The Suffering Servant

On Sunday Pastor Brad read to the church a letter that he wrote. It was created in the first-person-perspective of Jesus writing about Christmas and His life. We thought it would be great to post it here.

Hear this story told live by  clicking here

Titled: The Suffering Servant

“He grew up before him like a tender shoot,

    and like a root out of dry ground.

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,

    nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by mankind,

    a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.”

                                                            Isaiah 53:2-3

The decision to take on flesh, to become an embryo, completely dependent upon a young girl’s body for my nourishment and growth over 9 months was a decision made before creation. It was out of the eternal love of my Father, the Spirit, and Myself that I descended my throne to move toward suffering. My Abba loves the world so much that He gave Me, His Son to the winepress of pain.

 My coming was not without consequence for those nearest me. My mother and father had to endure the whispers and gossip of their dearest friends and family. Good friends suddenly were keeping their distance. Others never talked to them again. My coming did not make their life or their marriage easier. My presence in My mother's womb destroyed everything they had assumed their future would be.

Not even My birth was easy. I’m sure My Mother never dreamed of giving birth to her first child in a stable, a place better suited for animals than mother and child. And it is not insignificant that my birth, like all births, hurt. Yes, there was great joy and choirs of angels singing, but My birth would be just the beginning of her suffering and Mine.

Soon after my birth, my parents and I lived as refugees in Egypt. An angel of the Lord appeared to my father: “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.”

We left in the middle of the night and stayed in Egypt until King Herod died. We were safe but many were not. When Herod realized he had been outwitted…he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under.

“A voice is heard in Ramah,

    weeping and great mourning,

Rachel weeping for her children

    and refusing to be comforted,

    because they are no more.” Matthew 2:18, Jeremiah 31:15

Why do I tell you these things? Why not leave them out of the scriptures so you could live in blissful ignorance thinking life with Me is painless. I tell you these things because I am the Truth, and truth, though often hard, sets you free. It is because I am Love that I open myself up to being rejected and hurt and misunderstood.

Misunderstood. That still hurts. Don’t we all long for someone simply to understand us? I remember returning to my hometown—Nazareth. I went to the synagogue there and began to teach. At first everyone was astounded: “Where did this man get these things? What’s this wisdom that has been given him?” But then it became, “Isn’t this the carpenter? Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? Aren’t his sisters here with us?” And then they took offense at me.

It seemed everywhere I went people misunderstood what I was trying to do and say—Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum. It’s very hard to see people you really care about abandon you. I remember trying to explain to my disciples—not just the 12—at the time there were many followers of Me, I was trying to explain to them that their confidence lies in the wrong places. I said to them:  “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life….This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled them.”

And then boom. So many of those followers turned their backs on me and simply left. I asked the twelve: “You do not want to leave too, do you?” Peter answered me, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”

God bless Peter for getting it right? But I loved every one of those people who abandoned me that day too.

He was oppressed and afflicted,

    yet he did not open his mouth;

he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,

    and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,

    so he did not open his mouth.

                                                Isaiah 53:7

Can you truly know me without knowing my pain?

The night of my arrest there were no angels singing in the sky, no wise men bringing gifts. I was alone. Peter, James and John were nearby but they’d fallen asleep. I didn’t think it too much to hope they'd stay awake as I went off to pray, but no. Then upon my arrest they scattered. Peter, the first to call me Messiah, would deny he even knew Me three times that night. Over the next 24 hours the Sanhedrin, Rome, all of Israel, all of humanity it seemed would reject Me.

I’d seen the crucified before. The Romans would crucify criminals outside the walls of Jerusalem. I saw their agony, their humiliation—naked and bleeding, no where to hide—a horribly public pain. Are you comfortable worshiping a God who didn’t want to die that way? I drank that cup, of course, but it was bitter cup. Your alienation became my alienation. All the sin that has caused all the death on all this planet, became mine. The punishment that brought you peace was laid on me. By my wounds you were be healed.

Surely he took up our pain

    and bore our suffering,

yet we considered him punished by God,

    stricken by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions,

    he was crushed for our iniquities;

the punishment that brought us peace was on him,

    and by his wounds we are healed.

