The three triangles in The Love Story Community logo remind us of two important things: What God has done in our lives through Christ, and the imperative we have to spread that Good News to the entire world.
Originally a vision given to Terry and Sami Simmons in 2008, the colored triangles [black, red, and white] produce a visual representation of God’s work to reconcile humanity to Himself.
The first triangle is black and points up, representing our hearts that are lost in darkness and looking up to God whom we are separated from by our sins. The middle triangle is red and points down, representing God reaching down to humanity through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ. The third triangle is white and points up, representing the light that has comes into our hearts and our resulting worship and service.
Here is the original announcement Terry and Sami made to the world:
“In our life together, Sami and I have had a heart for the lost. We have always felt that God had a special evangelistic ministry in store for us, but we didn’t know what it was. We prayed and meditated, cried out and wept, but still the vision seemed just out of our reach. We are naturally impatient people, and we wanted God to give us our mission NOW [when we wanted it] instead of in His own time. So we struggled, and fought, and kicked against the goads trying to get the Lord to give us the full measure of our ministry.
Those were the most difficult and frustrating times of our ministry and marriage. God was maturing and preparing us for The Love Story, but we thought we were already grown. I guess you could say we wanted to go off “half-cocked,” but God was patient and stayed with us until we had calm in our spirits.
One evening when I [Terry] was feeling particularly restless, I went online and began to read about some of my heroes of the faith. I was reading some of Charles Spurgeon’s sermons when I came across a message he delivered in 1865 where he used a “wordless book” as an illustration. I thought that was pretty cool, but it didn’t really strike a chord with me. Later that same evening, I was reading about the great 19th Century evangelist Dwight Moody [a friend of Spurgeon’s], and discovered that he had also used the wordless book, but he had added a fourth page, which was gold, to represented Heaven.
That was all pretty interesting, but I didn’t think much about it until a few days later when I was jolted awake by a vision: God wanted us to take that 150+ year old concept, and use it to lead people to Christ. I jumped out of bed and started shaking Sami and shouting for her to wake up because “God has given it to me!”
Wow was she ever mad!
‘What time is it? Leave me alone! You’re crazy! Go back to sleep!’
But I couldn’t rest… Not with The Love Story running through my brain at 1000 miles per hour! I kept poking her until she got out of bed, and when she was awake enough to understand, she knew this was God’s plan for our ministry.
We immediately went to work on concept and design, and a couple of days later, The Love Story was born.
May God continue to bless our ministry and service to Him.
-brother terry 7/01/2008″
