We'll take the risk of being very honest up front. God has called us to share life together as a family, not as an institution, and there is a radical difference between those two. Our passion is relationships, with Jesus Christ at the center of everything.
So be gently warned that we're probably not going to meet your expectations, if you're looking for a religious experience or an impressive Sunday morning event.
If you're still interested in continuing to read, then we invite you to gather with Bridgewater Church on a Sunday morning or in one of our home groups during the week. We gather regularly as the church because we really want to be together, not because we believe we have to "come to church". We gather together to celebrate and to share the Life of Jesus Christ within us. Growing into honest, intimate relationships with God and each other are our priorities, except for those days when we get distracted and let other stuff get in the way. We thought you might want to know that also happens sometimes. We're works in progress, not finished products.
This is a community of very ordinary people seeking to know the real-life God who lavishes His love on His children. He is not interested in being impressed by how well we perform our duties. Instead, through His Word and His Spirit He invites us to know Him intimately, much more intimately than we have ever imagined. That is a beautiful invitation! You'll find nothing like it anywhere else.
If you don't remember anything else you read here, hold onto this please. We don't relate to our loving God intimately through rules or performance, but through grace and love and truth and trust.
We can't be intimate, honest and vulnerable with God (and certainly not with each other) until we believe that He TOTALLY and COMPLETELY ACCEPTS those who receive His life. There is nothing to earn or to defend when we enter into life in Christ, it's all by the power of His grace. It's totally a gift, one that we are all free to accept or reject. We are rescued (saved) by grace through faith, and we live by His grace from that moment through all eternity.
Hmmm. That sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? That's why it's called the GOOD NEWS of the gospel!
This is worth repeating. If you are in Christ, then you are TOTALLY accepted and totally and completely forgiven by God, warts and sin and doubt and mistakes and disorders and abuse and confusion and dysfunction and anger and fear and goofiness and all. When that truth finally sinks in, our life begins to change radically, and the joy of the Lord begins to truly bloom in us, and He begins to live and love the world around us, through us.
Just like you would never push away or reject or lose fellowship with your three-year old daughter who is acting up or disobeying you, God never does that with His children. If you've been taught or told anything else by the Church, we apologize for that. There is zero condemnation in Christ, under the new covenant, according to God's Word. God is holy and He certainly hates sin, but He loves, loves, loves His children, even when we struggle and fail.
There is nothing too horrible for God to forgive and heal, except rejecting His offer of eternal love. Nothing.
He knows we are broken and need soul healing, and in His sovereignty He even knows that we are going to fail again before we ever do. You can be intimate with a heavenly Father like that! You can trust Him and crawl up into His lap and be held by Him. You don't have to impress Him with your good stuff or hide from Him on the not-so-good days. If you are one of His little children, rest in the good news of that total acceptance, and of Christ in you the hope of glory. If you are not yet one of His children, then know that you are being persistently invited by Him to be adopted into His family.
So, anyway, Bridgewater is a simple community of Christ-followers, seeking to know God's Word and to walk in harmony with His Spirit, and to do that as a family instead of as an institution. We have a growing passion for learning to share life together in Spirit and truth, and we try to do that without focusing on a specific style or tradition or event or leader. The Bible tells us that every child of God is a minister and a priest and a sanctuary. We have a group of called but ordinary elders who shepherd and lead and teach this family (which is the biblical model, by the way), instead of a senior pastor. We know that Jesus Christ is our true Shepherd, so our main focus is pointing people toward resting in Him and knowing Him more intimately. Our heart is to grow people into real disciples of Jesus Christ, and we don't expect that to draw a crowd. We believe that making real disciples happens one-on-one, not by mass production.
Bridgewater is full of people who have experienced the realities of brokenness and failure and disappointment, but many of us are also experiencing a journey of healing and liberation and growth - and others among us are contemplating stepping onto that path. We are intentionally simple and loosely structured. In fact, we are a community that is looking more and more like a New Testament church. Of course, if you've ever actually read the New Testament letters you'll know that those churches were full of real life, imperfect people and messy situations. We are too.
So if you're looking for perfect and predictable and safe, we don't qualify. If you're looking for a community where people are willing to take the risks of being honest and real before God and each other, in grace, then maybe you want to come and see if it's real.
By the way, if it is real, then this is how you want to raise your kids to live and relate to God. That is, if you want them to experience the grace and truth and joy and freedom of Christ in them, instead of struggling to improve their behavior and working hard to live up to some religious rules and principles. Just a thought.
What else? Well, we are not polished or impressive, nor do we offer the latest and greatest in programs or activities. What we do when we gather varies from week to week, as the Spirit leads. We take the Bible very seriously, but we don't take ourselves too serious. We eat together a lot, sharing table fellowship. We cry together sometimes. We have fun. At times we disagree or even irritate each other. Sometimes we just sit still and quiet before the Lord, and sometimes we make a lot of noise.
We firmly believe that God has invited us into the crazy adventure of a grace-filled journey of healing and becoming free in Christ together. There have been a lot of hard days and messy moments, but we are sharing increasing joy and excitement and truth as God does what He does among us day by day. We are being blessed by the increasing revelation that He is even more than we ever imagined. When we share Life in Him, then we are doing exactly what we were created to do - which is why your deepest heart longing is for exactly that sort of community.
Anyone is welcome to gather with us as we wrestle with and explore and celebrate the reality of intimately experiencing God’s love and grace and holiness. Don't wait until you have your life together to seek the real God of the Bible. He will accept you where you are. So come as you are. Grace and peace to you.
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