Organize like Jerusalem

WELCOME

Pastor Chris Paavola:

On Friday, Friday night, and it was Halloween and I was having my fifth Reese’s peanut butter cup, and I realized that I think that the holiday Reese’s peanut butter cups taste better than the regulars. Am I right? They taste different. There are people who think that they taste the same and they don’t like the Halloween pumpkin shaped ones, the Christmas tree one and the Easter egg one. They are better man, and thank you. Thank you if I get an amen out of that then. And as I was eating though, I started thinking about how the next three months are just brutal to being healthy, right? Because it starts with Halloween and then after this is Thanksgiving where we just eat ridiculous amounts of food and then Christmas and it’s just snacks for a month and then New Year’s Eve, maybe you have a little too much alcohol or something like that, but it’s just so hard to stay healthy these next three months. And we were supposed to go to Jamaica this week for our 20th anniversary, but a hurricane happened. And so we pray for the island. They’re like, we’ll reschedule our trip or whatever, but that means I have to stay in beach body shape well into the new year. And I’m like, this is not fair. I planned this to happen this way.

And it takes so much restraint. The buckets are actually on the counter at home and the candy is there, and it takes so much restraint to walk by and not take the dad tax of just, well, that’s a candy. This is my house, like my candy too. And I realize how hard it is to be healthy. It’s hard to be healthy, the path of least resistance, it’s easy to be unhealthy. It really is. The cost of being healthy is upfront and the benefits is in the term and being unhealthy. The benefits are now, but the cost is in the long term, right? It flips, but it takes so much intentionality to be healthy. It’s easy to just sit on the couch. It’s easy to just doom scroll and scroll through the tv. It’s easy to get fast food or order takeout or whatever. It’s, it’s easy.

What’s hard is getting up and being healthy and eating right and walking by the Halloween candy. That’s hard. And it’s true for our bodies and just physical health.

SERIES

But it’s also true for the church’s health. There is a difference between healthy churches and unhealthy churches. In fact, some of you guys have probably experienced unhealthy churches in the past. Maybe you’ve been a part of one or you’ve visited one and you’re just like, whoa. Toxic, right? That it’s not a healthy environment. You’ve seen it. And I think St. Mark is a healthy church, but there’s been some growing pains that has happened in the last year or two. And that’s why we said we need to do this series called for Healthy Churches where we are going to see what I consider to be the essentials of a healthy church from some biblical examples. And this is going to be absolutely an in-house conversation.

We just got done with a really practical series where we talked about how to live out faith and talk to people who are different than you in a complicated world, and what do you do when you disagree on issues? That was a really practical series. Super, super, super practical. This is more of inside baseball. We’re going to look under the hood. And so if you’re a visitor today, I’m sorry, in some ways you hear what we want to be about versus what we have been about. Or maybe you’ve been burned by the church and you have church hurt in your past today. Maybe we’ll explain why some of that has happened and we’re going to talk about the hard things and the work we’re going to do to be a healthy church going forward. And I’ll be honest, I’m going to get a little transparent today. I’m going to get a little personal. I think I have to, otherwise, I’m not speaking clearly about the need for this, but it’s not just a conversation about the entity or the organization of the church. I hope as you listen to me, you start to think about your role as the church in the church and what you do, because I’ll give away the punchline, okay? A healthy church has healthy people.

And so I want you to be thinking about what does it mean for me to be a healthy part of this healthy body of believers? And where we need to start is by addressing the growth that we’ve been going through and some of the growing pains we’ve had.

GROWING CHURCH, GROWING PROBLEM

And if you look biblically at churches that have had growing pains, you open the Book of Acts and it’s right there actually, it’s kind of a refrain in the beginning of the book of Acts. So the resurrection happens. We talked about that. Everyone’s running around saying, Hey, Jesus predicted and pulled off his own death and resurrection. And tons of people start believing. 3000 people believe in one day on Pentecost. And then there’s this common refrain of how fast the church is growing. And the first five chapters of Acts take a look. It talks about how the Lord added to their number daily, those who were being saved in Acts 2 47 or in Acts four, four, it talks about the number of believers grew to about 5,000 in just a few short weeks after the resurrection, 5,000 remarkable growth, just a meteoric rise.

And then in Acts five 14 talks about how more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. And there’s just this stage that is set in Acts, chapters one through five of look at the growth. And then in Acts six, they talk about the growing pain.

