What Role Will You Play?
“School’s out for the Summer!” I remember singing that old Rock song when school ended for the summer. I still heard this repeated as the kids came home on the last day of school this year.
Fortunately, the significance of the lyrics of this 1972 Alice Cooper song is lost on them. The only lyric they repeated, at least in my household, was the single line, “School’s out for the summer!” Which is just as well. For if I heard them repeating all of the lyrics – “No more pencils, No more books, No more teachers’ dirty looks, Well we got no class, And we got no principles, And we got no innocence” – at the very least they might find themselves enrolled in summer school.
Wyatt isn’t enrolled in summer school this year. But, because there is the tendency for students to lose scholarly gains over summer break – referred to as the “summer slide” – both kids are beginning a summer reading “program.” In addition, I bought Wyatt a workbook for Math and Science. We don’t want a summer of bike rides and water slides to erase what he learned this past year.
How does that relate to our church life? Well, while reading the intro and first lessons in the science book, I was reminded about events at our church this time of year. In this science work book the third lesson is about “systems.” It begins by listing examples of systems: the United States government with the three branches – executive, judicial and legislative. It then mentions the Postal Service system and the people and processes it takes to deliver our mail. It talks about our body being a system; and the body being comprised of additional systems to make up the total body system. ☺ That sentence was more confusing than the concept. The nervous, digestive, skeletal and circulatory systems all work together within the body to make up the total system. Then consider mechanical and electronic systems within computers, video games, stereos etc. Systems are everywhere. A system, to quote the textbook is, “Anything with parts that work together.” Are you connecting this to church life yet? Do you see the connection to the Every Member in Ministry campaign?
The church is often compared to a body or a bride in the scriptures. For a few minutes, however, let’s think of it as a system – with many parts that come together to work as one in order to accomplish the task it was created to do. That task is to bring glory to God, maturity to the children of God and to reach out to the lost who need to know God and become His child.
Following that line of thinking, consider Hope Church as a system. There are smaller systems working within the church – the children’s ministry system, the music system, the sight and sound system, the hospitality system, the education system, the prayer system – all to bring Glory to God, raise up the children of God into maturity and reach out to the lost in the world so that they may become mature children of God as well. That Hope Church system, as a whole, requires each and everyone to participate and fulfill their role. If someone doesn’t fulfill a role, then the system malfunctions and possibly stops working. Each of us is needed. You are needed to help Hope Church fulfill its mission, its call and the task of bringing glory to God, maturing us in the faith, and caring for those who don’t know God at this time. Won’t you please be sure you take your place in the system – where ever God calls you – and help assure that the Hope Church “system” is operating efficiently in every God directed task.