Grow in Love, Love by Serving

While on retreat in early June, the Council adopted a slogan that summarizes our mission. This is not a change to our mission statement, but rather a simple, easy to remember summary of it. Our mission statement is:

We are a dynamic Lutheran Church providing both innovative and traditional opportunities for all people to: experience God’s Amazing Grace, to grow in Christian Faith, to participate in an extended family, and to serve our community.

Pretty good, right? I kind of like it. But we wanted something more memorable, some way to summarize it that stuck in the brain. Hence the new slogan, which is:

Grow in love, love by serving.

In case you were wondering, this is one of the lines to the cherished hymn “Go My Children, With My Blessing.” It’s short, pithy, and sums up rather nicely who we are as a church. My article for each of the next three months will be to break down part of this new slogan so that you can see how it summarizes who we are, and how following it even deeper will allow us to experience and grow God’s Kingdom in even better ways.

First up is “Grow.” All of us, every member of this church, should be growing. But growing how? In several ways.

1. Growing closer to God.
2. Growing as individuals..
3. Growing closer to each other.
4. Growing in our service.

First up is growing closer to God. This is where it all starts. Growing closer to God comes from reading your bible and praying, and doing both daily. Every day. To help you read your bible every day, here are some resources:

1. Go to this website each day for a different reading: http://elca.org/Faith/DailyBible/
2. Sign up for email devotions from Our Daily Bread.
3. Use the “Bible” app on your smartphone and read their daily verse
4. Here’s a plan to read the entire bible in one year: http://www.biblica.com/en-us/bible/reading-plans/
5. If you would like an actual printed book with a daily devotion, talk to me. We’ll get one.

If you need help praying, here is a simple guide:

1. Set a regular time and place.
2. Keep a list of people to pray for.
3. Pray using the Lord’s Prayer as a model. Don’t pray the Lord’s Prayer; that’s not what it’s there for. Jesus didn’t tell us to repeat the Lord’s Prayer, he said “When you pray, pray like this.” The parts of the Lord’s Prayer are:
4. The Father’s Character: praise God for who God is.
5. The Father’s Kingdom: pray for it to come, and to be part of it coming.
6. The Father’s Forgiveness: ask for it, and forgive others
7. The Father’s Provision: thank God for providing, offer petitions for you or others
8. The Father’s Guidance: pray for God to guide you or others
9. The Father’s Protection: pray for God to protect you or others
10. Don’t just speak, but listen. Make prayer a conversation with God rather than a list of demands.

If you pray every day, and read your bible every day, you will grow closer to God.

To grow more as an individual, find a mentor. Find someone who can show you how to be more the person God made you to be. Sit at their feet and learn from them. Learn how to be the person God called you to be. That’s how we grow more as an individual.

To grow closer to each other, spend time together outside church. You’re all smart people, you can figure this out. Go to dinner, go for walks, whatever. Just spend time with others from church, and do it outside the church walls. The closer you all grow to each other, the closer we grow to one another as a community.

Finally, God is calling all of us to grow in our service, and I’m not talking about volunteering at the CoOp (which is a fine thing to do!). I’m talking about serving your neighbors, the people around you every day. We don’t have to look far for opportunities to serve. Invest in your neighbors. Pray for them. Serve them, whatever and however they need. Share the love of Christ with them, and share Christ with them. That is the final way God is calling us to grow.

So there you go. That’s “Grow.” There will be lots more on “Grow in Love, Love by Serving” in the months to come because talking about them is easy. Living them out is hard. Fortunately, we have the Holy Spirit, and we know that God loves us no matter what. So no matter how well you do any of these, remember: God loves you, and so do I.

-Pastor Scott