Our Karen service...

I know its not a great photo but I had to try to capture last nights service. We have been blessed to see the Spokane Karen/Burmese community really grow this year. Many of the Karen in Spokane which is around 50-80 now, make their way to our church on Sunday. Some join us in the morning english service and then join together for the afternoon for food and fellowship and help with resettling issues. Then they gather for worship at 7PM. The service is a mix of all the children singing up front in a choir like manner, gospel hymns, prayers from various people, scripture memorization and repeating from kids, a teaching from pastor JC and reciting the Lords prayer at various intervals. It's refreshingly a shared experience.

I invited the english congregation to join the Karen service last night as a show of solidarity for the people of Burma. To come together and pray, worship and hope. It was a good service even though only 10 of us showed up to support the Karen. I preached a deeply burdened message on Sunday about Ruth and Boaz and how the purposes of God move towards us from a distance until they end up in our bed, calling for a full commitment. I felt it was a powerful picture of our experience with the refugees. First hearing about them, then seeing them, than eating with them, then providing for them, then entering the gate of the city to face the system for them, and then marrying them in the sense of fully embracing the call and purposes of God found in the coming of the refugees. It was just like Boaz and his experience with the coming of Ruth. I felt it was an anointed word for our church. And as a final confirmation of that word...last night, Pastor JC's message was from the first chapter of...Ruth. Amazing.