“It’s Kickoff Time”
9/26/10 Haggai 1:5-15 Luke 21:1-4
A long time ago when I played football, I was on the kickoff team. I was always full of optimism and I could feel butterflies in my stomach. When the referee blew that long whistle, everything we had been practicing for for weeks was finally beginning. I had to kick off the butterflies that were swarming around in my stomach and head in the direction of the ball flying through the air.
Every now and then God call us to be on his kick off team in some new adventure in the kingdom of God. We may not be sure of what the final outcome is going to be, but we’re glad to be on the starting team. We look for the direction the Spirit is moving and we have to kick off things in our lives and head for the Spirit’s leading.
God kicked off a new thing in Glenville 48 years ago. It happened when he called a group of people to move beyond being scattered individuals to rise up and become a church in this building. Of those who answered the call of that game, 5 of them are still among us in the game. They are Aileen Moffett, Ann Moore, Lillie Jackson, Juanita McGowan and Sarah Williams. Since then many others have come and joined our church family. Many today are in heaven because of the ministry that came out of the body of Christ here at Glenville. We thank God for the legacy they built.
One of the tragedies in the bible, is that often when God did a great move among God’s people, it often did not survive past the generation that was there to see it. The next generation would slip back into old ways and into their own comfort and slowly invest their lives into other things. Before long God’s claim on their lives and God’s purpose for their existence would be forgotten.
In the book of Haggai, God’s people had lived a very rebellious life and after many years of trying to get them to change, God let the people have their way. God had warned his people that the Babylonian army would come and attack them and carry them away. They did not believe it, and they refused to kick off their rebellious ways. The Babylonians came, burned the city, tore down the city walls, and destroyed God’s temple.
The people who survived were carried off as captives to Babylon, where they remained for 70 years. After several decades of captivity, the people then began to kickoff all the false gods they had worshipped and kicked off their complacency and began to cry out to God. God heard their plea, and after 70 years he touched the heart of King Cyrus who gave a decree for all the people from Israel who wanted to leave to return home to their lands and take the gold and silver articles that had been looted from the temple back with them.
The people were delighted with the news. They kicked off the Babylonian yoke and headed for Jerusalem. When they arrived, they started to rebuild the temple out of gratitude for God giving them such a great deliverance. But slowly their enthusiasm and their remembrance of God’s faithfulness began to dwindle. They stopped working on the temple, and began thinking about themselves. 18 years after arriving in Jerusalem, a certain level of prosperity and blessing had set in. They had built beautiful homes for themselves but had allowed the temple to not only go unfinished, but to fall into disrepair.
We like to think and say that “God does not care what things look like, God only looks at what is on the inside.” That’s only true to an extent and applies to when we first come to God. When a person cries out to God, God does not look at their outward appearance. It does not matter to God if the person has on rags or designer clothes, it does not matter if the person is addicted to drugs or addicted to fame, it does not matter if the person is a prostitute or a so called respectable sinner. All of them need the same savior, Jesus, as each one of us needs in our lives. But when God comes into our lives, a change takes place on the inside, that makes for a change to take place on the outside.
We kickoff some of the old things we use to do, and our goal is to offer God our best of what we have to offer. If you had some oatmeal, some three day old left over chicken, and some fresh T bone steaks in the refrigerator and you knew somebody you loved and admired was coming over for dinner, how many of you would be wanting to serve the steaks for the person. How many of you would be eager to say, “I got some steaks in the refrigerator, but I figured you could get full off this huge bowl of oatmeal just as well.” No most of us want to offer our best because we are caring and loving people. We know that what we offer says a lot about how we feel.
Our theme is Striving For Excellence. God has been a God of excellence to us. God didn’t wait until we became good people to love us. He loved us while we were sinners, so that we could get saved. He didn’t pay for our sins by giving up a goat or a lamb to die for us and hoping it would take care of things. He loved us so much He sent His Son, Jesus Christ to die for us.
When we blew it by not living up to the level of our new found faith, God didn’t throw us to the side of the road and call us ungrateful rebels. Instead God reached forth his hands and said get up my son, get up my daughter and let’s start our journey again. When you serve that kind of a God, you ought to want to strive for excellence in your relationship to Him and be willing to kick off anything that would hinder your walk.
Our campaign theme is excelling in our giving. We serve a God that excels in giving. How many of you prayed for something today? You only did it because you believe our God is a generous giving God. Has anybody ever kept count of the number of things they ask the Lord for in prayer out of fear they might ask for too many things. Of course not, because we know God has an unlimited ability to supply our needs. God ‘s word tells us 2 Corinthians 8:7 “But just as you excel in everything-in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in your love for us—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.”
Why are we launching this campaign. We committed ourselves to strive for excellence as a church. We are striving for excellence in our homes, in our lives, and in anything we associate the name of Christ with including our building. God does care about the way our building and property looks, just as he cared about the temple in Haggai’s day.
