This is a common saying and as we approach the 10th Birthday of Compass Church it’s hard to know where the time has gone. If I had to be honest it hasn’t all been ‘fun’. There is that constant challenge of trying to reconcile the clear mental picture of the preferred future that we have (Vision) with the reality of where we find ourselves in the here and now. The gap between the two is often called “cognitive dissonance” but I prefer to call it sheer frustration. To deal with ‘the gap’ we have a few choices: lower our vision to make it more easily achievable, stop leading or stop caring! None of these are an option so we persevere with a growing faith and hope that is bigger than ever before.
From very humble beginnings we started with 12 people committed to starting a “proper church” and move out of a lounge room. One guy had a coffee cart and machine donated, another business donated a fully water proof and lockable trailer that could fit everything we needed for our services (this is now being used by another church plant), another Non-Christian guy donated $6,500 to pay our rent for the first three months so we could work out if we really were going to make this work. There are many other early history stories that confirmed God was up to something and He hasn’t stopped over the last decade. What else can we say except “Thank You Jesus!”.
1 Peter 2:9 – 10 is one of our foundational verses and revealed within these wonderful words are some of the foundational truths we are built upon. Once we were not a people BUT NOW we are the people of God. Once we came from all different walks of life, backgrounds, generations, beliefs and then somehow God brought us together to start to form this beautiful sense of community, family and home we are privileged to experience day in, day out, week in, week out.
But by the grace of God we have grown a little each year and have become more and more a place we love to call home. Home because of the people, not a building. As we approach our 10th Birthday we have entered the most exciting time in the life of the Church yet. I encourage, challenge and dare you to watch closely, read, listen and travel the coming months with us as we believe a miracle of epic proportions is unfolding in our midst in regard to the next significant step we have been called to take.