Dearly Beloved,
As I began to pray to God about the name of our church, I asked that he would help me to think of a name that would really capture who we are to be as a church. I asked that our name would not be merely a name, but instead would be a constant reminder of what it really means to follow Jesus. I felt God giving me an illustration to help me understand where he wants this church to go.
He showed me a picture of people wandering around blindly, desperate to find freedom, desperate to find life; they were trying to find God. But in their search for truth, they weren’t aware that they were really trying to find God. They were blind to their true need. It’s like their vision and consciousness were hazy and distorted, so as a result, they were all on different paths, but really, these paths led to nowhere. They would wander around in circles, or walk on paths that led to dead ends, but in the end they couldn’t find a way out of these paths that they were treading. The worst part was that the paths seemed so right to them, so good and so appealing. While the paths were many in number and various in their shapes and forms, they were all essentially the same in that they were futile. Those treading the paths were lost, but they were convinced that there was nowhere else to go. They were indeed hopeless. This is, I believe, an illustration of the state of the world. People are lost, many unaware, and they need someone to help them find the right path by guiding them there and actually helping them to stay on it.
A pathfinder is “a person who goes ahead and discovers or shows others a path or way.” The lost people in this world need pathfinders who have discovered the path to God through Jesus. I hope that our church would not be a building, a place, a program or an event, but a group of people, men and women, who are pathfinders. Men and women who lead lost people to freedom, to life, and to God. That’s what a pathfinder is. It’s someone who doesn’t just tell people about God, but someone who leads people to God by displaying who He is and how much He loves them. After all, that’s what God did for us. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost and give his life for them. Jesus loves the lost; he loves us; that’s why our mission statement is so simple, but so reminiscent of what God has done for us: “To help lost people find life in Jesus.” I look forward to being a church that shares God’s heart for lost souls.