Bravely Onward!

I am always inspired by the generosity of our church membership! It amazes me that so many people would give so much because they want to see the kingdom of Christ advanced. We want to see our gifts contribute to the spread of the gospel and the fulfillment of the Great Commission. We want to see people trust Jesus as Savior and Lord as we have! To all of our members who give faithfully, thank you for giving to the Lord.  For many of us, we are glad to give, but if we're honest, we have little idea what happens to these gifts after we give them. In this post, I want to demystify the process by which our gifts turn into resources for ministry. Today, I just want to talk only about giving which is applied to the annual budget (a.k.a., undesignated giving). As I've mentioned in other posts, our church is an autonomous and self-governing church. In part, this means church members decide how to apply their gifts toward the ministry of their church. The way that the membership does t...

 What does it mean to be a Southern Baptist church? This is a very interesting question. A short, albeit loaded, answer is that  Southern Baptists are a network of autonomous baptistic churches which voluntarily partner for the purpose of advancing the Great Commission.  Wow! That's a mouthful. Let's see if we can break this down? Autonomous-  means that each Southern Baptist church is truly independent and self-governed. Local Baptist churches do not receive directives from a centralized denominational government. Instead, the members of each church determine the course for their own church through a democratic process of voting. We do things this way because we believe that Christ is the head of each church and that the church members have the ability to know His will through prayer and the study of His Word. We believe that His specific will for each specific church is discoverable through the voting of its members (see Acts 15:22).  Baptistic-  This ter...

  This week, I watched Keith Getty interview George Lowden of Lowden Guitars. Getty asked Lowden to tell the story of how he became a full-time guitar maker. He explained that in his early 20s, he sold clothing in several small shops in Ireland. One day, when Lowden was praying in church, he felt convicted that he was not doing what God had made him to do for the kingdom. Soon, he sensed a clear calling to make quality hand-made guitars. Immediately, he sold his clothing businesses and went into guitar making.  However, there was one small problem, Lowden didn't know how to make quality hand-made guitars! But this didn't stop him from following the Lord. Having no available mentor (and being decades before the advent of YouTube), Lowden learned how to make guitars through trial-and-error. When he got stuck with some technical problem, he learned to pause and pray through it. He said there were so many times that the God granted him the wisdom to work past the problem. When I t...