Acts 29

So we're in the midst of a name change that will be official (website and all) in September.

Edgeworth is becoming Seven Mile Road. (Or 7 Mile Road if you want to be cool about it.)

This is necessary because 1) Edgeworth is a confusing and troublesome name for connecting with many of the 60,000+ people in our local city of Malden who associate Edgeworth with the neighborhood they don’t live in, and so assume our church is not really for them; 2) Edgeworth doesn’t capture our mission or distinctives in anyway. (When we started we thought we’d be a parish community serving the neighborhood. Since our vision has grown and our understanding of culture has as well, we realize that there is no ‘neighborhood’ in any real sense anymore and we are called to engage a culture and not a 10 square block area.); and 3) We intend to send Ajay & Shainu to plant in Philadelphia in July 2008 and we would like their church to share a name with us. (Edgeworth won’t work in Philly or future cities.)

The name Seven Mile Road emerges from the text of Luke 24 and the story of the Emmaus Road. This road where Jesus came alongside these guys in their quest to know the truth, where the huge realities of Jesus and His Gospel were heralded, where the Scriptures were illuminated, where grace was extended, where their eyes were opened, where these guys sprinted back down on a mission to tell others this amazing Gospel that had captured their souls… this road ran “seven miles from Jerusalem” to Emmaus. Our hope is that the story of this road is the story of our churches… Boston, Philly, and many more to come. We long to be about coming alongside people in their journey, extending grace, living and declaring the wonderful and surprising truth about Jesus and His Gospel that has come to us in the Scriptures, seeing souls redeemed for His glory and their joy, and watching those whom God has graced being sent on mission and beginning the redemptive cycle all over again.