“You never know how thirsty you are until you come to the well.”
These words came to me as we prayed during one of our times of worship last week at the Cruxifusion conference.
There were many moments where it felt the Holy Spirit was completely enveloping the conference. God was definitely among us.
As clergy, our work is wide and varied. There’s preparing for Sunday worship. There’s visiting people in their homes or other places. There’s way to much administrative work. There’s funerals, weddings, baptisms. There’s meetings, meetings and more meetings. I can’t speak for others, but there are times when I might even forget just how present the Spirit of God can be.
“You never know how thirsty you are until you come to the well”
Well, at times I felt like I was drinking from a firehose.
Worship was passionate and powerful.
Our guest speakers challenged us, told us wonderful stories, inspired us, and made us think.
The fellowship with other Christ loving ministers was life-giving.
The food gave us food poisoning… oh wait… that’s a bad thing… but not even that could slow us down! (for long)
There are a number of things I am bringing home with me:
- Hope – Hope in the church because there are many people who love Jesus Christ and are willing to work hard to bring our congregations back to Him as our focus, despite any other theological or ecclesial differences we may have.
- Self-reflection – How am I maintaining my relationship with Jesus Christ in the in-between time until the next conference? How am I feeding my soul? And how is it reflecting the ministry I am involved with here in Sydney Mines and the surrounding area?
- Friendship – I made a number of new friends over the week, and reconnected and deepened friendships with those I already knew. Friends from coast to coast in this country. Literally from Newfoundland to Victoria Island. Good friends. Friends I will pray for, and friends who will pray for me. Valuable friends. Trusted friends.
All of these are important as we move forward as a church in the world today. We need to know we are not alone. We need to know there are churches out there who struggle like we do, who seek the Living Christ among them like we do, and pray for direction by the Holy Spirit so they can reach the community around them like we do.
If you are in a church seeking these things; if you are a church struggling with what it means to be solely focused on Jesus Christ as our Risen Lord, then get to know the people of Cruxifusion. We want to lift Jesus high within the United Church of Canada.
We aren’t political. We aren’t wanting to see the church reorganized or changed, we just want to focus on Jesus.
As we found out at the conference, we are not a renewal movement, we are a confessing movement.
We confess Jesus Christ as Lord of His church, and we seek to follow Him.