By Sarah Antweiler, Perimeter School Mom of Three

“They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” 
Acts 2:42

Years ago, I read The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. While this book has some good take-aways, I’ve always felt like Chapman kind of missed the mark. Clearly, he has never met a member of the Antweiler family, as our primary love language isn’t any of the five he listed in his best seller. Our primary love language is and always has been one thing: food. Before I even pour my first cup of coffee in the morning, everyone wants to know what the plan is for dinner. There is an old saying “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” but I’d argue whoever coined that phrase never met the females in my family. 

After a very short time at Perimeter School, I learned that many couples and friends turned their parent and campus meetings into a night out afterwards. I quickly learned to ask the babysitter to stay later so we could extend our evening into a date with my spouse or dinner with friends. When I discovered you could get $2 tacos at Twisted Taco on Tuesdays, my life was complete. After praying over our children and eating all you could eat chips and salsa and $2 tacos, my heart was full on these sacred Tuesday evenings.

In August of 2018, I began writing down all our meetings in my calendar only to discover someone had clearly made a mistake and changed our meetings to Mondays! "Surely this is a mistake!” I said to one of my friends. Sensing my displeasure in this change, she assured me it was better for parents who travel, etc. In my selfishness, all I could think about was how this was going to ruin my plans for $2 tacos on Tuesday nights. I had to reexamine my heart and motives for attending these meetings.

ONENESS With each other

Growing up in the Baptist Church, my parents spent Sunday evenings fellowshipping with other church members and eating pimento cheese sandwiches and other potluck items in the fellowship hall at our church. What I failed to realize about my parents’ pimento cheese evenings and my own $2 taco evenings is that something more than the physical need for food was being met.

When God called us to fellowship with one another, He called us to come together so that we could experience a “oneness” with each other. He called us to fellowship so that we could each bring our unique gifts and become a team, meeting each other’s spiritual, emotional, and physical needs.

Romans 12:4-6 reads “For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us.” God never intended for us to live our lives in isolation. He designed us to be together.   

our common mission

My attitude became less disgruntled once I realized these meetings weren’t really about what I could receive from them. Rather, these times of us coming together to pray and fellowship are about allowing God to use us how He sees necessary. It’s not about getting together with friends. We don’t need a formal gathering to get together as friends and talk.

Rather, we need to gather together as a group of people whose mission is the same thing: to raise up a generation of disciples for Christ. We desperately need each other’s individual gifts to accomplish this!

Never have I been so thankful that God made us so different for this purpose.

Monday, May 6th is our final campus meeting for the 2018 - 2019 school year. Whether you are celebrating the end of another school year or mourning your final year here at Perimeter School, the campus meeting is a call for us to come together and fellowship, worship, celebrate, and mourn together as one body. I’ve heard there will be food there, and while I can’t promise you there will be tacos or all you can eat chips and salsa or even pimento cheese sandwiches, I can promise you that God will show up and use you to meet the spiritual, emotional, and physical needs of this body of believers. It’s a supernatural thing - all you have to do is show up!

Our spring campus meeting, "School Days," is May 6 from 6:45 to 8:15 PM on the track. It will be a fun night celebrating all that God has done in and through our school this year. As a reminder, campus meetings are required for all Perimeter School parents. You won't want to miss this special night of gathering together as a covenant family! Bring a blanket or lawn chairs. At this campus meeting, you will also literally make your mark as part of the Perimeter School family by helping create a large piece of art exhibiting what Sarah says is so integral to our school – our unique gifts poured into the single purpose of raising up disciples for Jesus.