Thursday, July 11, 2013
Dear Eastridge Family,
I have a couple of
important items that I want to remind you about today. I also have a little note I wanted to share
from an older pastor friend from North
Carolina
I
was sitting on a bench at the entrance to Walmart yesterday, waiting for my son
to arrive, so we could check out the Samsung Galaxy 4 smart phone. I also wanted to purchase a new perfume for my
wife that I had heard about. It’s called Essence
of Walmart. It makes you
smell like you’ve been shopping at Walmart! I kept noticing the seemingly unending
customer traffic. I asked myself, “Why do so many people shop at Walmart?” The answer came in a flash: Because Walmart is
“the saving place.”
Many
Christians—dare I call them Walmart Christians?—view the church as “the saving
place.” And it is, but not
in the way that I mean. A Walmart
Christian comes to church and shops the various departments. They check out the choir aisle. If they like it, they will stay; if
they don’t, they will go elsewhere. Some
Walmart Christians shop the preacher aisle. If they find him too fat or too thin,
too old or too young, too conservative or too liberal, too Biblical or too
modern, too short or too tall, too long winded or not long enough, out the door
they go. Other Walmart Christians shop
for a Sunday School, or a big church, or a small church, or one in the
middle. If they can’t find
what they’re looking for, they leave their shopping cart in the middle of the
aisle and hightail it down the road to K-Mart, err, sorry, another church.
There
is one aisle that Walmart Christians never shop. It’s the one called
“serve.” They approach with
the attitude that the church serves them and not the other way around. They forget that it is the triune God who
decides HOW we serve the church: 4Now
there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5and there are varieties of
service, but the same Lord; 6and
there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all
in everyone. 7To each
is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.—I Cor. 12:4-7
(ESV) The part we play is to
choose to obey and use our Spiritual gifts for “the common good.”
Christians
are NOT consumers. We are givers, NOT
takers. To paraphrase President Kennedy:
“Ask not what your church can do for you; ask what you can do for your church.”
When we understand that church is not a place but a people, then we can readily
see how we should serve “the common good.”
YOU ARE not a Walmart Christian, are
you?
- Saturday
morning prayer service
Each Saturday morning Pastor Daniel is leading our
prayer service at 9:00am everyone is welcome to join us for prayer.
- Sunday
Afternoon Picnic
We will have a picnic following the morning worship
service. The Stewards ask that we bring
salads, fruit, chips or side dish to share.
The church will proved the meat and drinks, also bring any games you
would like to play.
- No
evening service this week and next
With the picnic and District Assembly the next two
weeks we will not have our evening service.
- District
Assembly
District Assembly begins Sunday evening 7 PM July 21st, so we
will not have evening service to enable everyone to attend. Dr. Jerry
Porter will be our presiding general superintendent again this year. He’ll be
preaching on Monday night and Tuesday evening in the ordination service.
- Sunday
worship service
This Sunday I plan to share a message from 1 Samuel
3 on hearing God’s voice. You may want
to read 1 Samuel 1-3 to get the background on for the message.
I look forward to worshipping with you and eating
together at the picnic on Sunday!
Pastor Andy
"We will never have time for prayer
- we must make time." Richard Foster
'The words of the tongue should have
three gatekeepers: Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?' Nicky Gumble
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