Recovery Sunday

I still am feeling wowed as I reflect on our Recovery Sunday worship service this past Sunday. This was one of the most powerful worship experiences we’ve had at Chain of Lakes. I am very grateful to Val Owens for all of the work she did in putting this worship experience together. The talk by Margaret Owens, Val’s daughter-in-law, really set the tone for our worship experience. As I shared after her talk, she shared her insides with us—she was authentic. After her talk I shared with the group present that this is the type of people we are going to be—we aren’t going to hide behind our piety. Instead we are going to share ourselves with each other in a very authentic way. Our new Accompanist, Kellie Burriss, did a wonderful job with her solo called “Angel.” At the end of the song I shared with the congregation that we at Chain of Lakes are going to be an angel for the people in the community; my dream is we will be a community where addicts will experience hospitality. I especially appreciated Nancy Amundsen’s (she is a Steering Committee member at Chain of Lakes) talk about the three c’s (Cause, Control, Cure) that she learned in Al-Alanon. When another person is struggling and that person tries to hook us into the problem, we can remember that we didn’t Cause the person’s problem, we can’t Control it, or Cure it.

Our attendance was small on Sunday, but if we consistently worship like this we will grow into living out our Purpose Statement.

We are called to be an authentic, Christian community where:
Strangers become friends
Friends become disciples
Disciples impact the world