The world in our hallway

That Just Happened

Pastor Brown wrapped up the 2013 State of the Church Meeting by rattling off 40 (or so) major projects and events that took place at Lighthouse Baptist Church in 2012.

With the learning and teaching, the serving and giving, and the supporting and grieving and enjoying (both within and outside of our church, locally and across six continents), the magnificent and exhausting amount of activity blew my mind. Well, if you knew our church...You kind of had to be there.

And that list didn't even include the less tangible but arguably more important activities like spiritual growth, vision clarified, purpose found, forgiveness granted, and hearty laughs over salad and pizza.
 
LBC has some kind of way about doing church.

If an outsider who's in-the-know about church type stuff looked at our modest congregation and humble building, they may possibly say that it is a dying breed. If that same person took a closer look at the leadership and the accounting and level of active service among the members, they would probably call it a healthy church. If they took a peek around the nursery, a disheveled countenance would cross their face. They would throw down their church data sheet and cry out the label:

"BOOMIN!"

When pastor finally finished his list I thought to myself, with a mental fist pump, "That just happened!"

But How did that happen? 

[Yes we are well aware of how the nursery gets filled ; ) ]

It happened by having humble, God honoring leaders. It happened by having just a handful of imperfect and even broken people who are in it to serve instead of being served, in it for depth more than breadth.

I want to be careful to go easy on Big Church. Big Church has plenty of legitimate strengths and LBC its weaknesses.

Here you will not go slipping in and out without a friend noticing. You will not find a hundred thousand dollar budget for the parking lot or sound system. If the music is a little too loud or not loud enough for you, you may mention it directly to the person in charge, but in the name of the Lord you will migrate to a part of the sanctuary that is louder or softer to your liking.

And that all seems very Christ like to me.

Take up this vacuum and follow me.

It happened because the paid staff is literally two (2)! That means there's no cost for all the cleaning and tending of our building and massive amount. Most of our maintenance is done in-house. Which is why we have the means to support 25 missionaries and give locally in various forms and buy a plot of land and build an entire church in Sierra Lionne.

Don't get me wrong. Just like every other church, we call it this- or that "ministry." But at LBC everyone readily admits that ministry is a church word for pure work.

I wonder if Judy running the vacuum or Ryan installing a new heat pump or Angie disinfecting the nursery or Rae doing her techie stuff truly see their acts holistically. I never did until now. I never realized that by signing my name to the service/needs sheet in the hallway of LBC, I'm literally serving, reaching, and sharing Gods love with the entire world.