New Years Resolutions

Happy New Year!

I am looking forward to 2008! I think it will be a great year for our church!
The New Year’s celebration has traditionally been thought of as a time of new beginnings. Spiritually, what will be new for us this year, either individually or collectively?

Do you make New Year’s resolutions? Last I checked, slightly less than half of Americans make written resolutions. I have to confess I am one of those who have not made it a habit. There are a fairly few number of things that are centrally important to me, and I’ve never felt the need to write down, “do better about them.”
Yet I also remember Lee Iacocca’s admonishment, “If you have an idea and can’t write it down, then you don’t have an idea.” So in that sense, I am writing four resolutions that all the friends of God at Sango UMC might adopt for the coming year:

1. Find a Sunday School class and join it if you have not already done so. If an existing class doesn’t seem quite right for you, then start a class! That’s what Cathy and I did in Virginia back in my layman days. You’ll be surprised at how many people, like you, are probably looking for something new and different.

2. Make worship a priority. Worship is the most important thing a church does, thus the most important thing a church’s people do. Striving to form spiritually enriching worship is my highest priority as pastor. Congregations that lose a dynamic, common worship time together lose the lifeblood of the community of faith. Make worship number one! It undergirds everything else!

3. Pray! Our bishop, Dick Wills, teaches a method of prayer and Scripture study he calls by the acronym, “SOAPY.” I resolve that this month I will invite the bishop to come to Sango to tell us about it. But we don’t need to wait for that to be a people of prayer.

4. Invite! Did you know that the majority of the people living within a “Sunday commute” of our church do not attend worship services more than once or twice per year, and very many not at all? Consider your friends, relatives, neighbors and acquaintances. Are they part of a congregation? If so, be glad! If not, offer to bring them here! Study after study shows that pastoral evangelism is the least effective form of evangelism for local churches. Lay evangelism or outreach is crucial to a church’s health!

Let’s work, pray and worship together to make 2008 a wonderful year!