Like sheep without a shepherd

Today's reading can be summed up:
"People wander like lost sheep. God will step in and take care of his flock. God will use them in his work of rebuilding, working as one."

"Even though I scattered them, they will come back. I'll make my people strong, God-strong! And they'll live my way."

Since I don't preach this weekend, I decided to do two things with my time this week:
1. Study ahead for my sermon on the 17th.
2. Call my flock, especially the Faith seniors and those who aren't connected right now.

The Scriptures I studied led me to three main ideas:
1. Read the Bible
2. Pray
3. Repeat

Then yesterday, Heidi and I attended the 5th annual Boston area pastors' appreciation lunch, where we found out something shocking. Of our regular worshipers, only 8% of them are reading the Bible. That means of the 150 folks at Faith on any given Sunday, a dozen have been in the word. In order to have growth and vitality, we need to get that number closer to 37 (25%). So far, 12 people have attended our Bible Study. We'd like to have that number at 25 soon.

The Word, Jesus, is our shepherd. If we are to know how to follow him, we need to be in the word. We were given a book called The Story, a trip through the Bible in 31 weeks, without having to read the whole Bible. Max Lucado's church test ran the book study and experienced a 23% growth that year.

Maybe to figure out God's desire for our church's future, we just need to find our place in The Story.