Our building ought to be the best we can make it given the blessings God has poured into our lives. We have done several things to use our building to lift others up to God. Our New Life Campaign gave us one of the finest looking and updated sanctuaries in the city. It happened because we came together to make it happen to get ready for 21st century ministry.
In two years we will celebrating our 50th anniversary as a church. Thanks to the generation of Ann, Lilly, Aileen, Sarah, and Jaunita, we are serving God here today. Our campaign is in part a way of saying thank you to them for being obedient to God and blessing us with this congregation. Our campaign is going to last for two years to end with the end of our 50th year celebration as a church. Today we are 48 years old.
Our campaign is going to involve making needed repairs to our building that need to be improved. First of all there is the parking lot. It’s hard to get excited about making sacrifices for a parking lot. But let’s put it in perspective. Drive up and down E. 105th Street and you will see many churches and many parking lots. Our parking lot is the worse looking lot between St. Clair and Superior. The asphalt is broken up, the grass grows through the cracks, and each winter the snow plows do more and more damage to it. Our insurance company suggested we repair it before someone trips on the holes and we get sued.
Our parking lot has been left behind by us for too long . Yet is the gateway to our church. Many of our visitors see it before they see us. Our parking lot testifies 24 hours a day to people about what we think of our position and responsibility in the community.
Our parking lot is more than just a place for cars. It also is a tool we use for the cause of Christ. It’s where we minister to children through our summer program. They need a safe place without worrying about tripping and falling into the holes. It is also a place we use for our outdoor services in which we have had up to 200 people from the church and neighborhood gathering. It’s the place we held our Health Fair, our community day, our Easter evangelism outreach. . We believe our God, our church, and our community deserves a better appearance than what we currently have in our lot. If the other churches can update their lots, then we can and will do the same, because nobody is prouder of their church than we are.
We are going to bring up to date our kitchen and our fellowship hall. We all know what it’s been like trying to minister to families with a dinner after a homegoing service and having fans operating all over the place and it still being too hot. The same has been true for wedding receptions, church dinners, and vacation bible school. The windows on one side of the fellowship hall have been closed off to stop the collapse of an outside wall.
Our dream is to put air conditioning in the fellowship hall so that we can plan to use the building even more. The women’s association has had a desire for years to update our kitchen and bring it into the 21st century. But this is something we should all share in, because we are all going to benefit from it. Hopefully one day, we will have a feeding program for the hungry as we did for almost 30 years of our existence.
We are going to replace the entrance doors to the side of the building near the access ramp. We are going to replace some of the windows in the building.
Our classrooms upstairs sometimes get too hot for us to use for youth worship. We intend to equip those classes and the nursery area with air conditioning as well. We have plans to present to Session this week for a new tutoring program to come to the church in January that would also operate for 8 weeks during the summer. We are looking forward to helping our kids do better in school than they have been doing. God keeps sending us kids for us to send on to college.
We are seeking to continue to make our worship experience more enlightening and meaningful. We thank God for the choirs and the dance ministry the Lord has blessed us with. We want to become even more coordinated in our appearance with new robes for our choirs, and new liturgical dance outfits for our dancers. We all benefit from their presence and we all should help in equipping them for their ministry.
We are seeking to continue to expand our worship ministry beyond our walls. We need to update our technology with our camera’s, our projectors, and our sound equipment. A couple of years ago we made it possible to watch our services live around the world. When Brandon Fitzpatrick went into the military and was shipped to Hawaii, he got up at 5am to be a part of our worship service until he found him a new home church in Hawaii. I was lying in bed sick last week, but thanks to the computer, I still got to see Women’s Day as it happened.
As of this week, you can now watch our services on your i-phones live or join i-tunes and get our sermons delivered directly to your computer or phone. We have our own i-phone app for those of you who understand that terminology.
We want to continue to build our youth ministry. That involves our support of the great work done by Pastor Kellie. You have been wonderful to her as a congregation, but we still need to do more. This was our first year with providing her with health and pension benefits. But some of the funds to do so came from presbytery, and each year that funding decreases. We have to rise up and make up that difference.
We also believe that there are some new ministries in your hearts that you would like to see begin to take place here are at Glenville. We want to have some seed money ready to help you get that ministry started. We do not know all that the Lord has placed into your heart that needs to come forth out of you but we want to be ready to move forward in God when it comes. The Lord may call us to plant another church or to work to help alongside another church, but either way we want to be ready to make it happen.
What’s our financial goal for the campaign. We want to receive $200,000 to make it all happen and then some. We are going to do it by faith and by willingly making sacrifices by choosing to kick off some things in our lives to put us in a position to give. We are not asking everyone to give the same amount, but we are asking everyone to be willing to make an equal sacrifice. We are going to ask you in November to make a pledge of what you will give over a two year period.
