“Listening, Learning, Loving”
“Where there is no vision, the people perish” Proverbs 29:18a KJV
Intro: Today we celebrate the Installation of Church officers for the year.
With a Reaffirmation or Remembering of your Baptism.
Every one of you is called to Christian service by the higher calling and virtue of your baptism.
Those of you installed today as officer of the church, You have been called to ministry to an office or work area
and have committed your unique passions, gifts, and abilities to a position of leadership.
What this means is that all people who follow Jesus are called to grow spiritually and then lead
As church officers you are given the task to keep our focus on the main reasons for any ministry
—To make disciple
—To work and serve for the transformation of the world.
As a spiritual leader, a primary function you carry is to help others see as clearly as possible
what God is calling your church to be and to do.
To forms this vision and then forms plans and goals for how to fulfill that vision.
Does this event or activity move us closer to our church’s vision to bring others to God in this place and time?
For the past 201 days I have been your pastor.
We have been talking about the vision of this congregation.
I have been listening to all the ideas and comments
and I have reflected back to you what you have been saying in the form of what has taken on the name the “1000 Days” plan.
That gives us until March 18th of the year 2018 to focus on:
Better communication,
realigning the Church committees and budget to emphasize both Ministry and Mission.
To unite all the various groups together under the common umbrella of the church.
To review the churches gift acceptance policies and structure a Permanent Endowment Fund.
To work with the Youth and Children’s Ministers to highlight ministry to families.
Have a “Share Your Faith Workshop” for the Witness Committee.
Send new pilgrims on the Emmaus Walk.
To complete the Flat Gap Long Term Disaster relief for a family who were victims of the flood.
Launch a capital debt reduction campaign to pay down the principle $328,000.00 Family Life Center mortgage. Take a team from this church on a Volunteer in Missions Trip with the Conference.
Growing stronger families, touching people’s lives, building relationships, reaching the lost sinner,
To be the loving community of faith
and transforming the world as God is calling us to do.
Not long ago someone asked me, “Do I finish what I start?”
Without hesitation I answered, “Yes, but I will need your help.”
It takes all of us, working together, and praying, laboring, tithing, serving, volunteering,
and putting into action your vision for this congregation.
Get ready to say amen. “I am convinced that whatever this congregation sets its heart and mind to do that together it can be accomplished.” Amen.
The first thing we must do is
I. Be a God Listeners
You are driving a bus. You go east 12 miles, and turn south and go 2 miles and take on 9 passengers,
and then you turn west and go 3 miles and let off 4 passengers. How old is the bus driver?
The main problem when trying to answer this questing is listening.
We hear certain information that we think is important but somehow miss the most important part.
We listened to the directions (east, south, west),
We think about the miles traveled and the number of passengers who got on and off the bus.
But when we get to the end and are asked how old was the bus driver?
Wait a second. How are we going to find out the age of the bus driver?
Is there some hidden message in the direction or number of passengers?
Are we supposed to add up all the numbers or what?
And then it dawns on you. How old is the bus driver? “YOU are the bus driver.”
How often do we have this same problem with listening in real life?
Over the years I have discovered that listening is a more important part of ministry than speaking.
How often at a funeral do we fumble at words to say?
How many times when someone is trying to tell us something important, a hurt, or brokenness, or despair,
Do we start rambling about something we just went through or that happened to us.
Never really hearing what the person is saying.
Never really listening.
Had you rather someone tell you to feel better
Or have someone listen to your pain and in doing so share in that moment of your struggles?
We must speak the word of God.
But we must also listen with the ears of God.
When we don’t have good communication with one another
It want be long until we don’t have good communication with God.
When I came here to be your pastor the first thing I did was to listen to God and ask for God’s direction.
Then I began to listen to you and what your vision of the church is.
I listened as you told me the churches history and we celebrated the churches Sesquicentennial.
I heard you talk about the churches Mission to Worship Prayerfully, To Praise Joyfully, To Serve Gratefully.
I listened to your Mott: Loving Him, Serving Him, Sharing Him.
I listened as you talked about you vision of a debt free church
that can focus on less on budgets and more on Missions and Ministries.
I heard you say that there needs to be better communication among the Committees and Leadership
I heard you say we needed better systems and organization of committees.
How that everyone needs to be working together under the same organizational umbrella.
I have heard your dreams about Mission Trips and Making Disciples and Revivals and Spiritual renewal.
I have listened to you.
I have also been a God listener.
As I have tried to discern the best way to lead you as your pastor
into this bold new time of church health and growth.
This church has a strong and powerful vision of the future.
There is so much potential, talent, and possibilities in this church.
