Aaron Proffitt

After a little experience under my belt now (one week to be exact), I am fully prepared to tackle this blog thing again. Thanks to everyone who came out to our Sunday morning worship experience. It was a blast to be able to worship God with all of you. Summers at Aletheia in the past have always been a time for the core group to stabilize and get prepared for the fall when all of the students come back from summer vacation. The summer of ’07 has been a totally different story though. This summer has been one of revitalization and growth for the ministry. In many ways, our ministry has taken on a whole new look. For those of you who have been with us over the past two months you know exactly what I am talking about. But other than the many visual changes that have been made to improve the overall look of the church on Sundays, I really feel that even more importantly, some transformations within the minds and hearts of our people have changed. The one thing that I fear the most is for Aletheia to become stuck in our own traditions that we have created over the last (almost) 6 years…in essence to become what we always seek to resist. We are not a young church anymore. Being in existence for over half a decade now has opened the door for the possibility of much stagnation and tradition making. For the most part we have avoided falling into the snares of tradition. Now, some of you might be saying right now, “what do you mean Aaron by ‘tradition’?” I am referring to anything, methodologically speaking, that is not Bibilical, and that is man-made, and that over time becomes the equivalent to Scripture in our minds or even takes precedence over it. This is what we, as a body of believers at Aletheia, have to avoid doing. Let me remind you of our vision statement: “Our goal is to see the Harrisonburg community and area college campuses effectively connected to Christ in a way that is relevant and genuine.” We emphasize relevancy for a reason. Because we want to continue to reach those from the younger generation or those that feel like they don’t connect with a more “traditional” style of church. But relevancy will never get in the way of orthodoxy. Methods must change but the message never will just like God’s Word tells us. So, the challenge for us this week is to bring Glory to God by remaining focused on reaching the lost in a relevant way and to not get caught up in our own human traditions. Let’s make it a point to move past even our own individual “traditions” that keep us from being the most effective, capable, and amazing servants of God that we can be.

Have a great week!

Love, aaron