Here’s what we are not going to do. We are not going to do a lot of fund raisers in which we ask people of the church to support the fund raiser. If you want to do a fund raiser, it has to be targeted to those outside of our church. Your customers have to be outside the church. We want disciplined regular giving not fund raisers.
There are two ways to have money to give. You can either increase your income or decrease your standard of living. Some of us may get a part time job for our pledge, others of us may look ways to cut back on things in our lives.
In our first campaign, Pastor Toby and I committed our raises on our job, we gave 50% of whatever money we received that we were not expecting from anniversaries and gifts. We chose not to buy another car during that period and made car payments to the campaign and during that 3 year period. We gave about $18000.00 having pledged $15,000. What can you do? Probably more than you initially think. There are creative strategies you can come up with.
Could you postpone purchasing a large item. Could you keep your car for another year so that you can make that payment to the campaign for a year? Could you give up the premium cable for a year and go to basic? Could you cut back on your cell phone expenses? Could you get your hair or your nails done with a longer stretch in between to save money?
Could you go out to a movie less often each month? Could you cut back on how many times you eat out? Each time you buy a new outfit, could you match it with an offering to your pledge? Could you choose to fast a meal each week and give that to your pledge? Could you stop trusting in your bank account and simply write a check? If you are convinced that you do not have anything to give, could you commit to giving God 25% of anything you get above what you unexpectedly receive.
To make this $200,000 happen, we are all going to have to kick off something from our lifestyle to invest back into the ministry of God. You know sometimes it looks like everything that can go wrong financially is going wrong. Sometimes finances go wrong because God is trying to work something in our character to cause us to rely more upon God.
But sometimes finances go wrong because God is trying to get our attention. He told the people in Haggai, you work so hard and have so little. Part of the reason is that I sent problems into your life to eat up your money because you only thought about yourself, and not about helping to rebuild my House. Consider your ways and change, and see the ways in which I will bless you.
You are going to have about seven weeks to pray about your role in the campaign. We are going to have prayer vigils for our church and community. We are going to have home visits to help explain the campaign in more details. We will not ask you for any money when we call or come to visit you. We will be coming for prayer requests and information for any questions your might have. We will have a dinner for some leaders and a few key others who will be asked to make a pledge prior to the time we all make a pledge on Celebration Sunday in November, so that you can see what the leaders have offered to do first.
From the youngest to the oldest and from the poorest to the richest, we can all pledge to give something to Striving For Excellence campaign if we are willing to kick off something and let it go. If you choose not to participate, all we ask of you is to not discourage the hearts of those who want to believe God to lift us to another level as a church.
God has blessed us with so much in our lives. We want all that we associate with Him to be reflected back in our love for God. Our challenge is to offer the Lord our best in our bodies, our building, our ministries, and our outreach to others. When Jesus pointed out the widow and her giving, it was not the size of the gift that touched him. It was the size of her sacrifice. Her giving left her completely dependent on God for her need that day. Thank God for touching and changing lives for the past 48 years in this place that we call Glenville. Let us approach our 50th anniversary to offer to the Lord nothing short of the best that we can give in seeking to make a difference in the lives of others.
Sermon Outline Pastor Rick
“It’s Kick Off Time”
Haggai 1:5-15 Luke 21:1-4
9/26/10
A. God Blessing 48 Years Ago
1. The Five
2. Ann, Lillie, Aileen, Juanita, Sarah
B. The Prophet Haggai
1. The People’s Rebellion
2. The Babylonian Experience
3. The Temple Of God
C. The Grace Of Our God
1. Does The Lord Care
2. The Guest We Serve
3. Oatmeal Vs Steak
D. Striving For Excellence
1. God’s Excellence
2. Excelling In Giving
3. 2 Corinthians 8:7
7 But since you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in complete earnestness and in the love we have kindled in you [a]—see that you also excel in this grace of giving.
E. Preparing To Celebrate 50 Years
1. Parking Lot- Lot Or Ministry
2. Kitchen Fellowship Hall
3. Youth Worship Classrooms
4. Worship Celebration
5. I Phone App
6. Youth Ministry-Pastor Kellie
7. New Visioning Ministry
F. The $200,000 Level Up
1. Choosing To Kick Off
2. Equal Sacrificing
3. 2 Year Time Table
4. November Decision
G. Our Steps To Getting It Done
1. Fundraisers Outside The Church Only
2. Systematic Regular Giving
3. Increase Income –Decrease Lifestyle
4. Pastors Testimony
H. The Choice To Kick Off
1. What Could I Do Without
2. What Steps Could I Take
3. What If I Have Financial Problems
4. Whose Expected To Help Out
5. What Is The Challenge
