You know what it is like for a young child; "It's all about me!" Then it's kind of fun to watch that child grow through his teen years and emerge into adulthood. Gradually over the years, he learns that there are other people besides himself in this world. It's very rewarding to watch our maturing kids learn how to live unselfishly.
That's what I thought this morning as I sat in church and watched Pastor Terry lead the service. After a wow! worship service, which in itself was evidence of a church who is emerging into maturity, Terry came up to introduce the theme of Missions. His goal was to overview some of the Missions projects that our church has undertaken this year.
First he introduced Sulma Hoeg, who along with her husband Karsten, has been serving in Nicuragua for the past several years. Every winter she and a team go down and prepare to clothe and equip 450 children to go to school. They are now planning a mission training centre where we can send teams to teach a variety of skills to the young graduates. After Sulma, Terry and Andrew Lauwers talked about their recent trip to Davao City Philippines to teach over 1000 young people. Then Pastor Sam told us about the last trip that several of of the guys and gals took to Costa Rica (as well as the next one coming up in the Fall) Pastor Rebecca reported on her and Doug's Church Planting seminar to pastors in Berlin. (She got home late last night)I was deeply touched, after that, when Terry introduced BJ Chursinoff and Lana Davidson who've chosen to take a year and give themselves to serve in Costa Rica. Then Pastor Gord, who just arrived home from St Vincent, gave us a quick overview of his trip with the PLBC team where they built a large church, plus taught at a bunch of venues. Gord encouraged the church by telling us that we have such a good reputation around the world that any door we want to enter in the 160+ countries where Foursquare operates, we are more than welcome.
We're coming of age. Our determination is to give away 50% of what comes into our church this year. Is it ok if I say I was a very proud Church daddy today? I am proud of the way each of our adherents and members have risen to a very unselfish vision. I'm mostly proud of our God who has promised us that it is more blessed to give than to receive.
1 comment:
Hey
I've visited Northside several times (about 4 or so since January) and I must say you and the youth pastor, Pastor Terry, are amazing and enlightening speakers. Your services are fairly easy to understand and have a good bit of humour to lighten them up.
The first time I visited or so, You were speaking about meeting a Catholic man on a plane, and something about losing your bible. The irony is, I was raised catholic so I kinda chuckled at that little tidbit. But yeah, I really enjoy Northside's services, and true, its ALOT differnt from what I was use to church being...but i still enjoyed it alot.
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