1 In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.

                                                                                                                                                Acts 6

And it starts out in Acts six, chapter one. Here’s what it says. “In those days when the number of disciples was increasing the Hellenistic Jews”, so Jews from Greek culture not native to Israel, Hellenistic Jews were complaining to the Hebraic Jews, the Jews from Israel. So the non-Israeli Jews are complaining to the Israeli Jews. Why? Because some of their “widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.” So we heard about it. And the reading from Grant, they just believed they needed to do as much as possible to save as many as possible as soon as possible because Jesus is coming back and they sold their homes, they sold their possessions, they did anything and everything they could, and they mortgaged it all to live out this thing called the church.

And because they had such a surplus of food or such a surplus of money, they decided, well, what should we do with this? And they started caring for the poor. In the city of Jerusalem, there was this work that accompanied their proclamation that Jesus rose from the dead. Awesome! But there was a problem. They grew so fast that there was a lack of care happening for these widows, these Non-Israeli widows. You kind of get this image of you ever seen a potted plant and it grows and then it starts to get overgrown in the pot and you have two choices. Trim back the plants, stop the growth or put it in a new plot, right? Put it in a new pot that it continues to grow. You either change the plant or you change the system.

And they had a choice to make. Well, what are we going to do if we keep growing like this? We’re not going to be able to care for all of these people. And if we keep growing like this, well, we’re not going to know everybody’s names on a Sunday morning if we keep growing like this. I won’t be able to hang out with the apostles like I used to do back in the day. They’re not as accessible and praise God. Instead of stopping the growth, they decided to change the system. You and I are here today because they changed the system that couldn’t compromise the growth. Jesus gave him a command to reach as many as possible. Jesus gave him a command to tell as many as he can. They knew that the church doesn’t have a mission. The mission has a church, and the church is not the mission.

2 So the Twelve gathered all the disciples together and said, “it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables. 3 Brothers and sisters, choose seven men from among you who are known to be full of Spirit and wisdom. We will turn this responsibility over to them 4 and will give our attention to prayer and preaching of the word.”

                                                                                                                                                Acts 6

The church is established to accomplish this mission of saving. And so in Acts six verse two, we hear, so the 12 gathered all the disciples together and said, it would not be right for us to say it:

Response: Neglect the ministry of the word of God in order to wait on tables.

Pastor Chris Paavola: So there seems to be this thing that happened. They’re watching all of this happen in between verse one and verse two, there’s this sequence of events we’re not privy to, but they’re watching all this happen. The widows are being neglected for their food. And so the apostles, well, they just think, we’ll come earlier, we’ll stay later, we’ll just work harder. And at some point, they’re busting their butt to bus tables and they’re wiping them down. And late one night, Peter looks at John and James is like, guys, this is crazy. I got to get up in the morning and preach.

It’s not right for us to neglect preaching and the work of the ministry to wait on tables. Someone else can do this. So brothers and sisters choose seven men. Notice it’s not like recruit seven men or guilt seven people and try to convince them to service. Just like choose. There’s a ton of people who want to help choose seven. Just choose them. Tell them this is what we need and let them figure it out. Seven men from among you who are known to be full of the spirit and wisdom, we will turn this responsibility over to them and we’ll give ourselves our attention to prayer and preaching of the word. We’re the apostles. We have to do that. Someone else can do this.

NEGLECT

And I read this and I just see these themes that kind of mimic us and our growth in the last three years, Saint Mark has grown 15% every year, year over year. So it’s 15% from that and then 15% from that and 15% from that. And over the last three years, you add up all of that 15%, and it’s actually 50% of the original number five, 50% more pizzas ordered at youth night, 50% more bulletins printed, 50% more mailings that go out and 50% more care requests that come in. And for me personally, I started to feel it as a leader. It was 50% less free time and margin in my day, 50% more demands on my schedule and demands on my leadership and 50% more lead time require. And I am not saying this as a pity party. I am just trying to be honest with you about what has happened. There has been a lot of change over the last three years, and I have felt it. And I neglected the first casualty when I started the feeling the restraint on my time and the demands of my time. My first casualty was prayer and preaching.

