Safe Harbor Online

Being like Christ is a process, one that we must take. And the process is discovering God in all the moments of our lives. In all the decisions of our day. In all the reactions we have. I found this video and I thought it summed up the process and how anything and everything, even running, can be spiritual formation and worship. Watch the video of the Olympian Ryan Hall as he shares his story with us.

Pastor Luke Camara

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I love looking through old photo albums. It is so wonderful to see the heritage of my family. As a church, we are quite new, but our roots run deep into the past. Here is the first video from Rev. John Soper in a series of 5 that speak to the roots, but most importantly, the heart of our denomination. For more info, you can check out cmalliance.org

Pastor Luke

Matthew, a member of Safe Harbor Church and an all-around good guy, is putting together a missions trip. I wanted to share with you the e-mail he sent out. I also wanted to invite you to be part of this great opportunity. If you are interested please contact Matthew. Here is what he wrote…

I have been working to set up a trip to Mali to see Barry and Terry to help them in their work. I have been speaking with a lady named Marcy from the corporate office (I think?) to find a time to go and what would be the basic layout of our trip. She says that, in most cases, they like to set up trips for two weeks with work teams between 10 and 15 strong. I think that would be hard for us to come up with, however she has informed me that another team is planning on taking a trip out there starting Nov. 14, 2008. The plan is that they would be out there for two weeks. This team only consists of about 8 people, I think, and Marcy was wondering if we might want to try and put a small team together to join them. To do this we would looking at trying to have 6-8 people that want to go. The length of time we would be there is up for discussion, as I know 2 weeks is hard for many of us.

This communication is simply to gauge the desire to try and fit in that time frame. If we are going to go then we will need to know a definite pretty soon so we can begin to prepare by getting passports, shots and money. Please take a little time and pray about this and decide if you think this is even a possibility for you so I can let Marcy know if we want to try or if we should shoot for next spring. I want to thank you for what you have meant to me, whether you know you have or not. Your hearts for the Lord and his people especially have been the very reason I have hung around for so long even though I may not seem to fit into this church family on paper. I want us to be able to do a trip like this and am willing to plan it for us, but I need people to fill the seats on the plane.

I want to reiterate, THIS IS NOT A DEFINITE answer that I am looking for, I just want to know your interest level.Please email me at mbingram80@gmail.com,  or just say so the next time you see me. You can also tell Luke what you think about this. I know I don’t have many details right now, but if we have some interest I will get more. I want to let Marcy know within a couple weeks whether we want to try for that date or not. Again, thank you.

IHS,

Matthew

For the past two weeks we have been viewing NOOMA films on Sunday. We have three more weeks left and you will not want to miss them I am sure ’bout that! But I can talk about how great they are until I’m blue in the face, the question is what are others say. So I grabbed a line from two other blogs. This one comes to us from my wife and her blog. She says this about the last NOOMA we watched, Rhythm.

“We watched a Nooma yesterday and it got me thinking. In the discussion questions afterward, it asked if God is compassionate, loving, forgiving, etc. or actually is compassion, love, forgiveness. Whether I’m right or not, I’m really empowered by the second. I would rather live out God’s compassion and love that try to do those things myself. Also from the Nooma, Rob Bell talks about being “out of tune” with God. We talked about what that means. We can go really deep when we think about it, but I think it’s simply when we take control of things instead of letting God.”

Here is another quote from another blog by our friend Rachel,

“When you think of God, what image comes to mind? If I try to think of God I don’t necessarily think of a person in a white outfit or Morgan Freeman or anything. The picture that comes to mind is that of a mother and father holding their newborn baby. In my picture we are the baby, and the God is the parents who provide everything for the baby. They love that baby even though the baby never did anything to earn their love. They clothe , comfort , discipline, teach, and feed the baby from themselves and it grows and the relationship grows and changes as well. Everything that baby needs is right there in the arms of it’s parents. I know it seems strange that a mother would be included in my image of God, but I think that God teaches us how to be a mothers as well as fathers. How to nurture and protect, and to love.

I was also thinking about people that I know that know a lot about Christianity yet seem to lack some key element that creates the joy that other believers have. And I also thought about people I know who are new to Christianity who don’t know the Bible, all the stories, and all the rules, but they have an awesome faith and are in tune with other believers. I know that as I stumble along in my decades old faith, that sometimes I lose the joy of my faith and my beliefs. But I am an imperfect person and an imperfect Christian. That’s OK. I don’t think there is room in heaven for any more perfect people.”

I have a problem, I think about Safe Harbor a lot. Like sometimes in the middle of the night, or at dinner, or in the car or while giving my children a bath. And since I think about it so much sometimes I forget that others they just don’t think about it as much. Honestly they are busy with life. They are sleeping, or eating dinner, or driving a car or giving their kids baths. But I think it is important for everyone to be on the same page. One way to stay on the same page is to have a common vision of the future.

So here is the vision of our future as a church. We want to grow to such a size that we can start multiple other churches. We want to be healthy enough to have a positive impact on our community of fellow churches within our denomination. We want to help people grow in their relationship with Jesus. So those are some of our future goals. We are not there yet, but that is where we are heading. 

Blessings,

Pastor Luke