On Sunday I mentioned the “Stacking Chairs” principle that we’ve adopted here at Port City Church.  The basic premise is that none of us—elders, leaders, members—are above any task…including (and maybe especially) stacking chairs.  Each week we set up 220 chairs and put away 220 chairs.  It’s one of the occupational responsibilities of being a portable church.

At the start of the new year I sensed the Lord calling me to surround myself to a greater degree with a few trustworthy men in my life.  In essence, God was nudging me towards taking a step in cultivating biblical friendship.  Hesitantly, but knowing this was the direction the Lord was leading, I reached out to two brothers with whom I had been forming a solid friendship.  

One of my favorite go to movies as a kid was the 1991 comedy What About Bob.  This classic Bill Murray film pairs Richard Dreyfuss, who plays a conceited psychotherapist with a recluse named Bob Wiley (played by Murray).  It’s so bad for Bob that he can barely manage leaving his apartment let alone function in any other meaningful way in society.  One of the best scenes in the movie is when Bob is attempting to board a Greyhound to New Hampshire.  

In Luke 5 there is a powerful story of a man with leprosy approaching Jesus and asking for healing.  It reads:

One time Jesus was in a town where a very sick man lived. This man was covered with leprosy. When the man saw Jesus, he bowed before Jesus and begged him, “Lord, you have the power to heal me if you want.”  Jesus said, “I want to heal you. Be healed!” Then he touched the man, and immediately the leprosy disappeared (vv.12-13).

Kosuke Koyama, a Japanese theologian, wrote a very fascinating book called Three Mile An Hour God.  Koyama points out that the average person walks at a pace of about 3 miles per hour, which for a kid who grew up in the hustle and bustle of a big city feels like snail's pace.  Using this analogy, Koyama argued that often this is the pace at which God works: slow, slower, slowest.