I prayed more my first year here at St. Mark than I do now, and I’m not okay with that. It’s the first thing that’s the easiest to let go. It is like if you go to a gym and you work out, it’s like, don’t skip leg day. Prayer is leg day, man. It’s like this thing that, and it feels optional. No one will notice. But you notice, right? You notice as the person who’s supposed to be doing it, and then eventually you’ll feel it. I equate prayer to this like it’s gasoline in a car. Technically you can have no gas in a car. Put it in neutral and push it to get where you want to go. You’ll get there, but it’ll takes a lot longer and you’ll be really tired when you get there. And I’ve seen churches that are prayerless pushing and doing a lot of work and gasoline, that prayers, that gasoline that just makes it go.

I’ve seen it time and time again. And you can’t tell the story of the remarkable growth of St. Mark apart from the remarkable prayer that precedes it. And it was the first thing I started compromising on and then preaching. And I think for some of you that might be a surprise. I think preaching is one of my strengths, but because it’s a strength, it’s easy to cut corners on it, to do a little bit less research. I know generally what I want to say or I’m not going to work so hard in that transition statement. It’s good enough for a government work, right? It’s good enough, it’ll get there. It’s close. I’m good, but that’s neglect. And I am neglecting the very thing that I am called to do. I’m called to preach here to minister the word and to pray for you and every one of your needs I am.

And here’s the secret about pastors. We get into this gig because we love people. I do. I love you and I love when you connect with Jesus like we saw this morning and just another baptism. I love when that happens. And that’s a good thing. It’s good to know your strengths, but your strength is your weakness. And there’s a shadow side to whatever your strength is, whatever you’re good at, there’s a shadow side to it that you need to be aware of. It’s called self-awareness. And the shadow side to being, to loving people is to being a people pleaser. And I will bend over backwards to please you because I want you to like me. And if you don’t like me, I accept it as a challenge. I’m like, oh, I will make you like me. I get that weird, it’s this weird thing. And when I see it in myself, and so when all of this growth is happening, the first thing I want to do is I don’t want to disappoint you.

And I had the reaction of, you remember the book Animal Farm by George Orwell. We read it in middle school, high school, something like that. It’s this idea that the animals run the farm. And it’s a metaphor obviously, but there’s the one character is Boxer the horse. Remember Boxer the horse? And he looks around, he’s so captivated by the vision of Animal Farm and he realizes he’s got all this strength. So he starts just working all the harder shows up early and stays late and just works harder and harder because he can. And eventually he breaks. He throws a shoe in his hoof, he nearly dies from exhaustion, and the pigs ship him off to a glue factory. It’s morbid, I get it. And his mantra though, boxer, the horse’s mantra is I will work harder. And that’s what I did. My reaction when I felt the creep of 50% and it just started encroaching more and more and demanding more and more. I compromised prayer, I compromised preaching, and then I just thought, I’m going to work harder. I’m going to do this. I just did a horse apparently.

So, I decided I was going to work harder. I’ll get here earlier, I’ll stay later. Suddenly I get here earlier and I’m not exercising in the morning and now I’m neglecting my health and then I just get fast food at lunch or then I got a meeting at six 30 and you know what? I’ll just work through the meeting until the meeting and I won’t go home for dinner. And now I’m neglecting my family, my kids, my wife. After a couple of weeks of that, I was like, Nope, nope, this is not okay. Neglect is not okay.

And so we made some changes as a staff starting in this spring and then really culminating this summer, we made some changes. First of all, care used to be a part-time job of Pastor Jack. And then when Jack retired, we made it a full-time job for Grant. And we went from a reactive way of handling care in the church to a proactive way. So instead of just always responding, you call us when you need us, we grant reads through the prayer requests and when he sees a need, he proactively reaches out or our small group hosts, they disseminate information to Grant, he checks in on them, how’s your group doing? And he care anything I can help with. And he care that we can. And that’s why small groups matter so much. We have to get smaller as we grow larger. We’ve talked about that because that’s a way of staying in communication with you and your needs.

And then our elders, we realize there’s some care that’s just ongoing, nursing home visits, hospital visits, whatever it might be. And so our elders, we said, you’re not just like worship assistants. We change the way we do elders. And they get together once a month in a huddle. We broke ’em into two different huddles. There’s six elders now, there will be nine next year. We broke ’em into two different huddles and they meet independently to talk through their care needs that they’re handling. And then we meet once a month as elders to talk through the care needs of the church and the spiritual affairs of the church. And suddenly the widows weren’t being neglected on our camp at the church.

