Ministry Moment of October 8, 2017

The idea I want to offer you today is service in the church.  As we think about this, I call to your attention what we just sang to you a few minutes ago from ‘Jacob’s Ladder’, if you love Jesus why not serve him?

My guess is that everybody here has some capacity to serve the church in some way. Just as those skill sets that I brought in from the military have allowed me to lead within the church, I believe there's things that you have, you can do, and you're called to do and that you can bring those skill sets to service on behalf of God.

I want to focus today on time and talent. We so often within the stewardship campaign talk about treasure.

To be clear, we need the treasure to turn to lights on. 

     We need the treasure to pay for various salaries of your staff. 

       I could go on, but It's really a three column test:  time, talent, and treasure. It's not pick one. It's pick something off all three.

Paul was dealing with the same issue in Romans when he would say to the church that he hadn't gotten to yet in Rome, (Romans 12: 1) "I appeal to you therefore brothers and sisters by the mercy of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship." He didn't say present your bodies to be burned up on some kind of sacrificial level, it was to be a living sacrifice on behalf of the church.

There are many things that we need help with here at the church. Many of them are relatively mundane and relatively easy to do. Some of them can be absolutely terrorizing.  For example, running the sound booth. It can be 99% boredom and 1% sheer terror when something goes wrong, but it needs qualified people to help us with that.

There are all kinds of things that you can do within this church.

I would hope that we would see that we have the capacity within us to answer God’s call. I'm going to talk in a few minutes about Gideon and how it is that he answers God's call, but 300 others answered his call as well, not only to lead, but to serve. 

To paraphrase Malachi 3:18, we make the distinction between those who serve God and one who does not serve him. I want you to respond because your heart is a glow; your heart is on fire. Your heart is on fire for God. That's the invitation for you today is to stop and pause and say, "Yes, my treasure is important, but I also want to contribute time and talent to this wonderful church."

I'm mindful of people here that think they don't have a lot of talent. They're like Moses, like Gideon that we're going to get to. My invitation for you is to know that God is calling you in some kind of way. What is that way? How is it that you can offer your time and talent to this church as well?

God bless you. Thank you very much.