Standing on Giants

This Memorial Weekend, we are talking about the church. Specifically, we are talking about the kind of church that we are and how we came to be this church. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t all because of those in this current generation. We are the result of much hard work and dedication by those who came before us. If we stand, we stand on their shoulders. Celebrate all of this with me and spend some time reflecting on where you are with the church and where perhaps you should be.

Standing on Giants

I am a pastor. I hope that doesn’t come as a shock to very many of you. That’s my job. It’s my calling. A job and a calling, though, are somewhat different from a passion. Hopefully they all intersect in a beautiful harmony that brings joy and fulfillment to your life, but bills tend to demand payment whether we’ve hit that mark or not, so they don’t always. Now, as it turns out, I’m also pretty passionate about many of the parts of pastoring, but the two that fire me up more than anything else are teaching and writing. As such, I’m always on the lookout for an idea. The thing about ideas, though, is that you find them all over the place. Sometimes they are in the places you expect, but sometimes you stumble across them where you would have never thought to look before. And then there are the times when they just hit you totally out of the blue. A little over a week ago, an idea hit me completely out of the blue, and I knew that I needed to write about it. I’d like to share some of that with you this morning. 

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A diverse group of people singing and reading from books outdoors near a church building

A Community Supporting Itself

“But you are to proclaim things consistent with sound teaching. Older men are to be self-controlled, worthy of respect, sensible, and sound in faith, love, and endurance. In the same way, older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not slaves to excessive drinking. They are to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and to love their children, to be self-controlled, pure, workers at home, kind, and in submission to their husbands, so that God’s word will not be slandered. In the same way, encourage the young men to be self-controlled in everything. Make yourself an example of good works with integrity and dignity in your teaching. Your message is to be sound beyond reproach, so that any opponent will be ashamed, because he doesn’t have anything bad to say about us.” (Titus 2:1-8 CSB – Read the chapter)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the church this week. I mean, more than normal. Being a pastor, I’m thinking about the church all the time, but this week has been a bit different. I’ve got some ideas rolling around in my head this morning, and I’m going to take just a minute to start to flesh some of them out here. I had thought about writing about the new Punisher special from Marvel on Disney+, but there just wasn’t much to say there. This idea, though, has been nagging at me for a couple of days now. It will probably be explored even further as my sermon for next Sunday, but this will just give you a bit of a preview of coming attractions. I’m thinking today about what makes a church strong and impactful over time. The answer is Jesus, of course, but it’s also more than that. Let me explain what I mean.

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