Welcome to the Gathering Network blog! Our blog is a place to further develop and reflect on our conversations as a church beyond Sunday service content. While Watch Groups are our primary tool for personal transformation, we know we can learn a lot from each other who may not be in our regular orbit of life (particularly during the pandemic). So we will write to and for each other.
Many (most) in our community are doing life-changing and genuinely healing work in their spiritual development. Hearing from each other is one way we can learn from and honor that work. You (Gathering Network) have things to say! We are here for it. This format will help us hear from each other and “save our work” as we journey together.
The Israelites seemed to always get into a pickle when they forgot who God was to them, how far he’d brought them, and how he’d provided for their needs along the way. A community journal like this blog is one way to keep remembering together and leverage each other’s collective strength when life circumstances challenge our view of God’s goodness.
We’ve been in conversations about a secure attachment to Jesus for almost two years. We’ve been taking the time to mine out how our attachment relationships affect how we relate to God, others, and ourselves. There are critical theological implications for understanding how our primary attachment affects us. We realize we are diving in midstream in a few different conversations as we hear from each other, but we’ve linked the Sunday Service conversation that connects to the writing when possible.
If the idea of secure and insecure attachment is new to you, this would be a great place to start where we do both an overview and deep dive on secure attachment and how we relate to God.
In the next few months, you’ll hear from us on these topics and possibly others as they come up:
Surrender amidst change and disappointment
Hope
Dealing with past pain
Secure attachment
Future of the church through the lens of secure attachment
Supporting the kids of the Gathering Network
We have a team of about ten people who have volunteered to contribute to the blog. If you’re interested in contributing, reach out to blakely@blakelypage.com. We’re new to this and expect we will be a little clunky with it in the beginning. But we’re going for it.
Lastly, a couple of things we think are worth saying as we get started:
While we wouldn’t publish something that we feel contradicts God’s character, this blog is not an official stance by the Gathering Network as an organization.
We think God’s character can be communicated from various perspectives and we value the differences within our community. We believe people can have different perspectives on a wide range of issues that do not affect the truth of the Gospel of Jesus. We think seeing how multiple people view and relate to a particular topic is a worthwhile investment.
Are you excited to hear from each other? We sure hope so.