{"id":3966,"date":"2022-11-06T02:52:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-06T02:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3966"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:33:48","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:33:48","slug":"country-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=3966","title":{"rendered":"COUNTRY CHURCH"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Over the past three months, on occasion, I have been preaching at a little country church in Greencastle, Indiana. And I have thoroughly enjoyed it.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s a small but attentive crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Actually, &#8220;crowd&#8221; is hardly the right word. The highest attendance so far has been 9.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And that included me.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They are sweet people who lost their pastor to a nearby church at the beginning of the summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The guy took a few of the members with him, and now the remaining congregation isn&#8217;t quite sure how to move forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I keep praying about how best to help them discern next steps.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This weekend they will be having a &#8220;fellowship hour&#8221; in place of Sunday school. Melissa will be joining me for the first time. I am looking forward to introducing her to my new friends.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Last week, Caleb drove the 40 minutes from college to join us. He walked in half way through Sunday school &#8211; before I had had the chance to tell everyone he was coming &#8211; and some nearly fainted to see a young man walk through the door of the church!<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Would you lift a prayer for this little flock as many struggle personally with health issues and together they determine the future of the church?<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEi2D4cg-PbxoITyR2OPtDOhJq1PyujQ8cTUgAjPyvqqvoms7M-Viy9FUJZ7NJbEfa8-QvSCY5T_guaNLiZjvQ8IaJWYmL1Y8cNlAYFcgYTeZJYw9_sXIeqk2HU0HkifOD8N7GoJPH9t1gGy0SDRwxUx9PL_5Z4-Uv-T_cOI8dBvrk9_hudBVXrwaa-x\/w480-h640\/imagejpeg_0(3).jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"768\" height=\"1024\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEjvHp2QvJ0drr4ql6H_K1T0OCCcgYtMtY2jYtrtTujzngxoLgak3BvkGgAo0W6_WzPxyuR3B4Adp3iPKwfR3NkvYe7X0KE-BurzGyAlefJUsvJPCxyXuteg_gs4AhY4FtaiD6VMEe3rWPqqBvxJRt6FhGBppsqFO5FUM5zg9VQP1ocBVhJZoU66ZaaM\/w640-h480\/imagejpeg_0(1).jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/img\/b\/R29vZ2xl\/AVvXsEjRufiFVhuaafC7DUQxLJ4R03dUe6NeRIi6qCJDBGMypsnk-kupreRMweUqQHDpxgm4w2J-CnznxAyMUGA6sbIhk9XyrYdL-ZDY3h0EklE2TGmtICWSMoYjWPd7z-H3K06NtmQa4Sun5BazeVkyDUb5FZO4_S5RkhZvLKY7b6YK3lDWNMNC5EUyAJlw\/w640-h480\/imagejpeg_0(2).jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\"\/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over the past three months, on occasion, I have been preaching at a little country church in Greencastle, Indiana. And I have thoroughly enjoyed it. It&#8217;s a small but attentive crowd. Actually, &#8220;crowd&#8221; is hardly the right word. The highest attendance so far has been 9.\u00a0 And that included me. They are sweet people who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3967,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3973,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3966\/revisions\/3973"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}