And it wasn’t me busing tables, right? But I realized something. We came up with a plan. We executed the plan, but we forgot to tell you the plan. And that’s on me. We didn’t communicate properly the need for the change, why we’re changing and what the change looks like. And actually if you look at Acts chapter six, they communicate the plan. Look. So the 12 gathered all the disciples together and said, it would not be right for us to neglect the ministry of the word in order to do X, Y, Z. And it’s not right for me to neglect the things that I am called to do because of all of these other demands that I have of my time. We didn’t communicate that. So this morning we are gathering all the disciples together to communicate the plan.

ONE FATEFUL WEEK THIS SUMMER

And I realized that we didn’t communicate this because there was a week where I got a bunch of people asking me emails and different things of how come you haven’t responded to and why haven’t I heard from and blah. And then one sweet, sweet lady from the church, lifelong member, a friend of mine called up and said, Hey, can we get together some things I want to talk about? And I was like, sure. Having no idea what she wanted to talk about. And she came in, she sat in my office and she shared with me, and I mean this with all the love in her voice and in her heart and just a posture of care and sincerity and no point was there disrespect anywhere in the room.

And she shared with me how a member of the church was in the hospital and she said, why haven’t you visited them? Can’t you find one hour in your week to go to the hospital, Chris? And then she said, I quote, help me understand. And she meant it. She assumed the best in me. Help me understand Chris now as a people pleaser. Oh, that was brutal. That was a gut shot, man. Just hearing you’re not pleasing me, Chris, you’re failing to meet my expectations. Unmet expectations is the source of all conflict. And I didn’t meet hers. We didn’t meet hers.

And what I realized is we hadn’t communicated the plan. We came up with the plan, we executed the plan, but we didn’t communicate the plan. And I shared with her that same week, well, that one member was in the hospital, there was another member who was dying, and I have a limited amount of time. So I decided to go visit that member in the hospital who is dying to comfort them in their final moments. And because I couldn’t provide care for this person who was in the hospital, less of a critical situation, I asked Grant to go and Grant went to the hospital and visited with them twice. And then one of our elders came and brought them communion. And I said, no, I didn’t visit them in the hospital, but the church did.

11 And he gave the apostles, and the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

                                                                                                                                           Ephesians 4

And we actually opened up and read Acts chapter six together, and I shared how I was feeling, neglect, neglect for other areas of my life and I was concerned about that. And I didn’t want that to actually start to rear its ugly head and neglect for other areas of the church that need my leadership. We’re in the middle of a capital campaign, construction project, leadership of my staff, writing sermons, preaching and prayer. And then I read another verse with her, Ephesians four, verse 11 through 12. So we read of Acts six, and then we read Ephesians four together and it says Christ himself. So not like this is a general idea. No, no, no. The head authority of the church, the big guy Christ himself gave the church apostles. It was the guys in the Bible, prophets and evangelists. Those are the guys in the Bible.

But he also gave the church pastors and teachers, he gave the church pastors to be at every meeting to make sure he was praying for it. Nope.

He gave the church pastors to make sure that they were waiting on all of the tables in Jerusalem. Nope.

He gave the church pastors to make sure that they attended all of the youth events and made sure that the right amount of pizza was ordered. Nope.

God gave the church pastors to equip the people for works of service. The phrase there is actually to equip the saints, you guys, for the work of the ministry, your God has gifted you and called you to serve in the church, not just me.

And I confessed that this was not something that I had communicated. And I ended this meeting with her and I said, yes, I will visit people in the hospital, but when I can’t, I will equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

Yes, I will counsel you when you’re struggling in your marriage, but when I can’t, I will equip the saints for the work of the ministry.

And yes, I will be at youth bonfires, eating delicious s’mores, but when I can’t, I will equip the saints in the delicious work of the ministry.

And when we got done with the meeting, we hugged it out. It was wonderful. It was wonderful. And she said to me, thank you for helping me understand. I had no idea. And then you need to preach this soon because we don’t understand. We walked into the conference room, looked at the calendar there and scheduled out that we would talk about this on November 2nd today. So, we’ve come up with a plan, we’ve executed the plan, and today we’re communicating the plan.

HEALTHY CHURCHES

Now we have to do this church because a healthy church shares the responsibility. It’s what we see in Jerusalem, especially when you’re growing.

