January 4, 2003
Title: Each One...Win One
Text: Colossians 1:1-13
Introduction
1. Happy New Year!!!
This time of year, many people look back and evaluate their life in the past year...
This is a good exercise.
Did you meet your personal goals?
How has the Lord blessed you in 2003?
Have you spent time in counting your blessings?
If you haven’t, I hope you do spend some time in reflection.
2. This is also a time when people look ahead to the new year...
many people will make resolutions...
they will try lose weight...
or exercise more...
or read the Bible through in a year...(forms provided)
or have personal devotions every day...
or spend 30 minutes in prayer every morning...
3. I certainly encourage you to look at your physical, emotional, and spiritual life and try to improve yourself in the coming year.
4. It is good for a church to do the same things.
to look back at what has happened...
reflect upon God’s blessings...
reflect upon the challenges that we have faced.
5. And it is good to look ahead...
to make some goals for the new year...
to cast a new vision...
to encourage and motivate the faithful...
and that is my goal today.
6.
Read Text: Colossians 1:1-13
Body
1. First, as a church, I’d like to begin by looking Back...
A. To be honest, when I first look back...
it is discouraging...
One day, I sat down to make a list of all the people who used to be a part of our church...
but for whatever reason, they are no longer with us...
some have died...
some have moved away...
some have left us to attend other churches...
some have simply just quit going to church altogether.
On this exercise, instead of just looking at the last year...
I looked at the 2 1/2 years that I have been your pastor.
And in that time, we have lost 21 people because they moved away...
people like the Pifers, Gary and Susie Short, Julian & Emily Sanders,
Deal family, Vern Buchanan, Daryel and Rosemary Townsend...
and others...
all good people...
all solid, tithing, working, serving, involved people...
and the losses have hurt us.
It has hurt our membership...
it has hurt our income...
it has hurt our ministry, trying to find people to pick up and do the work that those people used to do...
B. But, we can’t be all doom and gloom...
to be honest with ourselves...
we must look at both sides...
on the positive side, we have gained new people too...
some are brand new...
others had stopped coming to church for whatever reason...
but now are coming again...
people like Mary Grant and John DeRosa,
People like Herb and Ruth Kelley...
Tom and Judy Schultz...
Lina Bowser...
Erma Jones...Lisa Titman...
and more
A total of 17 people that are new since I’ve been your pastor.
And we praise the Lord for these people...
C. We also praise the Lord for those who have continued to be faithful throughout...
faithfully attending...
faithfully giving...
faithfully working...
without those people...
our church couldn’t have weathered the storm that we have been through...
D. But more important than numbers...
we try to look back and evaluate our spiritual growth...
or lack thereof...
This is difficult to measure...
In some cases, you can count the people who have reportedly gotten saved...
but overall, it is hard to measure spiritual growth...
We asked the question in our survey, "What is your spiritual maturity?"
And 74% answered, "I am growing spiritually".
So we must praise the Lord for spiritual growth.
E. On the other hand, we haven’t had the spiritual breakthrough that I would like to see...
the kind of breakthrough that comes when real revival breaks out...
the kind of breakthrough that comes when people hunger to get right with God...
so much so that they will run to the altar...
the kind of breakthrough that comes when Lord breaks out upon a people...
and the glory of the Lord is so very evident...
And that continues to be the cry of my heart...
Lord, send revival...
Lord, pour out your Holy Spirit upon Your Church at Belleview, FL...
Lord, begin in my heart...
"Create in me a clean heart o Lord..."
F. I invite you to join me in praying for our Church...
sure, we pray for new families...
sure, we pray for those who are sick or hurting...
but more than all that, I want us to pray that real revival will break out...
that 2004 will be the year that we will have that spiritual breakthrough...
2. Not only do we look back, but we look ahead...
A. One of the main jobs of the Pastor, in my opinion, is casting a vision for the Church...
God gave Moses a vision for His people...to lead them to freedom.
God gave Nehemiah a vision...to see the Temple rebuilt...
and God continues to give a vision to people called of God to lead a Church.
B. I am not simply your pastor because the Church voted and asked me to be the pastor...
I am your pastor because God called me to be your pastor...
He has appointed me to serve Belleview Church of the Nazarene...
When the invitation was given to come and interview for this position...
my wife and I prayed extensively about it...
before you voted...the people were in prayer...
and God answered that prayer...
