I got off work early, on a beautifully sunny day, and chose to go for a walk. I have a lot on my mind, a lot on my plate. I wanted to hear God, to give Him room in my head. This is not easily done when I’m prone to worry.



As I walked, attempting to hold loosely that which threatens my peace of mind, I encountered the most unusual flower. It was almost comical in it’s strangeness… beautifully strange, unconventional, multi-faceted, a vine climbing on a chain fence. I saw two of these strange flowers on a fence that lined the path. How many people pass by never noticing this flower? I was one of the lucky ones.



I was one of the lucky ones five years ago when I encountered Vibrant. I felt the same as I did when I saw that flower. I knew I had found something really special, strange even, unconventional, multi-faceted, a vine climbing on a chain fence. I might have laughed out loud a bit when I took a good look at the flower. What was God thinking when He designed this one?



My temperament and my presence of mind quickly shifted after my encounter with the strange flower. I wondered to myself what excited me about Vibrant when I first started this journey and what has kept me coming since. This is what I came up with…

- I remember being embraced quickly and completely.

- CV approached me personally and asked if I’d lead up JAC.

- I remember conversations about the order of our worship gathering. I loved that we had the Spoken Word and then music as a response to the Word.

- I gleaned a lot from our times going through whole books of the Bible.

- I feel like our worship sets were longer.

- We knew it was important to share stories.

- I love the question “what resonates with you”.

- I appreciated the opportunity to worship through art.

- C-groups have always been designed to be more then Bible study.

- I loved having the children’s story time at the start of church.



We didn’t do things new or differently, just to be different. We asked the questions and came up with different answers. The types of questions we ask change as we get older and have more experiences. In the past 5 years we had to ask some really hard questions of others and ourselves when pivitol people in our congregation felt they needed to leave. We had some bumps in the road and I don't think we've ever fully recovered. When I was sitting in Bipartisan Cafe and a man walked in who said, “I don’t know if this is where we were going, but this is where we got to.” That is also true for Vibrant.



Recently, we've been asking whether we start over. Do we move locations and change our time? Will this bring new energy and fresh faces to Vibrant? Sometimes it's a process to figure out the right questions to ask. It's important to look at the facts. What I do know is our leadership team is tired and burnt out. We apologize for taking on too much, for not knowing how to ask for help or asking soon enough, for finding it difficult to communicate effectively with you, for not always being clear, because we weren't always clear. It has been a challenging process for us and continues to be, as I know it is for you. What I can say with total honesty and sincerity is that your leadership team has poured itself out for Vibrant, for you.


So then what? How do we bring back the original excitement, before we experienced the growing pains? How do we create excitement in tired people? How do we begin to ask the types of questions we asked in the beginning? What if we don't find the answers? What if we continue being tired or we participate half-heartedly? Do we want to be in a church like that?



For some of us, this process, the last few months, maybe the last year or more, has been frustrating. It certainly isn’t efficient. It’s painful to not see movement when we feel like we’re pouring ourselves out. We must remember that God is not into efficiency. The many challenges we face in ourselves and in our congregation, He has been working through since the beginning of time. He is concerned with our character and our relationship with Him. He is not interested in a church that has it’s crap together. Our struggle gives Him room to move, if we allow Him. I would like to see what He does as we pray and lean into Him.