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