An update on Living Stones
Last year Jon and I took a tour of the holy land with Ross Lockhart. What an amazing trip that was! We began in Egypt seeing many sites and worked our way gradually via our nice, comfortable, air-conditioned bus along the route of the Exodus of God’s people to Israel and the Promised Land. It was eye-opening to see what the people would have endured on that journey without all the luxuries of our contemporary technology and tools.
Although I am not one to put a lot of value into buildings, being in a house church ministry, I couldn’t help but be amazed at the dedication and work it took to build the huge and impressive edifices we encountered along the way. From the great pyramids in the desert to the massive cathedrals and church buildings on so many of the sites of New Testament stories, it was striking to realize how long and challenging a task it must have been to create these structures. It takes time to build a temple.
Living Stones, as a movement, chose our name from 1 Peter 2:5 which paints a picture of who we are to be as a church.
You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. We believe that God is building us into a spiritual house together.
Likewise in 1 Corinthians 3:16, Paul declares,
“Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?”
Together we are the Temple of God. Of course, this isn’t talking about bricks and mortar, but a spiritual temple that is made up of all believers in all time.
A physical building such as the ones we saw in Egypt and Israel takes a great amount of time to build. Even today as we observe the restoration of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a magnificent structure is not put up overnight. So it is with the church. Living Stones is being built lovingly, prayerfully and carefully as we desire to be built into this spiritual house that will be acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. That takes time. Sometimes I feel like it is taking us too long to get things organized, to create the structures that we need to help us be as faithful to the Gospel as we can be, to grow and welcome new churches, to move forward in kingdom work. But then I realize that in God’s timeframe, the few years we have been working together on this journey is not that long! I know that the development of Living Stones into that spiritual house will go on long after I am able to be actively involved.
We carefully, prayerfully move forward, putting one stone on top of another. Beautiful, precious stones
We carefully, prayerfully move forward, putting one stone on top of another. Beautiful, precious stones. We build. We fill in the spaces with some mortar. We put up some timbers. All of it done hopefully in a thoughtful way so that we honour Jesus Christ. Sometimes we may have to tear a section down and re-do it. Yank out some nails or pull up a few joists which aren’t serving us well. Most recently we have been looking again at our excellent document Things of First Importance, alongside our polity document to discuss how to ensure that they fit well together.
One of the most important ways to build is in coming together. Zoom has been great over these formative months and years, but it doesn’t compare with being with one another in person to talk, pray, worship, teach and learn and celebrate being God’s holy priesthood (another image in 1 Peter 2:5). We are now working towards another opportunity to be with one another at our second annual National Engagement Conference. Mark your calendar for May 9-10, 2024 in Markham ON. We’ll have more details in the weeks and months to come, but we welcome everyone to join us for that time. It will be another way of building the temple that God has called us to be. We hope you will share that with us in person!
Shannon Bell Photo
