While it is sad to see summer leave us, I do look forward to the start-up of many of our ministries that we put on hold throughout the summer. With the start-up comes a fresh bit of excitement and energy that I just love. I hope you are planning on taking advantage of some of these ministry opportunities that will be beginning shortly. If you have any questions, you can always check our church’s website or call the church office.
The purpose of this particular blog post, however, is not to be a commercial for our upcoming fall ministries and activities. Rather, I just wanted to take some time to share with you the purposeful thinking behind why we as a church decide to put certain ministries on hold throughout the summer. So, let me just take a moment and share with you what some of those purposes are:
1. To give the workers in those ministries a much-needed break.
Many of the servants of the church dedicate themselves to a particular ministry for about nine solid months; which is extremely exhausting mentally, physically, and spiritually. By purposefully scaling back in the summers we give our servants the time to recharge their batteries for another season of ministry, and in doing so, keeping them from burning out and quitting.
2. To give some much-needed time for evaluating, thinking and planning for the future.
Many times, when ministries are going full steam ahead, there is little time and energy left to give to evaluating, thinking, and planning. And if time is not being given to those things, then our ministries will be very ineffective at helping us to carry out our mission of making disciples by reaching those who are far from God, while growing up those who are in Christ.
3. To do some much-needed training of the dedicated workers in those ministries.
Because we live in a world of constant change, there will always be room to learn and grow in our abilities to serve in different ministries within the church. However, because of our busy schedules, finding time to do the training necessary to help us learn and grow can be difficult. By scaling back in the summers, we make some room for that time.
4. I would say the most important reason we put certain ministries on hold during the summers is for the purpose of giving us time to be a witness for Christ.
With summer comes many great opportunities to be a witness to neighbors, co-workers, and family members. Because of the nicer weather, people are outside more and you have the opportunity to do things with people outside. I know for me personally I have been able to talk with my neighbors a lot more during the past few months, because I have seen them outside a lot more. We have been able to go to one of the neighbor’s youth baseball games. We have even been able to sit in one of our neighbor’s driveway as he lit off a whole bunch of fireworks on July 4th. Many of these things I may not have been able to do if the church’s schedule was as busy as it typically is. We need to be careful as a church that we don’t over program ministries that are geared for growing those who are in Christ, as a result leaving us little individual time to try and reach those who are far from God around us. Hopefully you have been able to use your extra time this summer to increase your witness for Christ.
After writing this post, I am thinking that maybe I should have written it at the beginning of the summer. So don’t be surprised if you see something like this around May of next year. However, I do hope that this information has been helpful to you in understanding some of our purposes for why we do what we do here at South.
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