by Pastor Rick | Apr 15, 2024 | Click Date to Respond
Hey MABC family & friends,
Sherry and I hope you had a great day of worship yesterday. Thank you for the time away with our granddaughters in the KC area. It was a busy weekend with recital practice, recital, and a couple of rec league volleyball games. Sandwiched in there was Sunday worship with one of our granddaughters. And other than a “little” Kansas wind, the weather was beautiful. As you know, our current method for working together was based on having the time to do just that in my “retirement” years – spend more time with family.
On the Sunday after Easter, I shared with you the importance of church membership and what I thought the commitment of a church member should be. I told you that I have a vision for every church member of one hour of worship, one hour small group of some sort and one hour of service weekly. If we tithed on our time to the Lord that would be 16.8 hours. Three hours hardly seems like much compared to that. I have a great way for some of you to join me in getting in your one hour per week of service and be engaged in some outreach.
Lawrence Elementary School is just down the road a piece on Maple. They are needing volunteers to come and make an impact in their school. They can use help in the Library shelving books and maybe reading to children. You may just show up for an hour at lunchtime and visit with kids in the cafeteria. If you are more active you can go out to the playground! If you don’t like kids (gasp!) but want to serve, they will make arrangements to work in the office and make copies for teachers. I have met with Cindy the principal and she is excited to see how we can be a part of what they are doing. Next year will be a busy year as they absorb some students from Payne Elementary located on Harry and Meridian. It is one of the schools being closed down as part of USD 259 budget cuts. It is easy to volunteer. I am including the link to the volunteer sign up. It is of no cost to you and takes very little time. I filled out the form Wednesday about 3:30 pm after meeting with Cindy and was approved the next morning. Just click on the “Fill out form” link in the colored box. Use the side bar to scroll down on the form.
http://www.usd259.org/volunteerregistration
Let me know when you sign up! We also have the opportunity to make an impact on the staff! May 6-10 is Teacher Appreciation Week. I know how much you all love desserts as witnessed by the room full of them when we had the lunch for Sherry and me. I will have a sign-up sheet out in the foyer and would love to inundate the teachers and staff with goodies for the week. They do not have to be individually wrapped for the faculty/staff lounge. Let’s end the school year on a big note and signify that we are ready to partner with LES in making a difference in our community.
We also have an opportunity for “in-house” service with our tech team. We need additional people to learn sound and audio/visual production for our worship services. As we look to expand our production for outreach purposes, we will need your help. Reach out to Phil or Stacy Roenne if you want to know more.
Thanks again for the Sunday away. Look forward to our new series on the “Growing Christian” this Sunday.
Pastor Rick
by Pastor Rick | Apr 10, 2024 | Click Date to Respond
Good Morning MABC family and friends,
I hope you are preparing for an interesting day as we await the “total eclipse” later this morning and early afternoon. I think in our area we are to expect around 87% of total eclipse. The next opportunity for us in America to view another total eclipse is 2044.
Yesterday’s message focused on Jesus’ question to Peter there on the shore of Galilee. It had been some time since the two had seen each other and Jesus knows His time on earth is coming to an end. He has business to attend with Peter, the one whom He has chosen to be the leader of the Church moving forward. After the events of Holy Week, Jesus needs Peter to affirm his love and trust in Him. Jesus knows that things are going to get tough for those who chose to follow Him after He returns to His Father in Heaven.
Do you love me more than these? We aren’t sure what “these” Jesus was talking about in Peter’s case. Jesus asks us the question as well. What is the “these” in your life that keeps you from being “all in?” What is it that holds you back from total surrender? Does Jesus have every part of your day except at work? Are there things you say and do at work that those who sit near you in church might think are questionable? Do you flirt with line between honesty and dishonesty? The so called “gray areas?” Men, when you are out with the “boys” what is your conversation like? Your jokes? Your stories? Ladies, when you are gathered with your friends, who do you talk about?
All of us battle something. Satan is a wary adversary and he knows our weaknesses. He loves it when he gets us going in the wrong direction, saying the wrong things, and doing things which might cause others to question the sincerity of our faith life and damage our witness. He loves when he can get us isolated and alone. That is why we need each other. We need community. We need the church. Not the building but the people.
Most importantly, we need Jesus. Until the day we enter into our eternity we will fight this battle with “these.” The battle goes a little easier when we follow the plan of our leader, the Lord Jesus. He has a plan for us and his ways are good. And, He has already defeated Satan at Easter and is coming back to make all things right. Put your trust in Him in Him and Him alone.
Your “these” will come and go but Jesus has promised to be with us always.
I will not be in the office this morning. I will be over tomorrow for the pastors’ cluster meeting and an Evangelism/Missions team meeting.
Have a great week. Don’t look at the eclipse without protection!