Being a God Listener means surrender and service.
Being a God Listener is not just hearing what God says, but doing what God says.
I have found that surrender is less about giving up and more about getting up.
Listening is about availability.
Listening is about the condition of the heart and attitude of the listener.
I am convinced what God is saying is to get up and do.
To set out and go.
The time to rest is over.
The time to get up is now.
The time to go is today.
At my second appointment as was at Hickory Hill / Walkers Chapel in Allen County.
They wanted to build a fellowship hall.
We started collecting change in a wheel barrel.
When I left they had only raised a little over $7,000.00.
12 Years later I received a phone call asking would I come and hold a revival in their new Fellowship Hall.
The point is sometimes we plant seeds, we may only be at the beginning of the vision or the dream.
Other times we just happen to be at the right place at the right time to see the harvest come.
In 2004 the Paintsville First Church Family Life Center was completed
I believe in the next couple of years the debt on the Family Life Center will be paid off.
Why, because that is what you have told me is your vision.
I believe that is what God has been saying to you.
Our focus for the future is set on reaching out to the community to make more disciples for Christ.
I believe you have been listening God.
And I have been listening to you.
Be a God listener.
II. Always Learn
The future is not something you just enter.
The future is what you create through your decisions and actions.
To a Christian learner information and knowledge isn’t everything.
To a Christian learner things like kindness and compassion and forgiveness, and love,
and Grace become everything.
When life gives you lemons make lemon aide.
Always Learn. Always Learn.
Don’t let gloom and doom replace the Good News of the Gospel.
We have to learn from our past and try not to make the same mistakes.
Since we are going to make some mistakes lets at least make some new ones.
Yes, we will fail and have setbacks and there will be times of discouragements.
But failure is not failure is you learn from it.
I believe the worst thing you can do is nothing.
The God who calls us also gives us the ability, the strength, the power to fulfill that calling.
The church is a place of easy entry but high expectations.
In other words, the church is a place where anyone can join,
But we should expect nothing less than for the members to give their very best.
Because that is what God gave when Jesus died on the cross for you.
He gave his very best so should you.
How do we learn from God?
1. Scripture
2. Godly Counsel
3. The Holy Spirit
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
2 He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
3 He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.Psalm 23:3
John 10:27-28King James Version (KJV)
27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:
If you had to sum up the most important things you have ever learned in just a couple of sentences what would say?
The most important thing that I have learned as a Christian is to pray.
The second most important thing that I have learned is that God will use the person that is praying
to answer the prayers if we will let Him.
God rarely tells you to tell someone else to go do something.
That means when you pray you have to be to change, to work, to go, to help, to serve, to do, to teach,
to reach, to give, to encourage, to share, to supply, to act, to transform.
Always Learn. Always Learn.
III. Loving because “God is Love”
Many people believe that love is a feeling or emotion.
Yes, feelings and emotions are involved in love but the greatest part of love is action.
Love is a verb (what you do) more than a noun (a feeling).
Marriages, even Christians marriages fail because they place more value on feelings than on actions.
I have conference with many couples who say that they don’t feel the love that they once did for their spouse.
They fell “out of love” but there is really no falling out of or falling into love.
We can fall out of bed or fall in the bathtub but typically we grow to love someone over time.
Imagine if Christ, just before the cross, went to the garden and thought; I hate this feeling.
I don’t feel like doing this, therefore I will base my decision upon what I feel.
If that had happened, we’d all be hopelessly doomed to hell.
The good news of course is that Jesus resisted and fought back His feelings
and even though He prayed three times to have the cup removed,
He was more interested in doing the will of the Father than what He felt like doing…thankfully.
Jesus displayed His love by willingly going to the cross and dying for sinners
and those of us whom were still His enemies and desperately wicked (Rom 5:8, 10).
So we must preach that love is not dependent upon feelings and emotions
because feelings are one of the shallowest and most unreliable of all human emotions.
Instead we must learn that love is a choice more than a feeling
because feelings are subject to the ebbs and flows the ups and downs, the highs and lows of life.
while true love is displayed in actions.
The bottom line is that love is what a person chooses to do, not what a person chooses to feel.
God so loved the world because He felt like it?
Yes but that love required action and that included the supreme sacrifice of His only Son’s life.
That was the ultimate love in action.
We say we love one another, show it.
We say we love the lost, go share the Gospel
We say we love this church prove it.
Put more emphasis on the doing and the actions of support and encouragement.
Love Because God is love.
Closing: Yes, today I have decided to listen to God.
I have already decided to learn everything I can about God, from God, and what God wants my life to become. I will show love to the people in the world around me through my actions and service because God is Love.
