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
by Pastor Rick | Mar 4, 2024 | Click Date to Respond
Good (very early) Morning MABC family,
Big thanks to those who went out in the neighborhood yesterday morning after church to get the invites out for our Easter activities. God certainly gave us a beautiful day to get out and about. I have had some of the “walkers” say they even had opportunity to hold conversations with people out and about. What a good way to make our presence known! There will still be some opportunities in the next couple of weeks to participate in getting the door hangers out in the neighborhood. We hit a big portion of the 500 hangers we have but we still have more. We had a few get taken out to Prairie Homestead as well.
There will be some impact over time from getting the invites but the biggest impact we can make is your “three.” Those are people you already have relationships with, who are known to you in some way. Surveys say that approximately 51% of unchurched people will respond favorably to a personal invite from someone they know when invited to attend church. Please continue to pray for your “three” and everybody else’s “three.” And, would you pray that our door hangers have an impact on the hearts they are supposed to touch?
We have two more weeks in our sermon series Entrusted. Next week we will finish up our models of witnessing. If you haven’t heard a style or approach that fits your personality yet, I hope next week you will. The last message in the series might be the most difficult as we talk about the cost of following Jesus and being his witnesses. Remember, he promised us there would be struggles and that the world would hate us because it hated him. We can see that more and more in our world today.
I am excited as we move towards the highlight of the Christian year…Easter. It will be two weeks of celebrating the gift of Jesus, his death and resurrection. March 24th will be the cantata. You might consider inviting someone who may not want to sit through a sermon but would come for a musical performance. Don’t worry, they will still get to hear the gospel during the cantata and then we will make sure to share the gospel as we close the service. If you need a little more incentive for your “three,” we will forgo Life Studies on Easter Sunday and have breakfast in Fellowship Hall during that hour. I believe we are doing biscuits and gravy with fruit. I will make sure you have more details and we will get them on the web page.
Please remember I am traveling the early part of this week with my father to his brother’s funeral in Delaware. I will be checking emails or feel free to text. In an emergency, don’t hesitate to call.
Have a blessed week!
Pastor Rick
by Pastor Rick | Feb 26, 2024 | Click Date to Respond
Good Monday morning!
Today is supposed to be another good day in terms of weather at least! Yesterday was a great day not only weather wise but in terms of fellowship. An awesome morning of worship followed by a wonderful time of sharing in a meal, conversation and encouragement. Sherry and I thank you for the “welcome lunch” and your time yesterday. We continue to learn more about you and we learned that you all really love desserts!
We have been focusing on witnessing and the sharing of the Gospel – the good news of Jesus Christ. I continue to remind you about praying for your “three.” Why three? Well, any time you see the list of disciples you will notice four are always at the top. They are Simon Peter, Andrew, James and John (Matt 10:2-4, Mark 3:16-19, Luke 6:13-26 and Acts 1:13). However, when important matters arise, we find that Simon Peter, James and John are the three in Jesus’ inner circle. He had 12 disciples but shared his most intimate moments with the three. Jesus taught the 12 but really poured into the three in his inner circle.
That should be a lesson for each of us and why I ask you to pray about three. We can try and spread ourselves out to reach as many people with the gospel as possible and try to get them to come to Jesus but to effectively fulfill the Great Commission we need to adjust our thinking. The Great Commission is not just going out and making converts. No, Jesus says make disciples. I don’t think we can effectively do that with more than three people at a time. To make disciples is a process that takes time and energy, a great personal investment. This investment is extremely important if we are to listen to Jesus’ command in John 15:16 that we are to “make fruit that lasts.”
Disciple making is the hard part for most of us. We can learn to share the gospel effectively as we overcome our fear and get out of our comfort zone but disciple making requires more of us. Jesus, the master teacher and disciple maker, spent anywhere from 18 months to 3 years with the disciples depending on the timeline of their calling. And, after having spent that much time with Jesus, they still didn’t always get it! He walked miles and miles with them, camped out with them, went through tough family times with them, and went through personal struggles with them. We will have to do the same with those who we engage in the disciple making process with. I currently have three men that I am really doing life (disciple making) with. I am with them at least weekly and for two of them, because of proximity, I will engage them two to three times per week.
Pray for three and make a conscious effort to invite them into a disciple making relationship with you. They could be somebody from your family, a social group, work or a hobby group. Get to know them…really know them…and begin to see lives being changed.
Have a great week!
