The next couple blog posts are going to be more geared towards Christians who serve in leadership roles. I've written this one recently and I'll be posting one I wrote some time ago.
The last few weeks at Worship have been awesome. The worship teams have been doing a great job. We now have four worship teams with great musicians of all ages. Sunday School is going great we've gone from a handful of kids a few years ago to having multiple groups filled this year. We've got several guys working on Sound and technology. We've recently put in several more pews to accommodate people, and today, people were still bringing in chairs.
It was interesting because I preached on grace and when I came home I couldn't shake the self congratulatory attitude, which was incredibly convicting having just preached the words “For it is by Grace you have been saved, that no man may boast.”
When I was in seminary, praying about where God was leading me, I was sitting in the library, and I noticed an older man, quietly sneak into the library from a small door on the side (For fans of the movie “”Field of Dreams” its that library). He quickly ran up behind the front desk, looked up something on the computer, and walked back to his unmarked door. I watched for several minutes as this happened two more times. To my delight, the next day in my “Biblical Exegesis” class (fancy word for in-depth bible study), we got to go on a field trip through that little side door in the Library. The door opened onto a steel staircase leading down into the basement. And at the bottom of the stairs was a small office and inside that office was the man I had seen the day before. Surrounding the office were large file cabinets and wooden cupboards. The man welcomed us and took us to a table where there was an original Martin Luther Bible and a few original and copied codices (ancient Bible manuscripts). This fellas job was to care for, preserve, and distribute the the information contained in those thousands of resources in that basement to the rest of the university and seminary. Because this was a place of learning and information, this guy was probably was the heartbeat of that school, but he wasn't a famous professor, he wasn't a well recognised administrator, in fact not man people knew his name, and his office had no windows.
I've told my wife several times that I want to be that guy. I'm not particularly outgoing. I'm generally awkward around large crowds, and a trait that doesn't lend itself well to being a preacher, I've found in the past few years, that I'm not such a fan of talking in front of large crowds. I'm not that cool when it come to speaking to kids or youth. In fact, I once had a colleague question my call to ministry because of this and because I wasn't able to talk about sports.
Unfortunately, God didn't lead me in that direction of a career with books or bless me with a Library science degree, but I often think about him when I start to get prideful. His job was simply to distribute information. While not many knew him or saw him, what he was doing was vitally important. To make sure that those seeking to learn had the ability to learn. I suppose people called to ministry in the Church have the same primary role; to share information, in this case the information is the gospel of Jesus Christ and the love and truth of God. There are many ways people are called to do this. We know this from Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 12 when he talks about the body of Christ.
The reality is that it's not about the pastor or the Sunday School teachers, or the elders or deacons, it's about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the task of every part of the body to share that information in whatever way they are called and gifted to do so. God works through every part of the body, not to build up a particular Church, or to promote a particular person, but to build an army of people ready and willing to go out and share the good news of Jesus Christ. This army is made up of very different people with very different gifts, called to different ways of doing ministry.
In Acts two we read about the first Church. They simply gathered together, prayed, had communion and remembered Jesus, and read the Scriptures and Apostles teachings. Then it says about their Church “and God added to their number daily those who were being saved”. They were a Church of 120 and thousands joined in a very short period of time, but we have no mention of charismatic leaders of the Church of Jerusalem, of great buildings, just simply a group of believers meeting together to do what God commanded to do, and it was God who added to their number. Not so they could have more people sitting in the pews but so that he could raise up this army of information givers, people who would go out and share the Gospel in the ways that he called them to do. Later, in acts we hear very little of this Jerusalem mega Church, we only have few, brief mentions of the Church after this point, but what we do know is that this great mob of Christians didn't stick around in Jerusalem, they went out, taking the Gospel to the world, starting new Churches. The focus was not on getting more people to come to their Jerusalem Church, but on sending them out to do the work God called them to do.
But it was His Church, for His purposes, by His grace, for His glory.
The last few weeks at Worship have been awesome. The worship teams have been doing a great job. We now have four worship teams with great musicians of all ages. Sunday School is going great we've gone from a handful of kids a few years ago to having multiple groups filled this year. We've got several guys working on Sound and technology. We've recently put in several more pews to accommodate people, and today, people were still bringing in chairs.
It was interesting because I preached on grace and when I came home I couldn't shake the self congratulatory attitude, which was incredibly convicting having just preached the words “For it is by Grace you have been saved, that no man may boast.”
When I was in seminary, praying about where God was leading me, I was sitting in the library, and I noticed an older man, quietly sneak into the library from a small door on the side (For fans of the movie “”Field of Dreams” its that library). He quickly ran up behind the front desk, looked up something on the computer, and walked back to his unmarked door. I watched for several minutes as this happened two more times. To my delight, the next day in my “Biblical Exegesis” class (fancy word for in-depth bible study), we got to go on a field trip through that little side door in the Library. The door opened onto a steel staircase leading down into the basement. And at the bottom of the stairs was a small office and inside that office was the man I had seen the day before. Surrounding the office were large file cabinets and wooden cupboards. The man welcomed us and took us to a table where there was an original Martin Luther Bible and a few original and copied codices (ancient Bible manuscripts). This fellas job was to care for, preserve, and distribute the the information contained in those thousands of resources in that basement to the rest of the university and seminary. Because this was a place of learning and information, this guy was probably was the heartbeat of that school, but he wasn't a famous professor, he wasn't a well recognised administrator, in fact not man people knew his name, and his office had no windows.
I've told my wife several times that I want to be that guy. I'm not particularly outgoing. I'm generally awkward around large crowds, and a trait that doesn't lend itself well to being a preacher, I've found in the past few years, that I'm not such a fan of talking in front of large crowds. I'm not that cool when it come to speaking to kids or youth. In fact, I once had a colleague question my call to ministry because of this and because I wasn't able to talk about sports.
Unfortunately, God didn't lead me in that direction of a career with books or bless me with a Library science degree, but I often think about him when I start to get prideful. His job was simply to distribute information. While not many knew him or saw him, what he was doing was vitally important. To make sure that those seeking to learn had the ability to learn. I suppose people called to ministry in the Church have the same primary role; to share information, in this case the information is the gospel of Jesus Christ and the love and truth of God. There are many ways people are called to do this. We know this from Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 12 when he talks about the body of Christ.
The reality is that it's not about the pastor or the Sunday School teachers, or the elders or deacons, it's about the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the task of every part of the body to share that information in whatever way they are called and gifted to do so. God works through every part of the body, not to build up a particular Church, or to promote a particular person, but to build an army of people ready and willing to go out and share the good news of Jesus Christ. This army is made up of very different people with very different gifts, called to different ways of doing ministry.
In Acts two we read about the first Church. They simply gathered together, prayed, had communion and remembered Jesus, and read the Scriptures and Apostles teachings. Then it says about their Church “and God added to their number daily those who were being saved”. They were a Church of 120 and thousands joined in a very short period of time, but we have no mention of charismatic leaders of the Church of Jerusalem, of great buildings, just simply a group of believers meeting together to do what God commanded to do, and it was God who added to their number. Not so they could have more people sitting in the pews but so that he could raise up this army of information givers, people who would go out and share the Gospel in the ways that he called them to do. Later, in acts we hear very little of this Jerusalem mega Church, we only have few, brief mentions of the Church after this point, but what we do know is that this great mob of Christians didn't stick around in Jerusalem, they went out, taking the Gospel to the world, starting new Churches. The focus was not on getting more people to come to their Jerusalem Church, but on sending them out to do the work God called them to do.
But it was His Church, for His purposes, by His grace, for His glory.