I continue to be encouraged by the response we are getting and the progress we are making with Sherwood Oaks Bedford. With two gatherings under our belt and one more in July, we’re making good progress to be ready by August. We take possession of the building on July 11 and our team will start making the space look and feel like Sherwood Oaks. Our tech team has been tweaking some of the technology and we’ve had some great interviews with potential children’s ministry coordinators.
To a large degree, the ministry of Community Baptist will continue through Sherwood Oaks. Hoosier Hills Food Bank operates a monthly food distribution at our Bedford facility and that will continue to be a vital support to our community. In addition, the conversations happening now include using the facility for mom-to-mom ministries, student sports activities, student and adult tutoring and even a preschool. Of course, all these are just ideas that are floating around, but they demonstrate the passion and creativity already being experienced as we move closer to our start date.
Because of the various aspects of the work that will be happening in July, we are only going to meet on July 30. However, during that time our various ministry teams will be meeting with their ministry leads and getting mentally and spiritually ready for August.
Recently I ran across this passage from Isaiah 43:19, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” (NIV)
As Sherwood Oaks embraces the new things that God is doing, pray that he would go before us, clearing a pathway through hearts that are as crowded and dense as those wilderness forests cleared by our early frontier ancestors, and that he would bring fresh and pure water right into the middle of the most desolate and forsaken situations.
It’s exciting and scary at the same time to be at the front end of a new thing, but pray that we would have hearts and eyes to see clearly where he is leading us.