The Need for Community

I spent lots of time Monday night and Tuesday morning, September 29 and 30, watching the cable news channels tell us that partisan disagreements kept Congress from being able to pass legislation that would prevent the collapse of the American economy. They couldn’t agree on whether the plan was to be a “rescue” of the economy or a “bail out” of “fat cat” CEOs who got us into this mess. The President looked and sounded absolutely defeated when he gave his 8:45 A.M. speech on Tuesday.

This is a crisis. There are ominous signs. Some banks are having to sell out to larger banks. Mine, Wachovia, has been bought. Some businesses in our area (Heard Chevrolet for example) are closing. Jobs are being lost. Our daughter-in-law, an experienced elementary school teacher, applied for a teaching job in Ft. Myers, and learned that more than 300 people has applied for the same job. A wealthy eccentric who lives in Port Orange told me that he had taken his money out of banks and put it in a vault. First Baptist Church of DeLand, where I used to serve as pastor, opens the church office on Monday mornings at 8:30 to people who ask for help with bills such as utilities and rent. In the last few weeks, people have begun to line up at 1:30 A.M. to be first in line when the church office opens.

The message I keep hearing is this: The Church is called to be on the front lines in the difficult days ahead. In hard times, people look for community. When we are faced with challenges to our financial security, and we see others suffering for lack of basic necessities, our better instincts tell us to come together and rely on each other for moral support. Without a sense of community, we go off into competitive individualism and start fighting over scarce resources.

I believe God is saying to New Hope Baptist Church, “Be a strong family of faith. Look out for one another’s interests, not just for your own. As things get more difficult, people are going to need you to be their community. They are going to need to find hope to make it through hard times and come out on the other side.”

We at New Hope can work together to serve each other and the strugglers that come to us looking for a place to belong. They need us to accept, love and teach them. In times like these we all need the knowledge that we are loved and that we belong to a family that is healthy and strong. That is what I hear the Spirit saying to our church.

Storm Warnings

On Wednesday afternoon Fleda called me from her office at Freedom Elementary School to tell me there was a tornado warning in our area. She was concerned to make sure that I knew and took shelter. The warning was soon canceled, but the experience set me to thinking that we are hearing other storm warnings these days, and we need to pull together and be prepared to help people.
The News Journal headline Thursday, September 18, was “Wall Street wallows in financial quagmire.” We may be entering an economic storm such as we have never seen. How is this going to affect our church? Hearts and minds may get turned to God. That would certainly be what God wants. The Bible is clear that God wants us to come to him in our times of confusion and need. Perhaps going through tough times financially will help us to realize that everything we have is a gift from God. Maybe we will see more people reaching out to our church, because they are being made aware of their dependence on God.
At the Port Orange Ministerial Association meeting on Wednesday, September 17, Dennis Bucher and I heard ministers from several churches agreeing, “More and more people are coming to us for help with paying their bills. More are needing the basics of life than we have seen in a long time.” I am grateful that we have a “Benevolence Fund” to which we give every first Sunday as we celebrate the Lord’s Supper and every Wednesday night as we thank God for the good things he is doing and give our “Happy Dollars.” We have recently helped people referred to us by Westminster By the Sea Presbyterian Church and by Chaplain Jim Smith of Halifax Hospital. We will continue to help people financially, and we will also help people to have faith in Jesus. We will help them understand in their own experience what Jesus meant when he said, “If you keep on obeying what I have said, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:31-32)
We have an important task these difficult days. When people ask us what we have to give them, our mission is to be ready with some compassionate help. Our compassion may involve helping them to pay the rent or the power bill. It will also involve offering them the truth and love of Jesus. That is why our worship, our teaching, our relationships, and our fellowship must be healthy – the best we have to offer. Having a daily relationship with Jesus and belonging to his people who obey what he has said, is the way to true security and freedom. That is more important than having a secure retirement or plenty of money in the bank.
When a storm is coming, a family pulls together and concentrates on the things that really matter. It looks like a storm is coming. Let’s pull together. Let’s be ready to help others. Let’s point them to the Way that leads to life and peace.

The Joy of Reaching People

Scott and Cheri Heatherington joined us last Sunday. They were members of New Hope in our earliest days and joined a larger church that had more activities for youth. Now that their children are out of the nest, they are back with us. We are grateful to God to have them in our church family. Cheri’s mom and dad are our Marge and Herm White who live in Monongahela, PA in the summer and in Port Orange in the winter.

This has been a good week for me as I have visited in three homes where people are interested in New Hope. I talked with five couples in those homes. I enjoyed all the visits and was especially thankful for my conversation with Samantha “Sam” Senatro and Gabbi Abdenabbi; two sweet teenagers who have been attending our youth group for a while. They indicated to Cheryl Secunda that they wanted to become Christ followers among us here at New Hope. It was my privilege to talk with them and their parents about what it means to accept Jesus as your savior and your teacher. I put together a PowerPoint slide show about baptism to show them on my laptop. I look forward to introducing these two new believers to our congregation and to planning their baptisms.

We celebrate new members. God is adding to his family. Fleda and I look forward to the New Members Class after worship today.

Thank you, John Rising, for the work you have done to make sure our sign got moved, properly placed, repaired and cleaned up. How about our sign! Doesn’t it look good at the corner of Taylor and Summer Trees? The new visibility will help people to notice that we are here. Soon the sign will be lighted at night again. If you are interested in volunteering to change the letters on the sign, please see me or call me. I want us to make good use of it, now that it is so very visible to people driving by our property. There are ways we can use our sign to serve our community.

Making Disciples

Last Wednesday evening was good in several ways. The food, as always, was good thanks to Erma and Garfield. Cheryl Secunda and her daughter, Kelly, led our youth in an enjoyable and effective time. Our discussion about how our church is going to obey the Great Commission and “make disciples” was stimulating to me and, I hope, to others. Two couples came to Prayer Meeting/Bible Study to learn something about our church. I left the sanctuary after choir rehearsal thanking God for the family atmosphere and the sense of God’s presence we often feel on Wednesday nights.
Our Church Health Team (Bill Batchelor, Leesa Holloway, Jim McCroskey, Cheryl Secunda, and John Wood) is working on a simple, clear, strategic plan for moving people through the steps of becoming like Christ. The very last instruction Jesus gave to his disciples according to Matthew’s Gospel was this: “Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am always with you.” We believe Jesus not only gave that commission to eleven disciples on a hill in Galilee that day, Jesus also gave it to us. We members of New Hope are given the charge and the authority to “make disciples.” The question before us is this: How will we go about turning unbelievers and uninvolved church members into fully devoted disciples of Jesus?
We agreed Wednesday nigh that disciples are people who are learning from Jesus, people who know and obey his teachings, people who are serving others just as Jesus served. We saw that being a Christian is not only being saved from hell when you die. It is being saved from hell while you live and having “life in all its abundance” today in your home, in your work, in your school. Therefore, our job is to teach people to do much more than say, “Jesus is my savior.” Our job is to teach them to obey Jesus.
Making disciples is not easy. Eugene Peterson calls it “a long obedience in the same direction.” Jesus said, “Not everyone who calls me their Lord will get into the kingdom of heaven. Only the ones who obey my Father in heaven will get in” (Matthew 7:21 Contemporary English Version).
The question before us is clear: How are we going to move people along a process of learning to obey all that Jesus has commanded? That is the gate to life. It is narrow and the road is hard, but we had better be helping people to find it, because Jesus made it clear that the broad gate and the easy road is the way to hell. (Read Matthew 7: 13-14.)