Why we do the things we do...
Jesus told his disciples that he would know the person who loved him by their obedience (John 14:15). Jesus also told his disciples that if they were intimately joined with him and he with them that their lives would bear fruit (John 15:5) and that apart from him, there was absolutely nothing they could do to improve or change anything.
We bear fruit in the Kingdom of God only when we are intimately joined with Jesus and doing exactly what he is telling us to do. God has faithfully been at work in West Seattle for many generations. 'The story' does not begin with us. It begins with God and his faithfulness always - and the faithfulness of God is from the Beginning. God calls up his people and sends them out to do his work in a specific place and on behalf of a specific people.
I, Jeremy, grew up in West Seattle and lived here until I left for college in '93. My wife, Sydel, lived in West Seattle for a very brief time during her early childhood. In the spring of 2007 God called us into a partnership with Church on the Hill. We assumed that God would locate us in Seattle's Capitol Hill Neighborhood since this was the place where God commissioned Church on the Hill to reach. However, God was sending us to West Seattle. In the meantime, God brought a handful of believers from West Seattle to Church on the Hill. God wove it into a beautiful picture to send us all out from Church on the Hill and into West Seattle.
And this is the narrow path God has us on today and every day. Listening to his voice and discerning how he is at work in our midst on behalf of our community. Our mission is not to grow our church. Our goal is not to gather as many people as we possibly can on a Sunday morning. Our work is to believe (John 6:29) that Jesus is in fact the Lord of the Harvest and that the harvest is plentiful (see Luke 10:1-4). So our goal is to be in His harvest field all the while trusting that he is Lord of the places and circumstances that he sends us to.