Hi everyone, great to see you. Really great to be back. Oh Todd, here from, I can't say

you're from out of town because of Travel Shame. Sorry. Todd is not here. I have no idea

who Todd is. It's great to see all of you who live in Portland. Welcome. Speaking of Travel

Shame, I just got back from a kind of midwinter vacation that was one part

rest to kind of let my soul catch up to my body after the marathon that was

2020 for all of us and for our church and a little bit of a writing break as well

to finish up my next book but was really in large part to pray and prep for the

coming season of our life together as a church. Today we kick off a new teaching

series that we're calling Future Church. We are, as you all know, in this odd

moment where we are in the worst phase of the virus. A lot of people are still

dying and yet the vaccine is here and we're kind of through the bend in the

curve and there's light at the end of the tunnel and we're not very far away

from coming out of lockdown and back together as a church. There's no hard date

set right now. We're in a weekly conversation but in theory as soon as next

month the plan is to start to reopen as a church for those that are ready and you

know at the beginning of the year actually in pre-gathering prayer right down

here before our time together when we were just waiting on God I felt the

spirit speak a very simple word to me and that was just that it's time to dream

again and I felt like that was a word for our church as a whole not necessarily

for me. You know there is a time to just survive I think of that line and

ecclesiasties or that famous poem like for everything there is a time and

there's a time to just like get through it and we don't need like an aspirational

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