Tag: go

Posted in Through the Bible Devotions

A little extra

Posted on by William Douthwaite
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

A “through the bible” devotion from Leviticus 19.

Friday is big trash day in our neighborhood. That’s the day we can leave just about anything on the curb, and the garbage collectors will haul it away. That is, if no one else picks it up first. That’s also the day when pickup trucks drive down the streets salvaging appliances, tools, scrap metal, furniture, and old electronics. Anything that can be repaired or reused is quickly carried away. My trash does become someone’s treasure.

I leave less on the curb these days. I donate my unneeded and unused possessions to thrift stores that support local charities, or I sell them online. As I’ve decluttered my home, I’ve been shocked at how much I’ve accumulated. Most of it finds a better home somewhere.

Right in the middle of guidelines for sexual purity (Leviticus 18) and honesty and justice in the community (19:11-15) is a prompt to help “the needy an the stranger” (19:10). Leave something in your field an vineyard for the poor to gather or “glean.”

How much is enough? How much extra do you have? How many folks could you bless with your abundance? Ask yourself that question before you rent and fill up another storage unit.

Posted in Life, Ministry

From grow to go

Posted on by William Douthwaite
I get the feeling that the church has turned an amazing corner. All I heard about twenty years ago or so was how important it was for the church to grow. Most of our conversations at meetings and conversations were about how to make that happen.

Now it seems that we’re not so much concerned about how we grow, but where we go. Size isn’t as important as our presence in homes, community and in places where ministry is needed. The number of new ministries outside our walls rather than the number of new members is what we listen for in meetings and conference. Our energies are focused more into mission trips, shelters and food pantries, and community organizations than attracting people to our particular congregation.

As I think about that, I can’t help but wonder when we turned that corner. And what factors led up to that? Was it the economic crises of 2008? Was it a proliferation of natural disasters around the world that forced us to look outward? Was it fighting a war on the other side of the planet? A combination of these things?

If I had known our focus was changing, I think I would have spoken more against the new sanctuary we built in 2004-2005. We were growing at the time and felt like this was something we needed to do and do well. Just a few years later, handicapped by a much bigger mortgage than we had before, we couldn’t go quite as freely as we wished. Yes, we’ve been blessed by our facility. But how many others could have been blessed had we scaled back or stayed where we were?

Life is so much different now than it was five years ago. From the economy to social media to the administration in Washington, few could have predicted what the world would be like in 2010. Five years from now, we’ll probably say the same thing.