These sentences actually appeared in church bulletins or were announced in church services:

• The sermon this morning: "Jesus Walks on the Water." The sermon tonight: "Searching for Jesus."
• Ladies, don't forget the rummage sale. It's a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don't forget your husbands.
• The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been cancelled due to a conflict.
• Miss Charlene Mason sang "I will not pass this way again," giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
• For those of you who have children and don't know it, we have a nursery downstairs.
• Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Pastor Jack's sermons.
• Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24 in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.
• At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be "What Is Hell?" Come early and listen to our choir practice.
• Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.
• Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.
• Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM - prayer and medication to follow.
• The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.
• The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.
• Low Self Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday at 7 PM. Please use the back door.
• The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare's Hamlet in the Church basement Friday at 7 PM. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.
• Weight Watchers will meet at 7 PM at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double doors at the side entrance.

In more serious ways, we Christians tend to garble our messaging about our core values and primary commission from God. On one extreme, when people talk about the expanding work of growing God's kingdom, we make it sound like empire building. We compare numbers, favorably or unfavorably, and feel a related pride or shame. In our humanity, we're taught to play silly games; either to aspire to expansion according to motives usurped by pride or shame, or we declare, "we're not into numbers," and we refuse to celebrate new lives in Christ (as the book of Acts often does even with numbers) and we even develop a sad and sorry notion of church, human constructs, that completely ignore the Great Commission of Jesus to the church.

Jesus' parting words sent his earliest disciples into a life-altering agenda. Expanding God's kingdom by sharing the gospel and nurturing an ever-increasing, faith-filled people who are transformed by the Holy Spirit, committed to Jesus Christ and actively loving the people of the world in the name of God. There's a thousand and one ways to say it, but that's what we're called to - making disciples of all nations. Baptizing and teaching. Being witness to those who are near and to those who are far off. Building a kingdom that honors Christ as Lord and that believes that we are salt, light, ambassadors, servants, and agents of healing and justice and mercy and redemption for this ailing world during our short spans of life.

We are into numbers, because every number is a person. No, we're not only into numbers, and in reaching more people we still want to reach them well. But people matter to God, and if they don't matter to us, I'm not sure why we're here - except that in being here God should change our hearts on this and other vital matters.

With that in mind, let me say with no garbling at all - we are a Great Commission church, or we are no church at all.

All of this leads us into a most compelling agenda. To go and make disciples. That is the mission that drives us…always. (Not merely converts…church goers).

The demands of this particular season are also compelling. We have some people charged at the opportunity to expand our ministry to more than one site. We also have a very full 8, mostly full 9 and very full 10:30 service. Our parking lot is over-taxed, even with the parking additions that are forthcoming. The neighborhood is taxed, even though we enjoy an almost entirely friendly relationship with our neighbors. And we're turning people away, both actually and passively, whenever we don't invite a friend and potential Christian because our fullness has a freezing affect on our better impulses toward sharing and inviting.

All that being said, a group commissioned by the elders met for almost a year, praying, talking, studying, and looking at other churches and their expanding ministries. This Expansion Team presented to the elders and pastors a vision for what could be. The elders and pastors affirmed this and now we present it to you. (This is not new…).

First, the things we don't feel called to do.

1. We don't feel called to increase our meeting times to multiple services throughout the week. While we could have five, six, seven worship services, instead of three or four, we believe that this would cause our community here to feel disjointed and more obviously, tax the neighborhood.
2. We do not feel called to tear down and rebuild a bigger barn. While we do hope to add some seating and parking and office space over the years, it won't be enough, or soon enough to stave off the growing need. Even more, none of people in leadership aspire to being a mega church in a mega-building, which often breeds more spectator-Christians than mutually supportive disciples.
3. We don't feel called to relocate the church. We believe that God has uniquely called and blessed us HERE as a community church, even though our impact is also regional. This is a good location for SFC.
4. We don't feel called to buy property in some strategic place (Coyote Valley?) and wait. That's costly, somewhat speculative and altogether too slow.
5. Finally, we don't feel called to do nothing. Our theology, our hearts for people, our passion for the gospel, require us not to do nothing.