We all, like sheep, have gone astray,

    each of us has turned to our own way;

and the Lord has laid on him

    the iniquity of us all.

                                    Isaiah 53:4-6 

It’s strange. I don’t know if I can explain it well, but in my greatest pain I witnessed the infinite beauty and worth of God. And I believe when we recall God’s greatest pain in Christ, we too see the infinite beauty and worth of God. No one wants to hurt, but there’s no escaping it—in our pain we meet God.

- Jesus 

From Brad:

Where do you hurt today? Is there a groaning inside you? I’m not going to sugar-coat this and tell you Jesus is going take the pain away today. I don’t know when it will end, but it will end. In the meantime, I’m going to ask you to pick up that pain, to pick up your cross and walk toward Jesus, the One who understands your suffering, and in the suffering we might just meet the infinite beauty and worth of God more deeply.

As Good As it Gets: The Myth of Arriving

If you knew that God wasn't going to fix the thing that's holding you back, what would it free you to do?

It's been a long time since I've seen the movie "As Good As it Gets", but the scene that the movie takes it's title from is hard to forget.  Jack Nicholson's character, a lonely man who struggles with mental illness, turns to a broke, single mom with a chronically ill child (Helen Hunt) and asks "What if this is it?  What if this is as good as it gets?"  It's a heartbreaking moment for the characters, but it also hits on a fear that I think we all share. 

I know that the Sunday School response is that with Jesus no situation is impossible and things always get better with God.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I think there are plenty of times when God, in his infinite love and truth tells us that this is as good as it gets (on this side of heaven).  Paul talks about such a time in Second Corinthians when he prayed that God would take away the "thorn in his flesh" but God says no.  Moses dies in the dessert, never reaching the land he spent forty years seeking.  The Bible is full of examples of people who never "arrive."

There is a myth that I have believed, and maybe in some ways still believe, that if we play our spiritual cards right, we will eventually "arrive."  If we believe the right things and pray enough and practice the spiritual disciplines, we'll get to that place where we won't struggle with our doubts, our greed, our broken family, our illness. . . you can fill in the blank.  The truth is that we may struggle with some things until our last day on earth.  This sounds discouraging, but I've actually found freedom in it. 

If you knew that God wasn't going to fix the thing that's holding you back, what would it free you to do?  For me it gives me freedom to run my race with a limp.  It forces me to stop putting off living until I arrive and start living in love, joy and truth in spite of the things that make it hard to do so.   It also helps me to focus on God, not my situation.  I know that someday His Kingdom will be established and there will be no more thorns in our sides.  Until then, His grace is sufficient and His power is made perfect in our weakness (2 Corinthians 12:8). 

-Jess P

[image source]

Sparrows

Psalm 84:3-4 

"Even the sparrow has found a home, 

and the swallow a nest for herself, 

where she may have her young-

A PLACE NEAR YOUR ALTAR, 

O Lord Almighty, my King and my God.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house;

they are ever praising you."

Recently, Shelley Giglio spoke on this passage at a women's conference and these verses have been consuming my thoughts ever since. Why? I'm stuck. I'm so stuck.

I am a traveler. Independent. Free-spirited. But I realized, I haven't felt like that, like myself, in a long time. I'm stuck in the land of motherhood. Responsibilities choke out any independence I once felt. I've lost myself.

Don't get me wrong. I love being a mother, a wife, a teacher. I wouldn't, in a million years, give up any of those titles for anything in the world. But I have let those titles define me. They are no longer titles but identifiers.

Enter Psalm 84:3-4. Simple verses I had read so many times before. Looking at this passage in my Bible, I had highlighted almost every verse in Psalm 84, however verses 3 and 4 remained untouched. And yet two weekends ago, these two verses shook me. Altered my perspective in a profound way.

See, I had bought into the mindset that my life was on hold. That I couldn't make a difference in the world because I was in child-rearing mode. Someday. Someday I would travel again. Someday I would serve the least of these. Someday I would feel alive again. Someday. But for now, I was busy building my nest. Making a home. Raising a family.

