Moving Forward

This is an article I wrote for the September, 2011 Wheatland Parish newsletter.

            We think of spring as the time when everything is made new.  In an agricultural sense, of course, that’s true. 

When it comes to church business, though, the fall is really the time when everything is made new.   We have new Sunday school classes and new youth groups.  The U. M. W. starts up again after taking a summer hiatus.  So does the choir in Gettysburg.  In the church, a lot of new things start up in the fall.

There’s a tendency, in an established church, to be satisfied with keeping the things we’ve done in the past going.  Now, don’t get me wrong:  it’s important to keep the things we’ve done in the past going.  They’re good things.  They help people.  They bring people to the church.  I’m not saying we should stop doing the things we’ve been doing.

What I am saying, though, is let’s not be satisfied with that.  None of the churches of the Wheatland Parish have reached the limit of what they can do.  There are all sorts of new things we can do.  All they take is for a few people to see a need and have a desire to fill that need.

If you’d like to do something, but don’t know what to do, spend some time in prayer.  Pray that God helps you see a need in your community.  Then, keep your eyes open.  My experience has been that when we pray for God to give us ways to serve, God will answer that prayer every time.  Sometimes the answer may be a little more than we bargained for, but we’ll still get the answer.  If we can trust God to help us, and if we can take a leap of faith, we’ll be able to do the thing that God has put in front of us.

The best ideas for serving God rarely come from the pastor.  They come from you.  As we move into a new church year, think of some new ways the church can serve God by serving the people God created.