Recently I read an interesting blog titled, ‘7 Things Your Church Needs from You’. There was nothing new in it, but it was just refreshing to be reminded of such things again. They are things I need to hear and reflect on as a pastor as much as anyone – the first in particular. See what you think.

Your church needs you to…

…BE HUMBLE
There is no character quality more important than humility. While humility does not come naturally to any of us, it can be learned, because here’s the thing: Humility isn’t a feeling or an attitude—it’s action. If you want to learn humility, you need to act humble. Here are 3 quick tips on becoming humble:

• Find mature Christians who exemplify humility and spend time around them. Learn from them and learn to be like them.
• Volunteer for the lowliest of tasks. Don’t ask to be in the public eye when you serve, but be content to stay in the back. Find joy in doing the lowliest jobs and do them when and where only Jesus will see.
• Get to know Jesus. It was Jesus who said, “Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.” (Matthew 23:12). And it was Jesus who humbled himself the deepest and was exalted the highest.

…PRIORITIZE CHURCH
Every church has people who make the public gatherings of the church a low priority. These are the people who only come to church when it is convenient and who use any excuse to miss a day or miss a service. Every church desperately needs people who will make the public gatherings a top priority. Today is the day to begin elevating the importance of church in your life.

Let me give you two reasons:

• First, you need your church. God made you part of your church for your good. You cannot do life on your own. You aren’t strong enough, you aren’t wise enough, you aren’t mature enough, you aren’t godly enough. Without the beautifully ordinary means of grace you encounter in the church, you won’t make it. Without the support of your brothers and sisters, you won’t make it.
• Second, your church needs you. God made you part of your church for the good of others. 1 Peter 4 says, “As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace.” God has gifted you to be part of your church, and those gifts are to be used for the good of other people. So prioritize church as an expression of generosity toward others.

 
…CONSIDER GIVING GOD A DAY
Why don’t you considering setting aside an entire day of the week and dedicating it to the Lord in a special way? We believe that the Old Testament law has been fulfilled in Christ, though there is some disagreement among Christians about the implications. But even if you believe that the Sabbath command is no longer binding on us, there is still value in learning from it.

It completely changes Sunday when you give the entire day to the Lord and his people. Now you’re not having to decide whether to take that class or join that club that meets Sunday afternoon. You’re not skipping church during exam time because you’ve got studying to do. You’re not leaving early to get home before the football game starts. Instead, you’re leaving behind all the cares of life, and even many of the joys of life, and dedicating an entire day to worship, to fellowship, and to serving others.

…LIVE LIKE A CHRISTIAN ALL WEEK LONG
It is easy enough to be a Christian at church, but then you get home. But then you go to work. But then you go to school. And then you’re surrounded by people acting ungodly, and even worse, you’re left along with your own thoughts and your own desires. Yet your church needs you to live like a Christian all week long.

Each of us faces different challenges and different temptations. But one key to living like a Christian all week long is spending time in Word and prayer every day. Make this a priority no matter how busy you are and no matter how crazy life seems. Make this something you do no matter how badly you’ve sinned and how little you feel like doing it. Pray day-by-day not only for yourself, but for your church. Take that membership directly and pray through it from A to Z, and then start over.Make your devotional life something you do not just for the good of yourself, but for the good of others.

…GET TO KNOW PEOPLE NOT LIKE YOU
Churches are involuntary communities—we don’t get to pick who comes to them, God does. So what we have to do is learn to live with these people and learn to love these people, even when they are very different from us. “For as in one body we have many members, and the members do not all have the same function, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, and individually members one of another.” If your church is divided so that all the young adults hang out together and all the older folk hang out together, or if all the people with accents hang out together and all the people without accents hang out together, that makes a statement about the gospel—that the gospel is not big enough and powerful enough to really make people love one another even though they are different.

So commit to get to know people not like you. There is no reason you shouldn’t be able to say that some of your best and closest relationships are with people who are very different from you.

…LEARN GENEROSITY
Few things reveal the heart better than money. Money has an amazing way of displaying what you really believe and what you really value. No matter who and what stage of life you are at, there is no better time than now to learn to be generous with your money. Here’s what the Bible says: “Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.” You must give, and you must learn to do it cheerfully.