P.R.
by Pastor Rick | Feb 23, 2024 | Click Date to Respond
Hey MABC family and friends,
This Saturday Sherry and I were out looking at some homes in the southeast Wichita area.
That would put us right in between our daughters plus quick interstate/turnpike access to
Kansas City area for daughter #3. There was to be an open house that we wanted to look at
but when we got there, no one was there. I called the realtor who then gave me the garage
code to get in and look at the house. It was nice but there was one thing that was a deal
breaker for us design wise.
Now, on the porch we found a couple of Amazon packages but there was nobody living in the
house as it was still under construction. We looked at the addresses and found they were for a
neighbor. Sherry offered to take them over to their house and I went to the car. Five minutes
goes by and Sherry comes out to holler at me to come to the house. A single dad was living
there and he was interested in our interest in the house. Sherry answered as always trying to
find a way to include a hint of faith telling him that we were looking for a house in this area,
about our daughters living close by and then she inserts the “go to”: and my husband has
recently started pastoring a church here in Wichita. That little bit opened a conversation to
discussing his faith. He happens to go to Newspring and has served in the children’s ministry
area for the past five years.
Now I say that to give you an idea of how easy it is to weave faith based ideas into your
conversation. Remember our key point from yesterday’s message? Evangelism is not just
anywhere we find it but anywhere we want to find it. In this case it turned out that the resident
was already a believer but we had some good conversation. Sherry opened the door and then I
looked at a discipleship opportunity and asked him if he goes to the men’s lunch at Newspring
every month? He said no so I invited him to his own church (ha ha) and offered to meet him
there. He gave me his number and said sure.
If you are a follower of Jesus, witnessing to others and making disciples is not an option. In
Acts 1 Jesus said “you will be” my witnesses.
Remember that there is no AWANA’s tonight. Sherry and I will be at church this evening for a
while…she has a meeting and I will get some work done in the office. Wednesday I will be in at
the normal time of 2:30 pm. Thursday afternoon I will have a meeting at Lawrence Elementary
and them a visit in the evening.
Have a great week!
P.R.
by Pastor Rick | Feb 12, 2024 | Click Date to Respond
(Warning: this may be a little lengthy…not as long as the Super Bowl so hang in there!)
How many of you made it through all 5 quarters of the Super Bowl? Were you worried you
would run out of wings before the game was over? Sherry and I were extremely blessed in that
regard. Our small group that meets on Sunday evenings is very good when it comes to food!
We have some excellent “smokers” and by that I mean wings, ribs, etc.! We never run out of
goodies. I also appreciate them because it is a diverse group. We have couples with kids in
elementary school, middle school and high school as well as graduate school and kids out in the
work force. We have teachers and paras, maintenance workers, law enforcement,
administrative assistants, a co-op manager and a fundraiser. One mom had a brain aneurysm a
couple of years ago and hasn’t been able to work.
I love the makeup of this small group because it represents what a church should look like.
Every generation is adequately represented. It is often said by this group that this is their
“church.” Whether we study a book of the bible, a video driven discussion or watch The
Chosen, our discussion includes viewpoints from different stages of life, different career paths,
and many different life circumstances such as parenting children and teens. Most of the
couples have been long time followers of Jesus but one couple with a junior in high school and
the college grad student are relatively new to the faith in the last couple of years. They have
had a tough time getting their kids to join them in their faith journey. To help them we often
have “family nights” like the Super Bowl where the whole family comes. We want those who are
new to the faith to see what a community of Christ followers looks like away from Sundays.
Now, can it be a little messy at times? Sure it can but isn’t that what happens in authentic faith
families? Sometimes our mess can be relational and sometimes it can be a “facility mess!”
Sherry and I host and sometimes our house gets a little messy. In events like last night’s Super
bowl gathering, there are food and drink spills, dirty dishes and our littlest ones don’t always
clean up their toys. Does it always happen? No, but when it does, Sherry and I don’t get upset.
Messes, whether food and drink, little ones interrupting conversations or occasionally not getting
all the Legos picked up are a blessing. That means that our people feel comfortable, welcomed
and loved…and they are present!
As your new pastor, this is what Sherry and I desire for Meridian Ave Baptist Church. We want
MABC to be a place where all generations feel comfortable, welcomed and loved. If you are a
member, what can you be doing to help us facilitate this kind of environment? If you looking for
a church home, would you consider visiting us and even join us in our vision?
Pastor Rick
