If you were with us on Wednesday night at Soup, Song, Story, and Sacrament, you know that churches who are focused on butts in the pews and bucks in the plate are dying.
Today, Job takes a stand. He has treasured God's words and he's sticking with him, no matter how much it costs him.
Me too.
Jordan Krey and I talked with our small Stewardship team about attending this conference called Money Follows Mission months ago. He made the commitment to take off a day of work and pay his registration fee out of his pocket if he had to. A few days ago, his boss said that an important client would be in town and he could not miss work. I'm picking him up in a few hours for today's session.
I wish he had been there to hear Mike Slaughter's talk last night. A quick glance at their web site (www.ginghamsburg.org) shows the following tabs:
Worship Together
Connect in Community
Grow In Christ
Serve Others
How many of us as Lutherans never get past the first or second one? Were we not made for discipleship, stewardship, and mission? Are we just playing church otherwise?
Mike was appointed to Ginghamsburg in 1979 as the first full-time pastor. At the time, the church averaged approximately 90 people in attendance. After a year, they were down to 70, as Mike focused almost exclusively on discipleship, stewardship, and mission. The average church in New England worships 60. He said a lot of things that struck a cord with me. Here are a couple:
"Do you do contemporary or traditional? Who cares?!? Do mission!"
"People aren't looking for meetings, they are looking for meaning."
Last Sunday, his church had over 4,900 people in worship. Every one of their members attends an in-home small group every week in addition to worship. Their Council of 12 meets once a month. It's the only team meeting the church has. Before a person can be on the Council, they need to travel to Darfur in Africa where 22,000 people have clean water, schools, and agriculture because Mike insisted several years ago that "Christmas is not your birthday. Quit acting like it is. It's Jesus' birthday. Honor him." He told his members (who have all taken a 12 week discipleship course before being allowed to join) to give a gift to the Darfur outreach ministry EQUAL to what they spent on Christmas. One gentleman was taking his wife and 5 daughters on a cruise to celebrate his oldest daughter's wedding. His 5th grader spoke with him, "Pastor said..." He wrote out a check for $13,000. They collected over a million about the 5th year into it. In the down economy (all 5 General Motors plants in the area have closed), they gave $700,000 each of the last two years. Most people spend half as much on Christmas and give the other half away.
Money follows mission.
Darfur is a place recovering from genocide. When you go there on a mission trip, it's dangerous. Mike said, "You can't be a leader in our church if you're not willing to risk your life." Their constitution states that after 3 years on Council, you must take at least one year off. People keep taking Mike up on his offer.
What does this mean for Faith and how we will do church in the next months and years? Please join us for Soup, Song, Story, and Sacrament this Wednesday from 6:30-8 pm in the vestry. We'll be talking about why God needs a church.
One last note: A year ago, 25 of us did the 30 Hour Famine for the first time and got our heads and hearts around the notion that now 24,000 kids under the age of 5 starve to death DAILY. We raised $8,000. I would like everyone in the church (and anyone reading this blog) to do two things:
1. Go online (www.faithlutheranquincy.com), click on Giving, and make a donation to one of three causes (e-mail me the amount of your gift and which one you picked at pastor@faithlutheranquincy.com, so that we can route the money in the right direction):
a. World Vision to benefit starving children world-wide
b. Feeding Children International, as we package meals during the event for Interfaith Social Services and the Germantown food shelf, both in Quincy
c. Faith's pillow ministry, as we will hit 10,000 pillows for Quincy Medical Center before the end of the year (our Social Ministry team will be matching the first $200 given...I'd like to have this done Wednesday). This is our other service project during the Famine.
2. Either fast with us for 30 hours (8 am on Fri, Apr 15th-2 pm on Sat, Apr 16th) OR pray for us for one of those 30 hours. Right now, we have 8 fasters and 3 pray-ers signed up. You don't have to live in MA to be one of the pray-ers (or a faster for that matter).
Together, we will change the world. Jesus didn't come to get us into heaven. He came to get heaven into us.
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