But Shelley Giglio spoke words that altered my thoughts in a dramatic way. Yes, I am in a season of nest building BUT I can choose where I build that nest. The sparrows chose to build their nests near the altar. The altar of the King. The altar of the Lord Almighty. And that changes everything.

If I build my nest near the altar, I no longer have to compare myself to other mothers.

If I build my nest near the altar, I no longer have to look a certain way, weigh a certain amount.

If I build my nest near the altar, I can experience a life of freedom. A life of redemption. A life of restoration.

If I build my nest near the altar, I can experience a life of adventure. Wonder. Amazement.

If I build my nest near the altar, I can see life through the eyes of my God.

If I build my nest near the altar, I can grow a family who will have eyes to see the poor, hurting, and hungry.

If I build my nest near the altar, I can expand my nest to bring in the orphans, the widows, the forgotten.

If I build my nest near the altar, the options for a life well-lived are endless.

And so, I will throw off all of my previous identifiers and cling to one. I desire to be sparrow-like for, in doing so, I will dwell in the presence of my savior. The only place that gives life. The only place that makes sense in this world.

"How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord Almighty!

My soul yearns, even faints,

for the courts of the Lord..."

Psalm 84: 1-2

 -Jess B. 

What a cute problem

The other day, I noticed that there was a tube of Preparation H on our bathroom floor. I didn't put it there. My wife didn't put it there. Neither one of us knew how it got there. Neither one of us even knew when it showed up. For all we knew, it had ALWAYS been there.

Along with the mysterious tube of soothing relief, my lovely wife and I recently acquired a new roommate. He was very small, had four legs, and lived inside our walls. His name was Howie, he was a mouse, and Howie was definitely not welcome.

In the process of trying to catch Howie (we're pretty sure his family lived in our walls too), we had some pretty emotional highs and lows. Well, mainly lows. Everything that moved in our periphery suddenly, in our minds, became a mouse. He even showed up in our bedroom. Just to say, "hello," I'm sure, but I never knew QUITE how high my wife could jump until he visited its up there..

The night he showed up in our bedroom (after I pulled my foot out of my mouth for telling my wife that mice can't go up stairs), my lovely wife and I were sitting on our bed, carefully watching for any signs of our fuzzy flatmate, when we finally looked at each other in revelation.

"You know, this is actually a pretty great problem. You know there are people who would LOVE to have a single mouse inside their warm, sturdy house?"

After that, Howie was just not a big deal. We caught Howie. Howie died a noble death after teaching us an important lesson about humility and how lucky and privileged God has made us. And just like that, that tube of Preparation H hit us with another lesson. It had been there in the background whether we were aware of it or not, just like God. We didn't know how it got there, we didn't quite understand why it was there, but we were pretty sure it was there to help us.

I know. I get it. Weak analogy... I'm tired and the NyQuil is slowly having it's way with me. But the point is solid. Every week at The Galley, we're reminded that God is HERE. NOW. We're reminded to be humble and to thank God for EVERYTHING good in our life, and we pray to learn from the bad. We pray with each other to learn the lessons that we're put here to learn, and I love that about my church. Thank you for keeping us humble, and thank you for keeping us a family in Christ.

-Chris F.

The Lion that is a Lamb

A king born in a manger.  I find myself being reminded that meekness has a special place in the Kingdom of God during this time of the year.  My Lord and Savior, the Creator of the Universe, humbled himself becoming God incarnate.  He was born!  That’s crazy talk!  I was born!  My son was born! You were born! But God?? Born?!  It’s  true.  Philippians 2 tells us that He made Himself nothing, taking the nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.  The human body, and especially a baby’s, is a very fragile thing.  We break, we get sick, we hurt, we die.  Yet, this is how God has chosen to reveal Himself to us, by becoming flesh and blood. 

Jesus represents the very core of who God is.

