Читать книгу Staying One - Clinton W. McLemore - Страница 7

For years, we have attended Aliso Creek Church, which has proven to be an enormous blessing. Both of us vividly recall the first time we went to a worship service there and Dr. and Mrs. J. C. Cobo turned around to welcome us warmly. Those few seconds were predictive of what we have continued to experience from everyone at ACC.

As we write this, we can picture many people in our congregation, which puts us in mind of the moving chorus, “They Will Know We Are Christians by Our Love.”1 It is based on John 13:35. Our fellow church members are recognizable by their love.

They are also highly intelligent and deeply reflective. We frequently leave our Sunday School class almost speechless. The insights that come from the minds and hearts of those who attend are astonishing. In response to a few initial questions, the members of the class are off into the spiritual stratosphere.

We also want to acknowledge how much we’ve enjoyed and been enriched by our small group that meets on Thursday evenings. In it, we explore passages of Scripture, share what’s going on in our lives, and pray together. The richness of that hour and a half continues to grow.

The senior pastor of our church, Rev. Thomas G. Gastil, is luminescently intelligent, multidimensionally gifted, and wonderfully open. It’s a great tribute to Tom that he has refused to retreat into the bunker of ministerial professionalism.2 Week after week, his sermons are saturated with unwavering proclamation of the gospel. They are thought provoking, theologically insightful, and spiritually challenging.

Staying One came about as a result of a workshop we conducted for a group of five churches. The workshop turned out to have an even greater positive impact than we’d first hoped, so it made sense to capture its contents in a book. Sharon Rockwell, an experienced lay counselor, first recognized the need for a workshop on marriage. She is talented and tireless. We very much appreciate all the work she invested to ensure that everything connected with it ran smoothly.

Our daughter, Anna-Marie, continues to act as literary advisor and gracious critic. For over a decade, she has painstakingly gone through every word of Clinton’s books multiple times before the final manuscripts were submitted, and each one is much the better for it. Thank you, Anna-Marie, for everything you’ve done with and for us over the years.

Clinton and Anna McLemore

1. This chorus, written in the 1960s by Peter R. Scholtes, is also known as “We Are One in the Spirit.” Several performances of it are online.

2. See McLemore, Honest Christianity, 112.