Making Room for What Matters - Part 3

Making Ministry Personal
When a serious need arose in the early church, the apostles did not attempt to handle it alone.

Acts 6 tells us that some widows were being overlooked in the church’s daily distribution of food. The apostles understood that the problem mattered, but they also knew they could not neglect prayer and the ministry of the Word to manage every responsibility themselves. Instead, they asked the congregation to select seven qualified believers who could make sure these women received the care they needed.

One of those believers was Stephen.

Stephen was not initially chosen to preach a sermon or lead a prominent ministry. He was selected to help meet a practical need behind the scenes. Yet he did not limit his service to his assigned responsibility. Acts describes him as a man “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” and “full of grace and power” (Acts 6:5, 8). He cared for people, knew God’s Word, spoke about Jesus boldly, and responded to opposition with wisdom. When he was eventually dragged before the Jewish council, he proclaimed the truth about Jesus even though it cost him his life.

Stephen served wherever he was needed and spoke about Jesus whenever he had the opportunity. He did not expect the apostles to do all the caring, teaching, or witnessing. He was a spiritually mature believer who accepted personal responsibility for the needs and opportunities God placed before him.

His life gives us a picture of what we hope the Seventh Year Sabbath will help cultivate: believers who are learning to feed themselves from God’s Word and becoming equipped to feed others. We want people to serve the church on Sunday and be ministers and missionaries on Monday.

Making Space for Something Better
As we have explained throughout this series, the Seventh Year Sabbath is not a year without church or ministry. We will continue gathering every Sunday to worship, pray, hear Scripture taught, and encourage one another. Grace Tots and Grace Kids will continue during our Sunday services, while Grace Students will move to Sunday evenings. Students and children will still attend camps, and our men’s and women’s retreats will continue.

Life Groups and Discipleship Groups will remain an important part of our ministry because they provide space for the kind of Christian relationships we hope to deepen. We will also continue selected outreach events and fundraisers rather than abandoning organized outreach altogether.

At the same time, we plan to pause Grace Family Nights, including its children’s ministries and adult classes, along with our regular men’s and women’s Bible studies, many outreach events, the marriage retreat, and several other activities.

We know people will miss some of these ministries. They have created good memories, meaningful relationships, and valuable opportunities to learn and serve. Pausing them is not a declaration that they were worthless or that the people who led them failed. We remain grateful for every person who taught a lesson, prepared a meal, welcomed a child, organized an event, or served behind the scenes.

Nevertheless, if we focus only on what is ending, we may miss what God is giving us the opportunity to begin.

A pause creates space, but creating space is not enough. We must decide what we will do with it. Will we simply replace church activities with more entertainment, errands, and personal commitments, or will we use some of that space to open our Bibles, gather around our tables, deepen our relationships, welcome new people, and participate personally in the mission of Jesus?

Our goal is not merely to create a less crowded church calendar. We want to create more room in our lives for what matters most.

Many Serving a Few
Most organized programs depend upon a relatively small number of faithful volunteers serving a much larger group. A few people prepare the lessons, organize the schedules, purchase the supplies, communicate the details, welcome the guests, teach the children, lead the discussions, and clean everything up afterward.

Those volunteers have served generously, and part of this Sabbath is giving them room to rest. However, our larger goal is to broaden the work of ministry rather than simply transferring those responsibilities to another small group of volunteers.

Instead of continuing to ask a few people to serve everyone, we want to equip every follower of Jesus to care for a few people God has already placed around them.

When many disciples each invest personally in a few, more people can be truly known, loved, encouraged, challenged, and helped to follow Jesus. A parent can read and discuss Scripture with a child. A couple can invite another couple into their home. A mature Christian can meet regularly with a younger believer. A Life Group can notice when someone is struggling and respond before that person slips through the cracks. A student can encourage a younger child. A Christian can invite a coworker to lunch, listen carefully, and speak honestly about the hope found in Jesus.

We are even planning to invite third- through fifth-graders to join Grace Students on occasion so that our older students can help plan activities, serve, and disciple younger children. That is a small but important example of the culture we hope to build. Those students will not simply receive ministry; they will begin learning how to minister to others.

None of these opportunities requires an elaborate program or a large budget. They require believers who are willing to notice people, open their lives, and take initiative.

Not a few serving many, but many serving a few.