His name is Emmanuel, meaning God is with us.   What’s more, is that this way in which He has revealed Himself to us, trumps everything else we think we know about Him.  In Hebrews 1 the author tells us that God had spoken to His people in many ways through a variety of prophets, but he has most recently spoken to us through his Son, the radiance of His Glory, the exact representation of His being.  Jesus represents the very core of who God is.  He didn’t decide to blind us all with a bright light in the sky and speak in a booming voice, or drop some golden book embedded with jewels and ivory pages from the sky – but He revealed to us His essence by becoming a baby in a manger, washing His disciples feet, and dying on the cross.

And once you know who God really is, it actually makes sense.

How can you let this picture of God work in your heart this Christmas Season?  Is there someone you know who needs to revisit their image of God – invite them to the Gallery!

-Clayton

*Artwork done by Daniel Bonell

Fully Alive

I recently had an opportunity to see Jake Shimabukuro, an amazing ukelele player, in concert.  Sitting in the packed Fitsgerald Theater, I started thinking about how frivelous a concert really is.  There are so many other things we could be spending our time and money on.  Then Jake started playing this beautiful song, inspired by a vision his friend's dying grandmother had.  Watching him on the stage it was clear that he was doing what he was made to do.  He moved as though the instrument was a part of his body and he couldn't help but make music.  He was so fully engaged that he might have been standing alone instead of in front of hundreds of people.  The quote from Saint Irenaeus came to mind; "The glory of God is man fully alive."  As the crowd gave him a standing ovation, it felt a bit like worship.  Not worship of the musician, but of something bigger that had swept us all away from the mundane and practical for a few minutes.  I cheered for the music, but also for the God who makes a man and fills him with music just so that he can share it and lift a whole room of people closer to His presence.  

I look for God at church, in the Bible, in prayer and even through my own deeds.  I had never thought to seek God by witnessing the passion and giftedness of another until that concert. Part of the reason for this stems from a shallow understanding of salvation.  When I first became a Christian my understanding was that Jesus came so that I can go to heaven.  This led to a sort of survivalist faith.  Just get through life without screwing up so big that you go to hell.  But as I learn more about God, I see that His purposes for us are much more rich and wild than this.  Jesus came to give us abundant life (John 10:10).  That means a life of passion, courage, hope, creativity and joy.  

Though my understanding of salvation has grown, I still fight a voice that tells me to just buckle down and get through the day.  The excitment of being fully alive to God gets lost in dishes and meetings and diapers and Bible studies.  I learned this month that by witnessing someone else being fully alive, I'm drawn into the hope of recieving the abundant life Jesus came to offer. If you need to be so inspired, you can find some great videos of Jake Shimabukuro on YouTube : )

Jess P.

Motherhood

"I can fail and still be a great mom"

There is one thing I know to be true about motherhood. It is not for the faint-hearted. I have never felt like more of a failure than I have being a parent. Going into this whole endeavor, I thought I was going to rock it. I was pretty convinced that my years of babysitting, years of teaching, and years of overall awesomeness ;) would help me sail through the hard times. Man was I wrong. I could seriously list a thousand failures from today alone!

• Amos slapping Olive across the face (again)
• Amos peeing on the floor (in multiple rooms) as I try to wrestle a diaper back on him.
• The pieces of pancake scattered all over the kitchen floor when Amos decided to be done with lunch.
• The fact that Amos has lived on a diet of cottage cheese and pancakes for days because he refuses to eat anything else.
• Raising my voice at Amos for what seems like the millionth time for the same thing, even though I know that doesn't help and only damages his sweet little spirit.
• Leaving Olive in the swing screaming for way too long because I had a million other things to do.
• The FIVE loads of laundry that, after 3 days, still haven't been put away.
• The sweet potato that I STOLE from Target today because it was hiding under the carseat in the cart (PS...TARGET has the WORST CARTS FOR INFANT SEATS so really I blame them for not having carts that you can clip infant seats onto)

I mean, the list could go on and on and on. It's easy to dwell in the failures, to look around at other mothers/fathers and feel like I'm the only one that can't get my crap together. But the beautiful thing is, I don't have to have my crap together. I can fail and still be a great mom. I can look forward to naptime/bedtime, look forward to leaving the house alone, look forward to going to work...and still be a great mom. I'm not supposed to have this figured out. I learn more from my failures as a parent than from my successes. My failures are shaping and molding me into a better mother. My failures are teaching me about my limitations. But most of all, my failures are teaching me that, in spite of them all, I am enough. I am the mother that Amos and Olive need, even with all of my imperfections.  