Pastor Rick
by Pastor Rick | Apr 1, 2024 | Click Date to Respond
Good morning MABC,
Wow! What a great morning of celebrating the resurrection! It was so great to meet some of your families including children and grandchildren. The church looked good with some of the updates, the breakfast fellowship was wonderful, and then we started taking photos! It was exciting. We even had some more photos after worship was over. As we posted pictures on Facebook they became some of our most viewed and liked posts. Now, continue to share the posts to your personal page and invite your friends to like or follow our church page. The more likes and follows the more our page gets noticed and gets better placement in searches. This gives us more opportunities to expose people to the Gospel and help grow the Kingdom. Our focus should be Kingdom growth. When we do that, I believe God will grant us favor and give us what we need as a church whether that means more resources or even more opportunities to share the Gospel with those in our community.
Speaking of our community, we have some opportunities coming up to make an impact. I have been made aware of some opportunities for us at Lawrence Elementary School for the remainder of the year. A couple of the opportunities are very doable for us. The first is something simple. They are looking for volunteers to come in for one hour a day to help in the Library. Simple things like placing books back on the shelves or even reading to the students. The other is Teacher Appreciation Week the first full week in May. How great would it be to shower the teachers and staff with a variety of snacks and goodies during that week We can do big events like Easter but I believe we will make the most difference with consistent little efforts. I am hoping to meet with the principal at Lawrence Elementary on Wednesday to find out the process for volunteers getting approved.
As for upcoming messages, I feel led to dig into discipleship. Our mission as a church is “To Make Disciples.” We have spent the first three months of my time with you talking about the need for revival and evangelism. Both of those are key to making disciples as the first part of the Great Commission is to “go.” Then Jesus said to “teach these new disciples.” As we help people come to know Jesus as their Savior, we need to help come to understand His lordship and what that looks like in their lives. Still trying to sort it all out but it will fall at a good time on the calendar as we have a baptism on April 21st.
As to calendar, I am not in the office this morning but working for home. Tomorrow we have an Evangelism/Missions meeting and men’s lunch gathering so I will spend some time in the office tomorrow morning. Sherry and I will be out of town the weekend of April 14th. We have some friends in the KC area we need to check up on but most importantly we want to spend some time with our “grands” up there and be at some of their activities. We have a music recital to go to on Sunday and some volleyball matches to attend. I believe Pastor Fred will be back to share with you all that Sunday.
Remember, Easter is more than just a day! See Les’ email update. It is a spirit we live in throughout the year.
Pastor Rick
by Pastor Rick | Mar 25, 2024 | Click Date to Respond
Good Monday morning (afternoon?),
It’s been a busy morning in the office and I am getting around a little later than usual for our Rewind!
Wasn’t yesterday a great morning of worship! The choir did a great job of sharing the story of Holy Week in their cantata titled “A Living Hope.” I know they worked hard on this for you all. When I started in January they were practicing! That’s almost 3 months! It was a blessing and I hope that as you see them in church you thank them personally.
This Sunday is Easter and it will be another wonderful day of worship. We are preparing for “rain” as I like to say. Extra greeters, nursery workers, children’s church and more. I have been asking you to invite your “three” and for some of you the work paid off. Your invited guests showed up. It may have been uncomfortable to ask but it pays off. We must continue to get out of our comfort zones just as Jesus did in heading to Jerusalem for Passover week. Scripture says he “resolutely set out for Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51 NLT). Resolutely means purposeful, determined, and/or unwavering. He knew what was ahead – terrible pain and agony – yet he ventured forth. Our little uneasiness at reaching out and inviting others to come hear the message of Jesus is nothing compared to what Jesus endured.
Keep working on your “three.” If you had one of your “three” come this past Sunday, reconnect with them, ask them what they thought and invite them back to a “regular” service. Don’t forget you can throw in the bonus of biscuits and gravy, muffins and fruit at 9:15 am before worship! If your “three” didn’t come, don’t give up…be purposeful, determined, unwavering. Billy Graham tells the story of a lady in England that failed her driver’s license test 37 times but she showed up for number 38!
I will ask you to do one more thing for me and it is a relatively easy way to share Jesus and invite others to join you at Meridian Avenue Baptist Church. When you go to Facebook and see a post or video on our page, don’t just like it. Click SHARE so that others in your circle of friends and acquaintances who don’t follow our page can see what is going on here at MABC. We have 209 followers. If each of you had at least 100 friends and half of you shared…that would give us the possibility of 10,500 exposures. Let me check my math…1/2 of 209 is about 105 x 100 friends = 10,500! Not bad for a Health/Wellness instructor turned pastor! Now, not everyone will see your share but then again if even half of them did it would be awesome.
Have a blessed Holy Week. I am looking forward to seeing what God is going to do in us and through us this week.
Pastor Rick
by Pastor Rick | Mar 18, 2024 | Click Date to Respond
Good Morning MABC family,
We just finished up our series on evangelism. I imagine that some of you are probably really glad that the series is over. Witnessing and outreach can be uncomfortable to many but it is vitally important for the work of the kingdom. In one article I recently read it said that most churches decline because they forget the reason they exist. They have become so focused on survival that they forget the mission given to the church. After these past six weeks you should know the mission of the church by heart! The church exists to share the good news of Jesus, his death on our behalf and his resurrection to prove that there is life beyond physical death.