A HEALTHY CHURCH SHARES RESPONSIBILITY

We have to share the load. Many hands make light work. And I go back, they didn’t try to or convince or guilt people into serving, they just chose seven people because there was a heart of service. And I look at this room and I see a bunch of people who want to help the church. I do. I see it in your eyes. Your faces right now are like, I want to help Chris. And it’s on me. It’s on us that we have not communicated the need to you.

And I am sorry and I need your forgiveness. But today I am communicating the need. I think some of you absolutely would serve if we asked and different areas of ministry. I know you would. You’re great people. If I asked you, you would serve. I’ve heard you actually say to me, well, if you would just ask, I’m happy to help, but I want to be proactive. This is the ask. Okay? I am asking, let me kind of explain the structure of our ministry and where you fit in all of this. Okay, so I’ve already mentioned we have elders. These are the six elders, and these are the guys that are going to be the extension of the pastoral arm. This is a biblical model of eldership. And these are guys at different services and they’re here to hear spiritual needs. If there’s ongoing care needs, they’re going to be the ones in the hospital room or the nursing home or whatever it might be the shut in.

So, Rob Howes is our head elder, Nick Kleimola, Tom Timmer, Tim Weatherall. They’re 11 o’clocks. Jerry Porter, he’s in the back there. Jerry, why don’t you wave? They’re back. And then Rob, are you here too? Where’d you go, Rob? Yep. Rob Wave. And then Ben Bain. Ben’s over here. He’s usually an eight o’clock or, but his kids, they got hooked to kids’ ministry. So anyway, so Ben’s over here.

And then we have a church council. Our council, Nate Kares is our president. Nate, wave your hand. He’s at the nine 30 here. Lisa Knoop. She goes to the 11. Kaylee Rizor. Where’d you go, Kaylee? There’s Kaylee. She’s the secretary. Sorry to all the spouses that I cropped out of the picture. It’s so obvious there’s like an ear and you’re like, they’re not important, so I don’t mean to communicate that. Anyway, so we got Karl Dehn. Carl was at the eight o’clock today. Tom, you’re in the back there. Tom’s our property chair, wave time. And then Kristen, I saw you two. Where’d you go there? Yeah, our world chair. And then Rob Howes, head elder.

That’s the council. Here’s how this works out. So in the next slide you’ll see we’ve got our elders provide spiritual oversight for the church. They hold me accountable to the spiritual affairs of the church. And then our church council holds, holds me accountable to the business affairs of the church. And we have a policy-based governance, so not a permission-based governance. So if I want to hang up something or we want to ping a wall, we don’t have to ask the council for permission. They’ve created a policy where we can do that.

And if they show up and it’s leopard prints, they might ask some questions, but they might reword the policy. But the policy, or here’s a better example. If something is an unbudgeted expense over a thousand dollars, there is a policy, I have to get three quotes or the staff has to get three quotes for that expense. That’s policy governing the way I lead. It’s like a statute of limitations style of leadership. We do that because we move at the speed of trust. And so it’s the most effective model of ministry. And then I am entrusted with the leadership of the staff.

STAFF

So, you can see the staff here, and I know this is hard to read, so if you scan the QR code in your bulletin, it’ll take you to the hub. On the hub is actual. You can just see the org chart for yourself.

I know some of you are weird admin type of people. You want to see this stuff. So go ahead, look at our org chart, but it shows you. Then I’ve got an assistant to help me, and that’s a new thing also this summer of an assistant to help me with some of the affairs of the church and just like the administrative things. And we have four directors, A director of Care and connections is Grant. So that’s care, that’s Worship is under him. Small groups, tech, hospitality, because that’s connection. And then our Director of Youth and Family Ministry is Ashley Paavola. And under her, she’s got Devin, who’s a coordinator, and then youth and high school and middle school and kids are under there. Then we have director Our World for children, Mary Huisinga, Mary, you guys, Mary Wave. She oversees the Our World for Children School.

And she’s got Michelle Sprygada, Michelle Wave, where’d you go? There you go. Michelle is the assistant director and then they’ve got entire teachers and staff of our world. And then we have a director of operations. Alia is our operations director, and she handles the finances and the HR and then the property and just vendors and contracts. And it’s a big job. Now, if you’ll notice that though, don’t get it wrong. Those aren’t the people that I’ve entrusted with doing ministry. Those are the people I want to equip the saints for the work of ministry. So yeah, Ashley can order pizza and eat pizza with teenagers, but I love it when you eat pizza with teenagers. Yeah, Xylinn can play, but I love when you are up here singing too. And yes, Oralia can balance a budget, but I love when you are getting down and dirty in the numbers and their job. The task of everybody on that screen right now, the task of everybody on that screen is to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

And I mean that it’s remarkable. Youth ministry youth and kids ministry have over 70 volunteers in a monthly rotation. And Oralia has a finance team. There are dozens of people in the music team, the tech team, all of it.

