Monday, November 08, 2021
May Unity and Prayer be Our Theme
Unity & Prayer are the themes for our upcoming deacon meetings at Ridgecrest Baptist Church. Both are vital if our deacon ministry is to be a blessing to this church, its pastors, and its members.
As I’ve prayed over the past year about these deacon
meetings, I kept having this thought placed on my heart: deacons should
demonstrate unity, and to do so, we need to know each other well and understand
each other’s calling.
Consider these meetings our team training where “iron
sharpens iron.” The focus will be getting to know each other and be prayer.
This summer, I read a small book by Matt Smethurst entitled
“Deacons: How They Serve and Strengthen the Church.”
Matt gives a clear picture of what work the deacons are to
be about in their role. He says it this way: “As the pervasive world of social
media urges people to ‘promote yourself,’ deacons quietly set others up to
win.”
When American culture, dare I say church culture too, is
marked by division and self-promotion, deacons protect and promote church
unity. We are to safeguard the harmony of the church and set our pastors and
others up to win.
Part of the harmony begins in this room as we grow in unity ourselves.
1, Attending deacon meetings is an important part of that: thank you for being here.
2 Reading our weekly deacon emails so you stay in the communication loop is another good step: 78% of you opened this week’s deacon update. Thank you to those of you that did, but we could do better.
3. One final way to help build that unity among deacons so that it can spill over into the church is by having each of you involved in our meetings.
We need the
deacon membership involved at this and future meetings, leading devotionals,
leading trainings, giving reports, and leading in prayer. If you are not on
today’s meeting agenda, it means you are eligible to be on the agenda in
January! You can volunteer or get drafted.
Thanks again
for being here. Now let’s go team!
-- David L. Burton