I want to remind you that there are two seasons in the life of the church where inviting others to join you on Sunda is made easier. One is Christmas and the other is Easter. Christmas is by far the most popular but without Easter our faith is in vain (I Cor 15:14-20). If Christ had not risen from the dead there would be no reason for us to gather every Sunday. Without the resurrection, the good news of Jesus is not really good news. Sure, there will be occasional days or events throughout the calendar year to invite people but nothing as exciting as those two days. There will stories of Easter egg hunts, the Cadbury Bunny in TV commercials, and even articles about what happened to Jesus’ body in the news. People won’t be talking about a local “Invite a Friend” Sunday anywhere else but in our church.
I don’t know if you are familiar with the magic and comedy duo of Penn and Teller but Penn Jillette made an interesting statement about people of faith in regards to the sharing of the gospel. He said, “I am an atheist. I don’t respect people who don’t proselytize.” Proselytize means sharing your faith, trying to convert people. That’s not a word we use much in faith speak anymore. He continued by saying “If you believe there’s a heaven and hell and that people could be going to hell, how much do you have to hate somebody to not proselytize?” If an atheist realizes that followers of Christ have an obligation to share the gospel, shouldn’t we – as professed followers of Jesus – have that same sense of duty?
This coming Sunday is the Easter Cantata, A Living Hope. It is the first activity of celebrating Easter that we have. Who will you invite? Will you get out of your comfort zone and invite someone to join you in the pew?
I will not be in the office this morning as we have a Ministries Team meeting Thursday afternoon so I will spend some time in the office them. I will be there for AWANAs tonight and in the office at 2:30 pm on Wednesday. We also kick off a study of the Holy Spirit on Wednesday beginning at 7:15 pm.
Have a great week. Meet someone new…someone outside of your “holy huddle.”
Pastor Rick
by Pastor Rick | Mar 11, 2024 | Click Date to Respond
Good Monday Morning!
I want to thank you all this morning! You have embraced some new ideas and seem to be enjoying it! The first Sunday of the month we walked the neighborhood handing out the door hanger invites and I heard how fun it was. Some of you who volunteered were able to engage our neighbors in conversation and that is important. It is how we get to know who we are to serve and they get to know us. Yesterday after worship I had a couple ask if there were still areas that needed to be done and they took door hanger invites out into the neighborhood. There are a couple of more streets to cover and we will try to get those done this week.
The willingness to go out is big! I have read that 85% of churches that are stagnant or not growing have turned the Great Commission into the Great Omission. We have spent the past two months talking about revival and witnessing because it is so important. This week we will wrap up our “Entrusted” series with a look at what happens when people are invited to “come and meet a man.”
Last night you all were willing to do something that apparently had never been done before. Seven of us went to our local PBS station and manned the phones for their telethon. The president of the station said they had never had a church do that before. He thanked us on screen a couple of times and even mentioned that a church had never done that. Shortly after we started I received a text from someone I knew who just happened to be watching PBS and told me how cool it was to see our church family doing something like that. One of the calls that I answered was from a lady in Augusta. We began to have a conversation that had nothing to do with the telethon even though I didn’t know her. I told her I knew her address and where she lived, that I lived in Augusta and was a former pastor there. That little bit led to what we were doing at Meridian Avenue Baptist Church. On top of that, we all laughed and had a good time. One of the PBS tech support guys noted that we had “Jamie Lee Curtis” helping us on the phones. You will need to ask Jennifer about that!
Opportunities like that are opportunities that fall into the “service approach” of evangelism that we hit on yesterday in the message. I didn’t try to get into the gospel with anyone on the phone but people noticed that we were a church doing something that other churches hadn’t. You never know when God will use that opportunity to present you with an opportunity to tell someone about Jesus. Even if the four hours of service last night leads to only one conversation with someone it will have been worth it for the kingdom. On top of that, we did a good thing for our greater Wichita community by supporting PBS. Remember, the service approach to evangelism is the one that most often takes time to produce fruit. Serving with others also has the benefit of strengthening our relationships and creating greater family bonds.
I won’t be in the office today. Tomorrow is the pastors’ cluster meeting at Prairie Homestead from 11:30 to 1:00. I will be in the office around 9 am after I meet a young man for coffee! We will meet Wednesday night for Bible study and I am still sorting that out as we try to figure out what we want to study. If you are participating in Wednesday nights, shoot me some ideas. If there is a topic you would like to dig into and it would bring you to MABC for our Wednesday night studies, let me know that as well.
Have a great week! Palm Sunday and Easter are nearly upon us. Pray for opportunities to invite others and then be alert (and open!) to the prompting of the Holy Spirt.
Pastor Rick