Published on Wednesday, November 16, 2011
I grew up in a very religious household. It was also a very individualistic, immediate family oriented religion as well. As I grew up and rejected the faith of my family, I naturally rejected many of these values as well. I think because if this, it hasn’t been incredibly hard for me to grasp the importance of community in the Christian life. I have always been the “community guy” in the churches I have been a part of. That’s the drum I beat. A large part of what drew Christy, my wife, and myself to Four Corners was the emphasis on God’s redemptive work in terms of creating for Himself a people, and not just a bunch of individual Christians. The structuring of our church around Gospel Community was something that I had been yearning for in a church for a long time. As we became involved in the family here, we joined Eric Barnes’ GC and quickly submerged ourselves into the life of the community. A bunch of other people did too, and we had exploded in number before we knew it. We realized we needed to split up, as we had become so large that we kind of lost the benefit of being a smaller community within the church at that point. Stu Minshew and I had discussed leading a new GC together, as we were both in Grad School and had very little time to lead well individually.
In the last month, God has really moved us to start serving Newnan. We had talked extensively about wanting to serve our community in two distinct areas: DFACS (primarily in providing Foster Care for children and helping the overwhelmed staff better serve the children in Newnan) and bringing girls out of sex-slavery. Atlanta has the most girls being exploited on any given night in the country and our hearts have been just broken over this. We have started to partner with Wellspring Living and look forward to many of our women mentoring girls at their residential facility in Tyrone. Additionally, Christy and I have almost completed the IMPACT training required by the state for us to open as a Foster Family. More of our members will attend the training in January and join us in serving. I am just blown away by the grace God is pouring into the members of our GC in the joy they are finding in serving.
Jeremy Bowlby
God is also building depth in our relationships. We are definitely encouraged by all of the time we spend together, celebrating God’s greatness and beauty, and we look forward to building even stronger relationships together.