YOU

And that brings me to you next week. We are having a volunteer expo. Well, we’re going to give you an opportunity to sign up to try it out. What is it like to serve in this area of ministry and it’s 90 days cash back, I don’t know, whatever. It’s a short-term trial. Check it out. If you like it, you like it. If not, find something else. And there are a lot of areas of ministry that you’re going to have an opportunity to sign up for, but I want to give you a week to think about it, talk about it, pray about it, because we have needs to serve on the altar team, the AV team, the care team, the coffee team, communications, facilities, finance, graphic design, hospitality, kids, ministry, landscaping, lawn team music, nursery office support, parking lot, photography, prayer team, youth ministry, and social media.

These are areas where we need leadership. We need people to lean in. And here’s what I believe to my core, you are uniquely and wonderfully gifted to serve. You have abilities. Some of you love landscaping, some of you love middle schoolers, some you love coffee. And some of these areas of ministry are underdeveloped, and we’re going to fix that. We need leadership to do it though. And you are equipped and gifted by God to serve. I believe that to my core. And some of you’re like, well, I’m not very, I’m whatever. I’m not very, I’m just kind of an average person. I am here to tell you the best ability is availability.

Someone who’s willing to serve, and I’m pleading with you to serve because it is not right for us to neglect the ministry of the word in order to wait on tables. Some of you are gifted. You love hospitality, you love setting and clearing tables, and we’re going to figure this out. I am looking at a room full of people that I know which say Yes, if I asked you to anything, but the needs are, it’s so hard. How do we disseminate that? You’ve got to clue us in on how are you gifted, how are you wired? What do you care about? And so next week, the volunteer expo, I hope you’re here and I hope you can be a part of this to just keep the ministry moving forward.

And again, it’s on me. It’s on us. We haven’t communicated this well enough. We were too busy with the demands of the ministry. We were in ministry. We were too busy in ministry to work on ministry. But today we’re trying to make that right. And my hope and my belief is that as we step up, as we re-pot the plant into a new pot for this new season of growth that we’re in, that what happens here at St. Mark will mirror what happened in Jerusalem. So after the apostles come up with this plan and gather everyone together and communicate the plan, take a look at what happens. I love how Acts chapter six verse five puts it, this proposal pleased everyone.

5 This proposal pleased the whole group. They chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit; also Phillip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas and Nicolas from the Antioch, s convert to Judaism. 6 They presented these men to the apostles, and laid their hands on them. So the word of God spread. The numbers of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly…

                                                                                                                                    Acts 6

Of course it did, because it included everyone. The widows were being cared for, the saints were being equipped for the work of the ministry. Of course, it pleased to them and they presented the men selected to the apostles who prayed for them by laying on, laying their hands on them. And the word of God spread and the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly. They didn’t compromise the growth. They were a healthy church. And may it be true of us as well.

PRAYER

Lemme pray for us, Heavenly Father, first of all, I confess that I have fallen short as a communicator, that we have not been as organized as we need to be to handle the growth. And we haven’t communicated the need that I have compromised prayer. I have compromised preaching the very things you’ve called me to do. And I need your forgiveness, Lord.

And Lord, help us as a ministry with just sharing the responsibility. I pray for every person who calls this place home that you would work on their hearts. God, how are you calling them to serve? How have you gifted them? How are they available? What can they do? And so God, meet the needs of this ministry. Don’t let anyone get burnt out. Don’t let the cautionary tale become true. Just share the load and make many hands, make light work for the good, the growth, and the glory of your kingdom, and continue to add daily the number of those being saved. In Jesus’ name I pray and we pray now the prayer your Son taught us to pray, saying together:

Our Father

Who art in heaven,

Hollowed, be thy name,

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

On earth as it is in heaven.,

Give us this day our daily bread,

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive those who trespass against us.

And lead us not into temptation,

But deliver us from evil.

For thine is the kingdom,

And the power,

And the glory,

Forever and ever,

Amen.