Last Saturday night we had our first official gathering as a community called Living Water UMC! We had 15 people gather in my home and share food and conversation. The youth minister in me had everyone play the game Two Truths and A Lie. The game is played by putting two facts about yourself and a lie on a 3×5 card. The group tries to guess which person put in the card and then which item on the card is a lie. We learned some amazing facts about each other. Some of them were: who likes animals and who clearly does not (Jokes about eating our cat were made!), one of us was baptized in slimy green water at a church in Glenpool, Ashley’s favorite food is jello but is jello really food? It was a lovely evening and my prayer is that it was the beginning seed of who we will become. I was asked that night where I got the name Living Water so I wanted to share that here.
After I was asked if I would be willing to start a church, I went through a series of steps that included interviews, questions and a group evaluation. During that time my husband and I tried to come up with a name and nothing seemed right.. After I was “officially” going to start a new church, my youth group, collegues, and friends all started coming up with names. The funniest one was by a student who wanted to name it “Monkey Business UMC.” During our week of boot camp training, the need to name the church became glaringly important. We had come up with some great names but if I googled them, they were already taken by people in the Tulsa area or the OK United Methodist community. So as I went to bed one night, I said to God “I need help with this one. I can’t do it and you have to give me a name, please.” I went to sleep that night confidant that in the next few weeks that it would come to me if I was willing to listen. About 2 am, my husband woke me with his snoring and I moved to the living room couch. As soon as I laid down, it came to me “living water.” So I got up, hit the computer and didn’t find a Living Water UMC in the entire state of Oklahoma. I then did a Bible search of the words and discovered it is woven throughout the entire Bible. I starting reading the woman at the well story and was drawn in to the perfection of how it fit my vision for the kind of church I wanted to start. So that is how we became Living Water before we had ever met.
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