Demonstrating Love to Others

Yesterday was another full day with Sunday School, our worship time, a fellowship meal, and then the annual meeting. Josanne and I left the building encouraged and with our hearts full. I hope others did as well.

At the end of the sermon on Jesus’ teaching in Luke 6:27-36, I gave us a challenge as a congregation to find some way to express God’s love to others in an unexpected way. If you haven’t heard the sermon, I encourage you to listen to it online, or if you need a CD, please let us know at the office. I challenged us to take concrete steps to demonstrates God’s love to someone we wouldn’t normally show love to. Many of you told me that you were taking the challenge to heart and I heard several of you discussing at lunch ideas about what you might do. (And, a few who were trying to figure out how to avoid the challenge—you know who you are). I hope that some of you will choose to share with me stories of how you are responding to this challenge and the results.

There are really two reasons I was led to make this challenge. If we are going to live out our mission of being Christ followers, we need to recognize that this will sometimes demand difficult things from us. Secondly, my desire is that the community would understand that North Danvers Mennonite Church is made up of people who are living out their faith in concrete ways. There are many worse things we could be known for than a Church which demonstrates the love of God to others. Remember Jesus tells his disciples that they will be identified by their love (John 13:34-35).

The annual meeting was encouraging to me as we heard about the various activities of the congregation over the past year. I’ll agree with what was said a few different times during the meeting. This congregation is an active one. There are many ways that can be seen in our outreach. It can be seen in the various worldwide organizations that our members work with and support. It can be seen by the many who are willing to lend a helping hand our facilities to keep them nice.

Thanks for all you do and excited to see what God places in front of us.

God bless!

Brian