Fireside Conversations

After our visit to the Woodstock Church and a break for coffee at the café, Tariku and I traveled to Front Royal for a soup supper and conversation with the people at Nineveh.  The threads of earlier conversations throughout the day came together in unexpected ways during this evening visit.

I explained to Tariku that Shenandoah Presbytery has many small churches, and that Nineveh is one of them.  The membership (at 50) is much smaller than either of the churches we had visited earlier in the day.  Still, we are growing in our sense of mission and in our openness to what God may have in mind for us. 

We arrived early and began our visit in the sanctuary.  Kes Tariku recognized that our pulpit and communion table are covered with linens that were embroidered by the Lydia Center for women’s work on the IBS campus in Mettu, Ethiopia.  There is also a wooden Ethiopian cross on the wall of the sanctuary.  But it was when I told him that Nineveh prays for him by name and for our partners in IBS every Sunday, that he turned to me and said, “Randy, THIS IS a partner church.”

Tariku’s answer earlier in the day to David Howard’s question about the best thing we could do as a partner presbytery, was “More church-to-church partnerships.”  Several of our congregations, like Opequon, Shepherdstown, Smyrna, Massanutten and others have been very involved in this partnership over the years.  But only three congregations have become official church-to-church partners with congregations in Ethiopia: First Harrisonburg, First Winchester, and Covenant in Staunton.  Each of these congregations has dedicated major resources and has sent and received delegates to build and maintain relationships with their partner church over the years.

To hear Kes Tariku affirm that a small church like Nineveh which cannot commit major mission funds, IS a partner church because of our commitment to pray for our partners every Sunday, opened up a whole new area for discussion of the meaning and expectations associated with church to church partnerships.  It is an ongoing conversation that may open doors for many of our smaller churches to new kinds of relationships with our Ethiopian partners.

Nineveh is blessed to have a large stone fireplace in our basement fellowship hall, which lends itself to fellowship and to conversation as the warm glow of the fire took the chill out of that November evening.

During the supper conversation Tariku heard about Nineveh’s efforts to balance local and global mission outreach, and how we have begun a weekly prayer support relationship with a church that shares our name:  Ninewah Presbyterian Church in Iraq.  Their pastors have been driven off, and elders who were leading the church have been ambushed and killed.  We pray weekly for those who are left and for those who now live in refugee camps for the safety of their families.  I also shared with those present, the story of the Shoe Box Time Capsule, and how it brought a needed word at the right time to Woodstock church.

When it was Tariku’s time to talk, he spoke about how the visits to each of the churches that day had touched his heart in a different way, and how moved he was to see the different ways that God is working in the congregations of Shenandoah Presbytery.  (Again, I invite you to share with the rest of our presbytery and our partners, the things that God is doing in your congregation.)   Tariku also spoke about the ways that God was working in Illubabor Bethel Synod, about the tremendous growth they have experienced and about the new ways they are seeking to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

It is good to hear each other’s stories about what God is doing because it reminds us that God is bigger than any one understanding of God.  Often when we share, we hear each other say “God is at work in what you have just told me.” even though what we have shared may seem to us to be just part of the routine of the way we do things.

Every church in every place shares the great commission that Jesus gave to “Go and make disciples of all nations.”  Jesus also promised to go with us, and so every different expression of each particular congregation’s mission can reveal to us a different way that God is at work with us and through us.  To share those stories strengthens our faith and broadens our awareness of the loving God who though hidden, is right there with us; cheering us on and leading us on.