So we're going to do something. What, you ask, are we going to do?

There are three potentials developing. We don't know God's timing or ordering, but we believe that God will bring all three opportunities like waves hitting the shore. I present them in a different order each time I speak of them, since I don't want to presume God's diving order until the right opportunities show themselves.

The first that I'll mention is strategic partnerships. What if another ministry somewhere in our area needed 20, 40, 60 people in order to reach a certain goal or answer a certain calling? What if we sent a go-team of people who commit to six months, or one year, or two years, of working, worshiping, and fellowshipping in that other ministry? What if we and that church enjoyed such a sweet partnership that we would gladly give some of our best people and apply some of our most fervent prayers to that ministry? (The Highway…1st Presbyterian San Jose, e.g.).

These opportunities do arise. We're asking the congregation to live and pray in a spirit of readiness so that if that call comes again, we might say "yes, here we come" for every good reason. By the way, this is not new to SFC. This is how SFC became SFC - strategic partnership.

Second, house churches are on the rise again. Not really again - still. Early church…China, Viet Nam, now Europe…soon America. We met with Russ Rohdo, currently a missionary to Spain, but soon coming to the West Coast. He and others believe that this will be the next big wave in US Christianity, and that home churches have special appeal to the youth culture, counter culture and anti-institutional types who might never darken the doorway of a traditional church building.

Built mostly around the table (food and communion, with prayer, some singing and teaching), the house church is like a small group that wants to go further, and become a part of an organic movement of growth and reproduction, growth and reproduction, until a house church becomes a network of house churches. Not cloistered community, but dynamic, organic smaller communities of faith, connected by certain things, but not a common building. Again, this is not new to SFC. Some of our small groups might already view themselves in these terms, with the larger church as only a supplement to an already developed smaller faith community. Instead of viewing these groups as rogues or independents, why not bless and send them into an ever-expanding future? Some of them, by the way, might one day rent a larger space or hire a pastor, or build a building. Others might simply grow from house to house. Altogether, we would invite a networking connection that's as tight as the house churches want or need it to be.

Third, and most obviously, we could open up shop in a rented auditorium or gymnasium and send some people there. We could offer a contextualized, relevant, probably contemporary church experience for people who, again, are far more likely to go to a rockin' gymnasium than to an aged and cultured sanctuary. You might imagine that some of these satellite ministries outgrow the mother churches in short order. Some, like the Highway, even plant still more churches in just a matter of years. We already have leaders who could do a ministry in this way, and we probably have members who'd rather be there (in a more modernized form of church) than here.

In the last meeting of the Expansion Team, we went around the room and asked, "Where do you see yourself connecting if God were to lead you into one of these waves?" The answers were well-distributed over all three options.

My answer? I want to be at dear old SFC. God's call on my life has always been to ignite and support the health and growth of historic, longstanding churches. My assumption is that I'll stay here (God willing) as pastor to "the little church behind the fire station," as we continually send, shrink and then grow; send, shrink, and then grow.

So where does this leave us today? We are asking the congregation to wait on the waves of God's spirit and to pray for opportunities. Then we need to search our hearts. Which opportunities are from God, and which ones of us will be called to go? All the while, we need to count the cost. No vision is free and very few things worth doing are done without a cost. But as we count and consider and plan well, we also need to encourage each other. (en-courage!).

Then, as God opens doors and calls some of us as missionaries and ambassadors, we send and celebrate. Our advisors all say the same thing - if we treat those partings as funerals, we suffer. If we treat them as weddings (I'm not losing a son…I'm gaining a daughter!) there is no end to the celebration.

And all the while, most practically, we're clearing seats and parking spots for the next wave of people that God will send to SFC.