One year ago today I wrote the first entry of “Our Story So Far,” the first of many, God willing! Six months later, on September 9, 2007, we opened our doors for our first public worship service. We met at Calvary Baptist Church and had 40 in attendance. It was a small intimate gathering of new friends who desired to be a part of a Holistic Missional Christian Community.

Since then, our infant congregation has spent its Sunday evenings singing in worship, praying, studying the Gospel of John, celebrating weekly Communion, and sharing meals and conversation as we all watched God form a new church.

We observed the season of Advent together, anticipating the birth and return of Christ.

We celebrated pregnancies, and mourned miscarriages.

We welcomed new people into our community, and prayed with one man as he believed in Christ for the first time.

We gathered for a rich study of the Pastoral Epistles, seeking to better understand what it means to be God’s church and outlining the functions and qualifications of the pastors.

And now we’re in the season of Lent, what our Orthodox brothers refer to as the season of “Bright Sadness.” We cultivate a season of expectancy as we head towards Easter, joining with Christ in His sufferings as we rejoice in the power and promise of the resurrection.

This has been a beautiful, and challenging, and redemptive year for Christ Church.

Even now, as I write, we are in a season of hopeful transition. Our dear friend Blake Quimby feels called away to serve closer to his hometown. Blake has been a crucial member of our body since its inceptions (He was, in fact, the first person to feel a call to Brenham after my wife and I). We are saddened by his departure, yet we look forward to the gift God will send to fill Blake’s shoes.

In addition to this, we have a contract pending to purchase our own facility. By God’s grace we have found an empty neighborhood church building in Brenham that suits us well now (as a small congregation) and can suit us well in the future as we grow and mature. This building is a 6000sf facility on an acre of land just off of Market and E. Tom Green at 1302 Washington. We pray for God’s wisdom through the process, that we would keep in step with the Spirit; and that if God provides us with this gift that we would occupy it as a Missions Outpost to encourage, train, and send missionaries into our neighbors, our nation, and across the world. Let neither this place (nor another) become an idol that would distract our focus and worship from our Creator and Lord.

With much excitement and hope,

Justin Hyde
Lead Pastor, Christ Church
Lent 2008