MBCC Blog

Chartering, Ordination, Installation . . . Oh My!

YOU ARE INVITED!

MBCC Worship Celebration
Sunday, December 14, 2008
5:30pm with heavy hors deaurves following
32 Ocean Avenue @ Mission Street
Directions | Facebook Event Page

Childcare provided, come early for parking

For the past eight years, MBCC has been what is called a "New Church Development" in the Presbyterian Church (USA). An NCD is a community where most of the long-term vision and leadership is provided by the "Organizing Pastor" in our case, Rev. Bruce Reyes-Chow.

MBCC is now at the point where leadership can and should be shared in new and creative ways so that more folks are able to help shape and embody what it means to be MBCC now and into the future.

To help celebrate this time, you are invited to join us for an uber-ginormous celebration and worship to commemorate three major rituals in our life as a community.

• "CHARTERING" of MBCC as an official Congregation in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
• "ORDAINING" of 10 Elders as our first official leadership team (Session) of the newly chartered MBCC.
• "INSTALLING" of Bruce Reyes-Chow as our permanent and called pastor.

A lot of Presbyterian lingo, but make no mistake this is a big day! There will be heavy hors dourves after service so come on by for an evening of celebration and worship.  Hope to see you then!

Wednesday Word: Cycles

Today Abby and I spent the morning shopping at IKEA getting the needed furnishings for our upstairs area at 32 Ocean Avenue. Now known as "The Living Room" and "The Office" respectively, the place is starting to take shape!

As she and I traversed the aisles planning shelving, dreaming about what things may look like and otherwise helping to create a sense of home for the MBCC crew, I was reminded more than once of the very same trips done throughout the life of MBCC as we have moved, grown and matured as a community.

And as proud as I am about the $10 steal we got the in the scratch-n-dent section - see pic - I am most proud of our ongoing willingness to follow God's calling upon our lives and risk moving and growing into new stages of our life together.

While this move to a different setting, neighborhood and time certainly seem like huge shifts in our life, the next transition is even more exciting and profound.  In a few months, Mission Bay Community Church will become an officially chartered congregation in the Presbyterian Church (USA). 

What?  What were we before, you ask? 

Well, officially, we were a "New Church Development" a fellowship that was given support and safety lines so we could form a community of people committed to serving Christ through a particular congregation.  Now that we have moved to a place where we can set some roots, we are getting close to fiscal stability and we have a good critical mass for growth, we think we are ready.

So . . . on December 14th at our service, we will be chartered, Elders will be ordained, I will be "installed" and we will, from that time on, be an officially recognized congregation.  Whew . . . a ton of church-ese there, and functionally not much will change, but there is something about this step that says we are continuing to grow, mature and I trust, grow into who God hopes us to become.

There will be plenty of time to talk about what this means, answer questions, etc.  so if you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment and/or contact me.  I'll be posting more about this as we move into this new phase of our life together.

Peace all