Here are just 2 quick tips:

• Remember that it’s not your money. The money belongs to God—he just gives it to you to manage it. And he means for you to manage it well and to his glory.
• Give to the Lord first. I know people who say they can’t give to the church, and yet they’ve got a new cell phone and are carrying a cup of Starbucks into church every week. That doesn’t compute. Learn to give the first and best of your money to the Lord. The harder that seems, the more you need to do it.

 
…BE A GREAT CHURCH MEMBER
Make yourself invaluable to your church, and do this by serving other people. I love reading about Dorcas, the woman Peter raised from the dead who was described as being “full of good works and acts of charity” (see Acts 9). “When Peter arrived, they took him to the upper room. All the widows stood beside him weeping and showing tunics and other garments that Dorcas made while she was with them.” Dorcas was a great church member. She loved people so much, and did so much good to them, that the whole community mourned when she died.

Would that be you? Would the people of your church weep as they remember you for all the good you did to others? Find the place you can serve your church, and serve there without fail, without excuse, without requiring praise and accolades. Do it for the good of others and the glory of God.

Full article can be read at - http://www.challies.com/christian-living/7-things-your-church-needs-from-you

The past month has seen the internet go crazy with videos of people tipping buckets of icy water over themselves to help raise awareness (and money) for ALS (a.k.a. Motor Neurone Disease).

As a marketing gimmick is very clever. It's short, immediately understandable, it's easy to do and entertaining to watch. As a result, the ALS Association has received more than $70 million so far, compared to only $2.5 million during last year’s campaign.[1] Getting people to tip icy water over themselves might be a great way to raise money, but it's not a great reason to donate our money.

As Christians, we have finite resources to donate and be generous with. God expects us to be good stewards of the wealth he gives us, and with so many charities and worthy causes vying for our charitable dollar, we need to be wise and discerning about how we choose to use and allocate our money.

One article I read this week suggested we should not donate to ALS because it is already well funded relative to the number of people who it affects and there are other more urgent and pressing causes to donate our money to (such as the crisis in Iraq). It suggested we spend our charitable dollars according to the following three factors:

1. Where is the greatest need?
2. Where will my dollars have the greatest influence?
3. What is the most urgent problem?

Personally I found this really helpful because it reminds me of THE greatest need in our world which is to hear the good news of Jesus. The most urgent problem in our world is for people to have their sin forgiven and be reconciled to God. With this being the case, the place my giving can have its greatest influence is helping to support gospel related ministries - that is, ministries that help proclaim the good news of Jesus.

With this in mind there are still many options before us asking us to donate our money. So how should we as Christians allocate (tithe) our money?

First and foremost ought to be our church. This is the place where gospel ministry happens day in day out that we are part of and benefit from (1 Tim 5:17-18). Secondly, we also have an obligation to the household of faith and caring for others in our midst who are in need with our material possessions (Acts 2:44-45; 1 John 3:17-18). Finally, God also expects his people to do justice and mercy where we take care of the refugee, the orphan, the widow and the poor etc (Deut 24:19-21; Luke 10:25-37).

Therefore, we ought to be looking to allocate our giving to support gospel ministries such as church and our link missionaries. Also those charities that provide help to those in need where the gospel remains central (e.g. Compassion and Anglicare)

There are many, many other charities that are doing great work and would love your support (e.g. research into cancer, ALS and diabetes). However, these charities will always get funding from the government and the public. But the government and the general public won't support the work of the gospel because they are fundamentally opposed to it.

That means, if as Christians we are convinced the gospel is the greatest need of our society today, we need to be the ones who support it.

That means, rather than a gimmicky internet video determining our giving, we need to prayerfully and wisely think about how best to allocate our money for the good of God and his kingdom.

"Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." 2 Cor 9:7

Yours in Christ
Stu

[1] http://www.alsa.org/news/media/press-releases/ice-bucket-donations-082414.html

Nearly three years ago I bought a bike from the Two Monkeys Bike shop in Penshurst. It was a flat bar road bike that I thought would be a good hybrid bike to commute to the office on and go on weekend rides. When I was invited to go out riding with the boys on Saturday morning I turned up on my hybrid, wearing tennis shorts and a tee-shirt to be met by a bunch of guys on carbon fibre road bikes, wearing lycra and all looking very serious. I was duly dropped on the very first hill and watched the group rapidly ride off into the distance!

Since then, I’ve traded the hybrid for a road bike, ride 2 or 3 times a week, have swapped the tennis shorts for lycra and have become somewhat of a cycling fanatic. Not only is the Tour de France compulsory late night viewing, but also the Giro d’Italia, Vuelta Espana and various one day classics.

