11/06/2023
175 years in Numbers, and in Lives Touched
Here are the numbers—a conservative guesstimate—of what 175 years of ministry might look like.
● Sermons = 12,780 sermons, lasting 281,000 minutes (at a laughable 22 minutes per sermon), which translates to 4,686 hours, or 28 ½ straight days of preaching!
● Holy Communion = 1172 celebrations, with who knows how many people partaking.
● I’m guessing at something like 5780 Baptisms
● Weddings = 1750
● Funerals = 7000
● Youth Confirmations = 4375
When you stop and try to track all of that, you realize the immense number of people and families whose lives have been touched and changed through the ministry of just one congregation…ours.
But it’s not about the numbers. There is only one number that matters—and that’s you--or the endless number of ‘you’s that have found what they are looking for in this place, through the kindness and willingness of this church to serve God and others.
Consider all the lives touched by:
● Hosting the Agape Immigrant Chinese Congregation
● Participants in our ESL ministry
● The Angel’s Attic Thrift Store
● 50 years of shaping young minds and hearts through our Preschool
● All the Youth group retreats, trips to the Appalachian trail, mission trips, bible studies, and pizza parties.
● All the Children’s sermons and Sunday school classes, and Vacation
Bible Schools.
● Hours and hours of Pastoral counseling
● Hospital or bedside visits
● The TLC that goes with the direct aid from the food pantry
● A set of coats for your kids
● Christmas when there wouldn’t have been Christmas through Angel Tree
● So many Foster children with their very own duffle bag, blanket, book and toy
● A fully certified and credentialed professor in the seminary dreamed of by Bishop Yamasu in Sierra Leone by the name of Daisy Gbloh.
● How many homes are air and watertight—so much more livable than they were before our 20 plus years of repairs and renovations took place in and near Frakes, Kentucky (Henderson Settlement).
I could go on, but maybe you’re beginning to get my drift. We are part of a legacy of faith for the faithless, hope for the hopeless and love for the lonely and loveless. We are heirs of God’s Kingdom: brothers and sisters in a revolutionary movement of life which does not revolve around us, but around our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And as far as I can tell—so far so good. It is a joy to celebrate 175 years in the ministry of the Master. As we move throughout this year, we will be taking time to look back so that we might look forward in creating our own legacy of doing great things for God.
Archived Posts
The Perfect Church
There is an old joke about the perfect church. We talked just a little about the perfect pastor, but turnabout is fair play. It goes like this:
The Clothes You Wear
Sunday I talked about Joshua the High Priest having his filthy clothing replaced by a cleaned and beautiful garments. I also used the illustration of a boy becomes a dragon—who ‘wears’ dragon scales—and is stripped of those scales in order to be restored to a boy. In fact, I could have done the whole sermon around all the clothing imagery in scripture.
What just missed the cut for Sunday’s Sermon
Naaman’s servants may actually become one of the hidden gems of the sermon. They say, essentially: “If the prophet had told you to do something difficult, you would have done it.”
One of the Longest Benedictions I Ran Out of Time to Share
Maybe you know the story of how Joseph and Mary accidentally left Jesus at the gas station on their way home from Jerusalem. Well, not the gas station bathroom in Jesus’ case. Joe and Mary are far down the road before they realize Jesus isn’t with them...
So many quips and quotes...
So little time to preach
I wonder what Mary and Martha’s phones might look like:
* Martha = the open browser with 27 tabs
* Mary = the single window that matters
* Psalm 46 = God saying, “Close the tabs.”
Quotable Outtakes That Didn’t Make the Sermon This Week
“When you try to control everything, you don’t just exhaust yourself—you quietly replace trust in God with trust in you.” & more
There is a challenge when it comes to preaching the Word of God.
Preachers are called to open up and interpret the word—inspired and written down thousands of years ago—and make it relevant to a very different world. On top of that there’s a degree of persuasion that goes along with the process.