bible study heartbreak

i love bible study. love it so much. i honestly look forward to bible study more than anything all week. if i learned anything this past year (besides sodium/potassium channels), i have learned that i've always yearned for the amazing fellowship with these amazing christians that i have in my life right now. it makes me extremely saddened to think about how 75% of them won't be around next year. this kind of made me think about a part of Velvet Elvis that i read last nite:

Here's what often happens: Somebody comes along who has a fresh perspective on the Christian faith. People are inspired. A movement starts. Faith that was stale and dying is now alive. But then the pioneer of the movement--the painter--dies and the followers stop exploring. They mistakenly assume that their leader's words were the last ones on the subject, and they freeze their leader's words. They forget that as that innovator was doing his or her part to move things along, that person was merely taking part in the discussion that will go on forever. And so in their commitment to what so-and-so said and did, they end up freezing their faith.
What gets lost is the truth that whoever painted that version was just like us, searching for God and experiencing God and trying to get a handle on what the Christian faith looks like. And then a new generation comes along living in a new day and a new world, and they have to keep the tradition going or the previous paintings are going to end up in the basement.
The tradition then is painting, not making copies of the same painting over and over. The challenge of the art is to take what was great about the previous paintings and incorporate that into new paintings.
And in the process, make something beautiful--for today.

how powerful, right? i at least know i'm not going to let my faith freeze up. this is because the passion and drive behind our bible studies can't be freeze-framed, they have to progress. they have to progress for our own self-improvement and for our ability to create a new generation of Christians with a flexible and fresh outlook each time. because though God's will and promise is solid, our world is constantly changing and ministry has to be compatible with the world.

God is love,
Sara