Monday, January 22
Dedicated to the service of God...
Yesterday was Day 2 in the Down Town West Theatre for Crossings. (the official launch of this faith community is in just 19 days)It was another good day.
Once again, we started at 7am with at least a dozen people there to unload and set up. Our intention this week was to do a ‘slow motion’ set up to make sure we understand in the beginning what it takes to unload and set up everything correctly.
About 9:45 we had a short worship service and shared the common meal together. After that Betsy Wolf gave us some guidelines for a prayer walk around the theatre.
The prayer walk was by far the best part of the day…
Everyone went around the entire theatre praying for the people that will come to Crossings trying to ‘find their way back to God’. We prayed in the auditorium where the adults will be, in the Kids’ City area, in the areas where people will stand and drink coffee together. We prayed for healing and restoration for families and individuals. We prayed that Crossings would be a place that looks like, acts like, and talks like Jesus.
Some of us prayed and actually took some oil and anointed the building and equipment.
I’ve always struggled with getting a good understanding of why this ‘anointing with oil’ thing has any significance. Betsy shared this definition of the word ‘anointing’ before we started praying...
Anoint: To consecrate or make sacred in a ceremony that includes the applying of oil; to dedicate to the service of God.
One of the Scripture references she used is from Exodus where they are setting up their place of worship called the Tabernacle…Exodus 40:9 “Take the anointing oil and anoint the tabernacle and everything in it; consecrate it and all its furnishings, and it will be holy.”
There was no doubt that was our intention for the day…we wanted to set that theatre aside, not with some ‘holy fairy dust’ but simply with the desire of dedicating what we do there to God and to His dream for His people.
It was definitely a good day.
Mark Nelson at 5:14 PM 0comments