Pumped Up

Sunday, we had three baptisms, which was awesome.   I cannot thank the generous souls enough--you know who you are-- who gave the money to buy our baptismal pool. Adam Foster is our youth pastor, and his parents were in town.  His mom, Becky, had a great comment that his dad, Jeff, echoed.  We were standing around our baptismal pool after the crowd had thinned out a bit.  Becky said, "You must be really excited about all that the Lord is doing here... 3 baptisms, people coming forward to the altar..."  Jeff said, "That's a good day."

Amen to that.  But there's more.  The baptisms are the tip of the iceberg, so to speak.  The visible part of a move of the Spirit.

I mentioned to the congregation towards the end of the year that 20 people had left the church.  I told the church that I was happy they left.  There were some shocked faces... until I told them that the people who left are young men who have answered the call to ministry and are now serving some of our rural churches.  And they have taken wives, girlfriends and friends out to the churches with them to support them and play music...  I am really excited about people hearing a call to ministry!

We are in the process of trying to "change the scorecard;" not just counting "butts and bucks," but really paying close attention to how many people come to know Christ, how many are baptized, how many new members do we bring in.  You work towards what you celebrate, and so we are hopeful that putting evangelism front and center will help us catch fire!

Another part of the scorecard is discipleship.  We want to make sure people are becoming disciples, being disciple.  After so much prayer and a lot of people crying out to God that we want to go deeper, and show us how, Lord... we have "brought back" the old Methodist Class Meeting, the foundation of Methodism for 150 years... before we got too smart to need accountability and growth in grace.

It's another story how powerful something as simple as the old Class Meetings have been.  We set a goal that we wanted 50 people in such meetings by year-end.  We were at 42 last week, and every week brings someone new to a group or someone asking to form a group.  God is good.

So yes, I was pumped on Sunday.  But I am staying pumped up throughout the week, because I know something awesome.  We have been growing and reaching people, perhaps better than the average bear.  But it's not good enough!  It's ok.  But we have been doing it without a comprehensive discipleship plan.  Now we have that.  And we will be able to see these groups invite pre-believing friends to the rich fellowship and life-transforming power of Jesus Christ!  I think we will find it a lot easier to invite someone to our class meeting than to church.  When they come to know Jesus, when we are natural in our invitation to the Jesus-life, that is when we will see baptisms and on-going growth in grace!