July 20, 2008

Mother Teresa once said: I do not pray for success, I ask for faithfulness.  Sometimes as Christians it is hard to draw the fine line between success and faithfulness.  In the Gospels, we learn that Jesus never wanted his disciples to be great.  He wanted so desperately to get them away from the lure of success.  Rather, what Jesus desired for his disciples was to be good.  Interwoven in good is faithfulness and sometimes it is hard to just desire faithfulness without success.  Mother Teresa never lived her life to be great or successful, but to be faithful to Jesus Christ by loving and serving the poor and oppressed. 

When I look at Metro, I am so touched by the things that God is doing in our community.  We continue to grow in our Sunday services where our weekly attendance has grown to almost 300.   In the first four weeks of our sermon series God on Film we had close to 100 newcomers attend and we still have weeks to go before it is over.  Our ministries are growing healthier by the increase in volunteers.  We sent a team to South Africa to minister and meet Jesus Christ through the poor and oppressed.  And lastly, we are in the black financially as a church.  Many would say these are signs of success, but I would disagree with them.  They are signs that we are being a faithful community where God calls us to value the things of his Kingdom rather than the world.  My hope for the future of our church is that we would continue to focus on being faithful rather than successful.  Thank you for being faithful this past quarter.  Let’s continue the faithfulness as we look forward to many exciting things that will be happening in the fall. 

  Peter