Time to Serve
Greetings church!
Walking into church has always been easy for me, mostly because I grew up going to church. There is a photo of me as I was a few weeks old in my best Easter onesie on the way to Merced First Baptist Church. As I got older this trend never changed much. I knew what to expect, I knew when we were going to sing songs, how to pray, and what was going to be asked of me. I was a veteran by the ripe age of 5 years old.
This isn’t true for everyone. Often times, as our world gets more and more divisive there is hesitation to walk through the doors of the church, especially if you didn’t grow up attending. Fear of judgment, fear of not knowing what to do, fear of no one saying hello to you. Its scary having to navigate a new space for the first time when everyone else seems like a professional. It’s the reason we, at FBH, want to create spaces for people to experiencing the body of Christ in a non-threatening way while we serve them in a very practical one.
As Christians when we said yes to Jesus we said yes to serving the world, I mean we even painted on our entry way, “Serve the World.” We think serving is paramount to becoming more like Christ every day. Acts 20:35 reminds us of this, “In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
So now that we are all feeling convicted, we want to keep you clued in on some practical ways for you to serve the world. We still have opportunities available for you to help with the Fall Carnival and the hundreds of people who will be coming onto our campus on October 31st (register here). Beyond that we have a men’s shelter building opportunity to provide living space for those who are currently homeless, this is being championed by Kings Gospel Mission but we get to be one of the first churches to do it it (register here). And lastly, keep an eye out in the coming weeks about how to help us feed hundreds of people this Thanksgiving who may not have a warm meal other wise.
This is the church. Loving and serving others in the name of Jesus.
See you Sunday!
Pastor Peter