Lessons from Jonah!

“But Nineveh has more than 120,000 people living in spiritual darkness, not to mention all the animals.  Shouldn’t I feel sorry for such a great city?” 

Wow! This verse of scripture is found at the end of the book of Jonah!  Many are familiar with the story of Jonah and the whale.  God told Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh to deliver a message to the people to turn from their evil ways and Jonah decided not to go and ran away.  Because he did, he ended up in the belly of a whale! He finally realized he needed to listen to what God wanted him to do and after 3 days/3 nights; he re-surfaced on dry land and went to Nineveh!

It’s crazy how Nineveh was larger than the population of San Angelo!  Did you know that over 70,000 people in San Angelo DON’T go to church on any given Sunday?  I wonder if Jonah would have come here.

When Mark and I felt the call of God on our lives, we became greatly burdened about that number!  Growing up in church like we did, we just assumed everybody went to church on Sundays.  Besides what else would you do? J After careful consideration of our options, we chose to start a church right here in this city to try and reach some of those 70,000 people who have left church for some reason, have never gone to church or just don’t like church.  Through countless hours of prayer and gracious people, God has allowed us to see many friends and families experience church in a whole new way!  They aren’t outsiders looking in.  They are developing relationships with people who are in the same stage of life and seeing God in a whole new light!  People are connecting with the music and being challenged by the biblical concepts learned from the bible.  Mark has heard a number of stories from people that will tell you that their family member wouldn’t darken the door of their home church but they would enjoy San Angelo Church!  I can tell you, it hasn’t been easy but to be able to witness lives being changed makes all the hard work worth it!

So as we learned from Jonah, we will continually try to reach our Nineveh and offer people a simple kind of church that they can hear the life changing message of God.