Change the World Through Me

I've been very intentional about encouraging the administrative leadership in the church to continually ask: Where is God at work in this church? And then to reflect upon the question that naturally flows out of that: How can we respond to the One whom we have seen in our hurting world? Last night was our session meeting and once again I challenged people to look and see that God is before us, leading us and guiding us and acting in our rural "old people" church. Sure enough, the leaders were quick to agree that they could see and "feel" God at work in the church. They reflected on the fact that when new officers were needed this year, no one said "no." They also mentioned what an honor it was to serve in the leadership of the church. They confessed the truth to one another: that leadership was also a pain, but that beyond the pain it was truly an honor to be asked to serve God as elders and deacons of the church. It's been an exciting year, watching the Holy Spirit's fire falling on this group of people. To go from asking "is there ANYONE who will serve?" to "Please, pick me!" is awesome. Each one who was called responded "Here I am, Lord. . . . I will go, Lord, where you lead me; I will hold your people in my heart." And each one mentioned the fact that God had saved their lives -- mostly physically -- and in so doing opened their eyes to the awesome wonder of living with the opportunity to choose to reach out to others each day.

I am also meeting with two others in the church who are excited about starting a family ministry here and asking what it will take. Both reflected on the song that we sing at the end of each service: "Take now my life, let me live for Thee; fill me with your power, Lord; Change the world through me." It's an awesome prayer to sing on a weekly basis, but it summarizes who we are and what we are called to be. At our last session meeting we had come to the conclusion that we really wanted to focus this year on the theme: Pass It On and what it means to share our faith with each other. When I mentioned last night the accompanying theme: Change the World Through Me, the session agreed it was exactly where we want to go. The time has come to ask God to fill us, to change us so that our world can also be changed.

The question for me is: Now, how do I lead? And I guess it's my prayer too. To those in cyberspace, I ask your very real prayers for the leadership of this church.