My girl Jen Hatmaker writes it perfectly:

"It is enough for me to show patience when I want to stick my fingers in my ears and scream like a toddler. It is enough to choose mercy when they've made the same mistake yet again. It is enough to imitate my Christ, who never jumped through conventional hoops but transformed the trajectory of history through grace and sacrifice.

You are enough as a mother when you act like your Redeemer, dear one. When you talk like he talked, love like he loved, forgive like he forgave, and teach like he taught. When you launch your children into this big, exciting, wonderful world, that is all that will matter. It is what they'll remember and imitate.

It is enough."

Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. -William Makepeace Thackeray

- Jessica B.

Photo Credit

Just when you think Christ has left you, look at the mountains and ask Him to dance.

Recently I have been wrestling with whether or not I feel the presence of The Lord in my life. I have been experiencing a lot of hardship within my family and as much as I have surrendered and begged for The Lord to be with me, I haven’t felt him. I’ve felt lost. As if God just dropped me off in a dessert, and left me to navigate through an unknown territory with so many things and people weighing on my back, looking for me to find a way out for all of them.

I felt overwhelmed, lonely, hurt, and fearful. And honestly, I was sad. I was choosing everyday to lead a life of Christ. I was intentional with my words, actions, relationships, and thoughts yet I felt as though he left me, alone, in one of the darkest seasons of my life. It reaffirmed my belief that everyone in my life would someday abandon me, and that made me so sad.  

My circumstances became my identity.

Led by my depression and the lie that has dictated my entire life of not being worthy enough, I gave up. I began telling myself that I wasn’t worthy of the love the bible described. My circumstances became my identity. I was suddenly led by my depression. I stopped attending church, closed my bible and journal, and before I knew it, things continued to spiral downward. I couldn’t get out of bed, wasn’t responding to the messages and calls from the Gallery community (I apologize) and most of all, lost the Joy that I had about life. 

Christ provided me with yet another opportunity to be in his presence through a gifted trip to Colorado. One of my first days there I sat outside of a little coffee shop in the small mountain town of Nederland, Co. While sitting in silence, I opened my eyes and heart for the first time in months. I cried out to Christ for what I decided was my final time and in that instant, I felt him. He was there. I felt him hugging me through the depths of the mountains. I felt him sitting by my side through the trees. I felt him calling me to return to His dance. I felt him speaking into my heart telling me that as soon as I walked away, He crafted my return. I felt his powerful love unlike ever before. I was overwhelmed by this feeling of His love.

In that moment I felt God calling me to come back to His dance. To allow him to lead my life again and for me to simply follow. I opened my journal and turned to my notes from Pastor Brad’s sermon about the dance we partake in with Christ. 

“We reside in the arms of Jesus. When we pay attention and can be led by Jesus, we create a beautiful dance with one another. When we try to take the lead, don’t pay attention or don’t like the dance God created. We think we can create a better one resulting in us falling out of sync. It looks horrible, we feel horrible.”

I fell out of sync in my dance with Christ. Instead of asking for his help through the difficult steps, I rushed through them or pretended they didn’t exists. I tried to create new moves on my own. I was trying to lead the dance.

So here I am. Learning how to re-dance with The Lord. Step-by-step remembering the intimate dance He and I have created throughout the years and being open to the new steps He is teaching me. Being reaffirmed continuously that The Lord intimately loves me. I am his bride and He is my groom. He is longing for a relationship with me and I am ready for a deeper one with Him.  

I leave you with my favorite song Christ and I dance to:

Watch: Phil Wickham - Divine Romance

-LaCresia King 

On Love...

"Loving people doesn't translate to being an astronaut very easily."

Growing up everyone always asks you, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Most of the time I always said I didn't know, and would then go ask my family what I would be good at. I did this because I didn't see myself at being very good at many things that could be a transferable to a tangible career in the eyes of a child. I did know that I loved people a lot, but loving people doesn't translate to being an astronaut very easily. 

