Early in the life of our congregation I fielded a certain genre of questions regularly: "Pastor Wade, why don't we have a __________ at Living Word?" The questioner- usually well-intended- would insert in the blank a description of some type of ministry they had experienced at another stage in their life. At first, the question caught me off guard - the answer seemed too obvious to be correct: "Because we don't." It wasn't that we should not- or would not- but that we did not.

The root of the question is the expectation that a congregation has certain features to it- ministries, programs, calendar entries or a physical place that identify it as a congregation. The smallness of our young congregation highlighted the identity crisis faced by most congregations today. There was a lot would could not do, but our size forced us to concentrate on what we could do. To steal a phrase from a guy named David Garrison: Before you organize "it," make sure you have an "it" to organize.

If you strip away all the trappings of time, prosperity, calendars and busy-ness, you will find that a congregation is a gathering of Christians who give themselves and what they have to Christ and His work.