For four Sundays during the month of June, Southview joined hundreds of churches all around the world who participated in an event called One Prayer. The premise was this: If God would answer one prayer for the church at large, what would you pray for?
"God, make us ________."
Pastors from sixty-six churches across the United States and Canada sent in videos of their sermons answering this question. Some of the responses to fill in the blank were "fearless", "magnetic", "dangerous", and "holy". Pastors from the thousands of churches participating in the series would then choose which four messages they wanted their church to see, one each week.The second week of June, we showed Pastor Ed Young's message, entitled "Make Us Wake Up." Pastor Young is an incredibly gifted and creative communicator, something to be expected from the founder of CreativePastors.com. I thought his message was fantastic, and I found a few of his points to be a little edgy (which I LOVED!).
The whole message was based around how he wished God would wake the church up and that Christians wouldn't just sleep through the awesome things God has for us to do. Near the end of his message he spoke about how some Christians "go to sleep" with their time, talents, and money, and how they don't really give any of these to serve the church. He went on to say that if you are not serving in your church (including TITHING!), you are not really a member of that church!
How cool is that? I've never heard someone put it that way, but it's so profound! One stat that he gave was that 69% of Jesus's words were words of application...Jesus wanted us to DO SOMETHING! You can't just roll up to church on Sundays, sit your butt in a pew for an hour, and then go home and call yourself a member! I always hated in school when the teacher would put you in a group of 2 or 3 other kids to do a project, and there was always that one kid who didn't want to do any of the work, but wanted to be a member and take some credit after we got an A. Pastor Young says, "You might have your name on some dusty roll somewhere...but if you're going to be a member, you've gotta become a part." Love it.