Aligning Our Systems With What We Believe
For years, we have taught that Christians should be contributors, not consumers, and participating members of a team rather than spectators in the stands. We have encouraged believers to use their spiritual gifts and take part in the mission Jesus has given His church.
Yet we must also admit that some of our systems have not always reinforced what we teach.

We have unintentionally made Christianity easy to consume. The church plans the events, prepares the lessons, organizes the outreach, recruits the volunteers, and provides the ministry, while everyone else can simply show up. A person can sit in worship services and Bible classes for years, accumulate an impressive amount of biblical knowledge, and still have little experience sharing the gospel, discipling another person, or accepting responsibility for someone’s spiritual growth.

We can become well-informed Christians who are not actively making disciples.

That is not merely a criticism of the people sitting in the seats. As church leaders, we have helped create and maintain this system. We have preached personal ministry while continuing to offer a ministry model that can make personal involvement seem optional.

The Seventh Year Sabbath is one attempt to bring our systems into better alignment with what we already believe. We want to move from consumers to contributors, from spectators to participants, and from a few people carrying most of the ministry to every believer accepting responsibility for the people God has placed nearby.

This begins with learning to feed ourselves. Our shared Bible-reading and journaling plan will help each of us develop a regular rhythm of hearing from God through Scripture, reflecting upon what He says, and responding with obedience. Our Sunday messages through the Gospel of Luke will keep directing our attention toward Jesus—who He is, how He lived, what He taught, and what it means to follow Him.

The goal is not to complete a reading schedule or fill every page in a journal. It is to cultivate believers who know how to open God’s Word, understand it, apply it, and begin again when life interrupts the plan. We want Christians who can feed themselves so that they are increasingly prepared to feed others.

Inviting People Into Our Lives
We also hope this year will help deepen our relationships.

Church friendships can remain surprisingly superficial. We see the same people on Sunday, ask how their week went, talk about our children or the Buckeyes win/loss, and then head home without ever learning what they fear, where they struggle, what God is teaching them, or how we can pray for them.

Friendliness is good, but Christian fellowship should eventually move beyond friendliness. We need relationships in which we can speak honestly, pray specifically, open Scripture together, confess sin, ask for help, receive correction, and celebrate spiritual growth.

That can begin with our spouses and children, but it should not end there. God has also placed friends, neighbors, coworkers, classmates, and fellow believers around us. Life Groups and Discipleship Groups can help create space for those relationships, but simply attending a group will not guarantee that they develop. We must be willing to let people know us and make the effort to know them.

Those of us who have been in church for a long time may face an additional challenge. We already have established friendships, and our lives may feel full. Those relationships are gifts, but they can also make us less open to someone new. A visitor may receive a warm greeting on Sunday without ever receiving an invitation into anyone’s life.

We want to move beyond saying, “We’re glad you came,” toward saying, “There is room for you with us.”

Hospitality is more than welcoming someone into a church building. It means making room for people in our schedules, homes, conversations, and friendships. We do not merely want to invite people to attend church with us; we want to invite them to walk with us as we follow Jesus.

Who Are Your Few?
The New Testament presents a simple but powerful rhythm. Believers gathered to worship, pray, hear God’s Word, and encourage one another, and then they scattered into their homes and communities as witnesses to Jesus. The gathering mattered, but the ministry of the church was never confined to the gathering.

The church gathered equips the church scattered. It does not replace the church scattered.

During this Sabbath year, we hope every person will prayerfully identify a few people God is calling them to love and serve more intentionally. Begin with those already entrusted to you. If you are married, how can you encourage your spouse spiritually? If you have children, how can you help them know and follow Jesus? Who within your church family needs prayer, encouragement, or friendship?

Then look beyond your established circle. Who lives near you? Who works beside you? Who sits near you in class? Who regularly crosses your path? Who is new, lonely, hurting, spiritually curious, or far from Jesus?

You are not expected to minister to everyone, join every group, lead every effort, or meet every need. But you can love a few. You can open the Bible with someone, share a meal, listen without rushing, offer practical help, pray, talk about what Jesus has done for you, and invite someone into your life.

That is what we hope this Sabbath will accomplish. We want faithful volunteers to receive needed rest, individuals and families to become rooted in God’s Word, relationships to deepen, new people to be welcomed, Christians to share their faith, and disciples to become disciple-makers.

We want to do a little less together so that each of us has more room to live faithfully where God has placed us.

Do not focus only on what is ending. Look for what God may be inviting you to begin.

Who are your few?