'service' Tagged Posts
Cultural Shifts, Christmastime, and the Importance of Relationships
Christmastime, as I mentioned last week, is one of the seasons in which people are the most open to attending church. Within our local context, there is a fantastic opportunity to extend an invitation…
Are We Asking the Right Questions?
I recently heard a story on a podcast I was listening to. It’s a well-worn business management story—one that I’d heard several times before. However, this was a church leadership podcast, so I was hearing it with “new ears,” so to speak. The story goes that a new CEO stepped to the lectern to address a room of gathered employees at the 100-year-old company he’d been…
Why Do You Serve?
The church is God’s appointed agency for the salvation of men [Note: this means all people, not just males. —JL]. It was organized for service, and its mission is to carry the gospel to the world.” —The Acts of the Apostles, p. 9 In this space over past weeks, I’ve lauded your efforts as a church body with regard to service, and let me be clear, I have…
Responding in Service
Over the past few months I’ve seen our membership step up and commit to serving this church at an impressive rate. Not only do we have almost 300 people signed up for H.I.S. Teams, but our estimates show that almost 50% of our average weekly attendees are…
Turn, Turn, Turn
The 1960’s rock hit, “Turn, Turn, Turn” based on Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 begins with the stanza: To every thing – turn, turn, turn There is a season – turn, turn, turn There has been a lot of “turning” within the Spencerville Seventh-day Adventist Church over the past year-and-a-half. There has been a turn in pastoral leadership, which brings turns in…
Encouraged by the Ordinary
It’s easy to think of the disciples as an elevated group that followed Christ—wandering to and fro, teaching and healing in His name. But they were a rag-tag bunch of guys with ordinary lives—each with quirks and issues. However, in them, Christ saw something He could use, and He bid them to follow—committing the totality of their lives to the ministry (Luke 9:2-3).…