Water

Just filled up the baptismal for Andrew Donner, a college student who will be baptized.  Our evangelism is cranking on a lot of levels... children's ministry, youth ministry, Methodist Student Center, sanctuary services, all producing converts.  And all to the glory of God!  I can't figure it out.  If I could I'd bottle it, sell it, get proud... but that can't happen anyway.  It's the work of God through and through so that the only boasting we can do is in Christ. And I won't shut up about all the good he has done!

Last year about this time, I got frustrated with our bulletin "stats."  We count attendance and giving.  That's important, but it's hardly the whole picture.  I felt we needed to start keeping track of things that need to go up and things that need to go down.  So, worship attendance and giving need to go up.  But so does membership in the church, and most definitely professions of faith.

Things that need to go down has been a little harder to get a handle on.  Kids going to bed hungry needs to go down, and if there are as many Methodists as we say there are in Rowan County, then it should be going down.  People living in sub-standard housing needs to go down.  Jeff Lewis has been helping me think through how we can measure stuff like that.

At any rate, we set a goal of 20 new members and 10 professions of faith.  We did not set that goal as something that we must reach-- we set it simply to remind us that it is an important task.  The Holy Spirit will determine the final numbers.  Maybe higher or lower.  But we need to keep it in front of us, to remind, to challenge.  Well, we were really being blessed early in the year.  We were going to hit our goals.  So after baptizing some of our children I asked if we should push harder, and we all agreed we should.  So our goal is 30 new members and 20 professions of faith.  I think putting that out there has really helped us to be intentional, reminding us that we all have a part to play in bringing people to the church.

As of tomorrow, we will have 24 new members and 12 professions of faith. We think that's pretty good because as United Methodists we are not used to much of that at all!  If you think about the need, about all the people in Rowan County who do not know Jesus as Lord and Savior, we have a lot of work to do.  I wish you were crying about it.   I need someone to go to the Staff-Parish committee and say you want a new pastor because we just aren't getting it done!

You know, Brother Wesley used to tell his preachers, "you have nothing to do but save souls."  Somewhere down the line, we got into doing other things.  The main criteria for a Methodist preacher back in the day was "have they fruit?"  That is, are people converted under their preaching? We still ask that question when we ordain elders, but we apparently refuse to define what fruit is... or we don't want to be accountable to anything so measurable.

See what happens when I get pumped up because people are coming to faith in Christ?  I get rabid.