My growing fascination with the Tour de France (TDF) and other professional bike races has led me to appreciate the intricacies of road racing – especially the different tactics, team selections and roles of different riders in the peloton.

Not only are there different ‘races’ happening within the race itself, there are different race strategies being implemented depending on the type of riders in the team. One type of rider is the sprinter. He is normally a strong rider with explosive speed who is able to launch his sprint out of the bunch for a stage win on flatter courses (e.g. Andre Griepel, Marcel Kittel and Mark Cavendish)

Then there is the climber. These guys are lightweight mountain goats who have huge stamina levels that mean they can go up long steep climbs real at real pace. Alberto Contador, Nairo Quinatana, Chris Froome are the best climbers around and are normally the guys who take the overall win in the grand tours, like the TDF.

Puncheur’s are more alrounders who can punch up short steep climbs with a short explosive burst and sprint to victory from a reduced bunch (e.g. Philippe Gilbert, Simon Gerrans, or Alejandro Valverde).

It’s all well and good to have climbers, sprinters and puncheur’s going for the victory, but every team needs a number of riders who can help their #1 guy get the victory – and these riders are called domestiques.

The role of the domestique is to work for their lead rider. They ride in front of their leader to protect him from the wind, helping him to save energy. They go back to the team car to get any drinks, gels, and clothing he needs. They will give him their wheel or even their whole bike if he has a mechanical problem. They will chase down breaks by opposition riders. In short they will sacrifice themselves all for the sake of their lead rider. Some domestiques are good enough to be the #1 rider but they sacrifice their own ambition to ride in the service of another; these guys are called ‘super domestiques’. Riders like Michael Rogers, Richie Porte and Luke Durbridge are domestiques for their teams.

As I was watching all this play out in the recent TDF, it got me wondering, if Jesus was a cyclist, then what would he be?

Many people might think Jesus would be a sprinter. After all, he was a carpenter’s son, so he would have been strong. But the nature of Jesus mission was not fast and furious. He came to run a race that that goes for eternity.

Maybe he would he have been a climber? After all these guys are the winners of the grand tours. As God the Son, he would certainly deserve to be the teams #1 rider and designated leader to go for glory.

But as I thought about it was obvious that rather than being a sprinter or climber or puncheur, Jesus would most definitely have been a domestique. Here’s why ...

• Like a domestique, Jesus sacrifices himself for others. He puts his ambitions and desires to the side and serves the needs of others. While domestiques will do it riding into the wind or chasing down a breakaway, Jesus sacrifices himself on a cross.
  
• Domestiques serve their team leader at great cost – they smash themselves for him; they sacrifice their own chances of victory to enable victory of their leader; they get no glory for themselves because it goes all to their #1 guy. This is what Jesus did. He saved people for eternal life and it cost him his life, and he did it so those who trust in him can have the victory of eternal life.
  
• Even though domestiques don’t win the stages, they still have to climb all the mountains to ensure they can stay in the race and they often do it carrying extra drink bottles and energy gels for their leader. Jesus also had to climb a mountain. Not a mountain in the French Alps, but a mountain outside Jerusalem. He wasn’t carrying drink bottles and energy gels but a wooden cross on which he would be crucified.
  

When you look at the life of Jesus, his whole mission in life was to sacrifice himself for others. As Jesus says about himself in Mark 10:45
     “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

He didn’t come for his own glory, he came for his Father’s glory. He glorified him by dying for sinners to take the judgment they deserved. He came not so he could have the victory, he came so those who trust in him could have the victory. And even though he is God the Son who deserves all our honour and praise, he gave up that right and came not to be served, but to serve us.

It made me realise that if life was a bike race, Jesus came so that weekend warriors like you and me who plod along on Saturday mornings in our lycra, could win the ‘TDF of life’. In doing so we will stand on the victory dias – not in Paris, but in heaven. When we trust in our ‘super domestique’, then our victory is guaranteed. Not because we worked and trained and earned our eternal victory, but because Jesus sacrificed himself on a mountain to set up the victory for us.

So if Jesus was a cyclist, I’m convinced he’d be a ‘super domestique’. Just like every team needs a super domestique if they’re ever going to win the TDF, so you and I desperately need Jesus if we’re ever going to win the prize of eternal life.

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