Kay and I felt the power of the Holy Spirit burning within us after we had interviewed with you...
we felt like that it was God’s will...
and we continue to feel that way...
And as your God-called pastor...God has given me a new vision for His Church in Belleview COTN.
C. Our Mission will remain the same..."Loving God...Reaching Families...Making Friends"...
That God-given mission won’t change much year to year...
it is global in scope...
it is what we are about...
it defines us...
We exist to love and service and worship God...
we exist to reach out to families...
and we don’t just want to get folks in the door...
we want to make them our friends...
that is our mission...
D. Our VISION is the method that we use to accomplish the mission...
last year, our vision was Christ First....
Each letter in "Christ" stood for something...
Christ
Holiness
Revival
Intercessory prayer...
stewardship...
and Togetherness.
We had used the space shuttle theme to "launch" the theme each month...
but with the disaster of the space shuttle columbia...
I felt that out of respect for the crew...
that we back off the shuttle theme..
but we focused on some important things each month...
things like those already mentioned...
but also including a study of the last days events...
and others.
3. And now, in 2004 God has given me a new vision for Belleview Church of the Nazarene
A. And as I shared it with the Church Board...
together we have worked out a plan for accomplishing our mission of...
Loving God...Reaching Families...Making Friends...
in 2004.
It can be summed up in the Words "Each One Win One"
B. One day, during the last year...
one of those faithful people that I mentioned earlier...
that kind that are always here...
always working...
always helping...
the people that are the life’s blood of the church...
She asked me, "Pastor, what can we do to get new people in church...
we’ve lost so many families....
how can we replace them"
Those weren’t her exact words...
but that was the message...
and I could tell that the situation was of great concern to her...
I don’t remember the answer that I gave her that day that she asked the question...
but the real answer is coming today...
in this message...
C. Under normal circumstances...
if a church lost 1 faithful, working, tithing church member...
it would hurt...
but we have lost over 20 people like that...
and most churches would be happy to gain just 1 faithful, working, tithing family in a year...
but to be honest...I’m not satisfied with gaining just 1 family...
I want to double ourselves...
a complete duplication...
"each one...win one"...
Each person
Each family
Each couple...
win another person...
or family
or couple
to the Lord!
Currently, our attendance is about 48 people during a Sunday Morning Worship service...
By December 2004, I’d like to see 96 people during a Sunday Morning Worship service...
D. And when I say "Win one"...
I am not talking about just getting them to attend church once or twice...
I am talking about getting them in...
getting them involved...
getting them participating...
getting them saved...
getting them helping...
serving...
E. That doesn’t happen overnight...
that is a process...
that may take the whole year to accomplish...
it starts out with
each one pick one...
Pick out the family or person or child that you intend the reach during this year.
then each one pray for one...
Before you ever contact that person or family, begin praying for them...
Ask the Lord to go before you...
then each one befriend one
usually its not the best method to just pound on someone’s door and invite them to church...
it is usually more successful to actually get to know them first...
invite them over to dinner...
begin to share your life with them...
and they will share theirs with you...
Then, when the time is right, "each one invite one"
when you have made them your friend...
invite them to your church...
let them see that you aren’t the only friendly person around...
we’ve got a church full of friendly people...
F. And that’s enough of the process to get you started...
there is till more to do to get them to accept Jesus Christ...
but let’s start there for now...
I would like for you to begin thinking about who you might be able to select ...
if you are a couple...
think of a couple you would like to reach...
if you are a family...
think of a family...
Kay and I have already thought of a family with 2 children...
that we’d like to reach...
I guess we will have to find 2 more kids to make 6!!
But you get the idea...
pick someone or some family...
and begin praying for them...
pray for them before you ever talk to them.
G. There is a Biblical basis for this vision, "Each one win one"
it is found thoughout Scripture...
it is called "bearing fruit"
in Genesis, when God created the animals and plants, and finally man...
His plan was that they "be fruitful and multiply"
That was His plan to populate the earth with animals...
and plants...
and people...
each animal give birth to more animals...
each plant give birth to more plants...
each couple give birth to more people...
H. But this idea of bearing fruit goes beyond Genesis and populating the earth...
it is also God’s plan to make more Christians...
each Christian give birth to more Christians...
In the words of our Text, Paul says, "
