Today is Monday, August 25th, 2008; Karen's Korner #1386
Next Sunday the church where we belong gets a new minister. For the past several months, we have had a handful of guest pastors or presenters.
Several Sundays we had Jim Allard who is a retired pastor and now a Hospice chaplin. He spoke to our congregation for a final time yesterday.
I don't know the title of his sermon, but as a former pastor, Jim had some thoughts on what we should expect of a minister, of ourselves, and of our church family.
He said there are three essential truths or functions of the church (whether you are getting a new minister or not!):
* believe - we come together to believe the truths of the Bible (John 3:16 - "For God so loved the world that He gave His only son so that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life." Do we believe what Jesus did? Do we believe what He gave us?
* belong - we come to church to love and be loved - by God, by others - one another. We care about other people; we are all part of one body;
* become - we come, to become. We are new creatures in Jesus Christ. We come to begin and continue the process of becoming what Jesus wants us to be, to become the minds and hands of Christ. We come to become our better selves! (Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! - 2 Corinthians 5:17)
Not only to we come to church to see others and for them to see us, but also to see Christ, to see Christ who lives in us - and to see the Christ who lives in others!
As Christians, we not only have a message to give the world, we also represent that message to the world in the way that we live. We represent Him by what we say, what we do, and who we are.
There was more -- more words, more Bible verses, more comments, but that was the focus. I'm glad I didn't miss yesterday; our congregation has a new minister coming. New opportunities, new vision, new responsibilites, new help, new hope! It's not about him. It's about us! It's about me!!
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