As I grew up, that never really changed. In fact, I think I realized that love is, in some ways, the "key" to life. It permeates all things that are in their correct form. It solves all problems, not in an actualized sense, but it solves the problem of a problem being a problem; a poor man is suddenly not poor when he has love; he realizes love has more riches than any bank could hold in dollar equivalent. Love brings us together, heals our wounds. Every one loves their true friends. What if every one loved everyone? Would not everyone be a friend?

God is love. God solves all of our problems, regardless of if they are truly solved to our liking or not. If we love God, God is our friend. Who doesn't want to talk to their true friends? Does not prayer make sense if we love God? And if we are mad at God, doesn't that still make sense? A man yells at his friend when he is angry at the friend, but a man is just a man, yet he endures the anger if the love is true, and they are made closer through the conflict and resolution. How much more can an all-powerful God take your anger? Sadness? God is love. He takes all the abuse we give to Him because He loves us.

This is the love we are to have:

"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love." - 1 Corinthians 13:4-13

All the cliche songs are right; love is all the world needs! It is the misunderstanding of love that demeans that truth. Understand what love is and show it, that is our purpose in life. 

- Jay C.

Robots and Toilet Paper

I grew up in a Lutheran church, and boy, did I have being Lutheran DOWN. My mother was the choir director, and I went every week for as long as I could remember. I knew all the things to say during the service, I knew all the things to do, and I knew all the things to tell people about being Lutheran. In my head, if I did everything right, and if I kept being Lutheran, then I was solid. I would be saved, and all of my spiritual bases would be covered.

When I got older, I went to bible camp. What better place to meet girls than in the Wisconsin wilderness WITHOUT MY PARENTS? Bible camp was awesome, I even got to totally hold hands with Megan, Meghann, AND Paige all in the same week. Being Lutheran RULED!

Along with bible camp, I went to Sunday school every week. My girlfriend would meet me there, and I got to see her and all my cool Minneapolis friends (whom I would reference to impress my sheltered Apple Valley friends). Everything was great.

Well, kind of.

As a teenager, I loved being at church. But at the same time, I hated church, although I couldn't articulate why. I loved seing my friends. I loved my Sunday school teacher, and I really loved the space. Best of all, it was EASY. But I hated sitting through church. It was a chore. I was handed a script to read and repeat at the right places. We would sing uninspiring songs, read our script, sit through 15 or MAAAAYBE 20 minutes of sermon, read some more script, and be done. I hated it. I felt like a robot every week.

Once I went to college, I quit going to church. I abandoned God and became a "Christmas and Easter" churchgoer. I came home for those holidays and really just went to please my family, and I still hated it.

I always felt like something was wrong with me because I hated church. I didn't feel anything when I thought about God, and I felt even less when I thought about church.

Thankfully, my lovely wife Courtney convinced me to restart our church hunt after our previous church didn't really do anything for either of us. She compiled a list of churches in the Saint Paul area for us to try, and the first one on the list was The Gallery.

We walked into the Gallery, and Tiffany immediately struck up a conversation with us before we were even all the way inside. We sat down and enjoyed Quest's teaching (since Pastor Brad was being hardcore and biking) and two more folks introduced themselves to us when I snuck out to go to the bathroom. This felt nice.

In that first sermon, Quest challenged us. He challenged me. The sermon wasn't short at all! At my old Lutheran church, the old Norwegians would RIOT if the sermon went over 25 minutes! And I was LEARNING! And INTERACTING. DURING THE SERMON! My little scandinavian head almost exploded. But I loved it. We loved it. We never looked at the other names on our list of churches.

For the first time in my life, I'm excited to grow as a Christian, and it's all due to The Gallery.

One Sunday, when I was suffering the consequences of drinking too much coffee, I noticed that the two rolls of toilet paper in the bathroom had been perfectly arranged to accommodate anybody, which I felt summarized our new church perfectly.

Thanks for welcoming us in, Gallery Covenant. And thank you for taking this journey with me.

- Chris F.