In May I wrote this letter. In May we had no idea what we were doing. I wrote that we would be unmooring ourselves in August; now I see all the ways we untied the knots and pushed away from the dock in May.
09 May, 2007
Dear Stockbridge Boiler Room family,
In the midst of rethinking how to live out a vow to be kind to others, true to Christ and to take the Gospel to the nations, Tony and I have been praying over our next steps in making the Boiler Room a reality. We have said we won't move until God shows us where, or how, and that we're willing to scrap everything we've planned in order to follow his leading.
The past weeks have been a trying time of discernment for both of us; a sense that God is calling us to something unknown, inviting us to live closer to Him. We have waited on him. In a sense, we believe we'll be waiting on him for the rest of our lives, but we've been blessed with unity in seeing the next step, and we're ready to move.
We want to invite you to an adventure of prayer, waiting on God, faith and hope that he is who he says he is, and that he will answer the prayers of his children. We prayed for all of you, and he gave us a community we love. Now we would like you to pray specifically that he gives us a house in the neighborhood for the interns to move into. That's a next step toward establishing a presence of light here.
We are not going to fund raise for the Stockbridge Boiler Room. In the spirit of George Mueller, and believing we live under the gaze of a watching world, in order to give glory to God, we want to give "to the world and to the church, a clear, distinct, and undeniable demonstration, that it is a blessed thing to trust in, and to wait upon, God; that he is now, and ever was, the living God, the same as revealed in the Holy Scriptures, and that if we know and are reconciled to Him through faith in the Lord Jesus, and ask him in his name for that which is according to his mind, he will surely give it to us in his own time, provided that we believe he will" (Answers to Prayer, p. 99-100). Like Mueller, we want to prove God's faithfulness. Mueller did it through articles published in local newspapers and magazines; we will do it through a blog.
What does this mean? It means that beyond what Crossroads has already so generously offered us, we will depend on God to provide. We will pray and trust and he will provide, we know he will. And we will bear witness to his faithfulness by blogging about it. We will live by prayer and by faith, without asking any individual for any money. We will publish our financial statements on a regular basis, and provide them for anyone who asks, but we will not seek people out in order to tell them about the SBR with the secret hopes that in addition to praying, they'll make a financial pledge.
We are excited about this; we feel God's benediction on this, and we can't wait to see how God provides, how he tests us, how he teaches us and stretches us. Please pray for our trust to grow.
*If you're wondering what the Stockbridge Boiler Room is, besides a place where the furnace goes, click here to read our hopes and dreams for the Stockbridge Boiler Room. Download stockbridgestory.doc.
**If you're wondering who we are, we're Jennifer and Tony Tendero. Two years ago we moved from a farmhouse in the country to a house in a neighborhood whose heart and soul are scarred.
In August we are going to unmoor ourselves from the security of a salaried job with benefits.
A ship is safest in the harbor; but that's not what ships were made for.
***Excerpts from Jenn's journals chronicle this shift of heart and place. They are not required reading.
Download journal_excerpts.doc
::jenn::
this post's photograph + banner photograph by mav
