Few People + Big Hearts = Big Impact
If a church keeps a calendar like Zion (with a fiscal year beginning in July), this is the time of the year when church leaders begin to think about their annual meetings. More often than not, these "business meetings of the church" call us together to do things like adopt a budget and elect members to our congregation council.
Perhaps more important, though, is the presentation of the annual report, a written archive of the congregations activities — financial and otherwise — that accomplish their mission and ministry. One common thread you'll see in ours at Zion is that we have a huge impact in our community with the involvement of (sometimes) a very few. And, though we have aspirations and strategic plans to grow our congregation, we cannot overlook the power that comes in small numbers of people with big hearts who accomplish great things in God's name.
Pastor Mike Foss, our discipleship guru says, "The power of the local congregation is not to be measured simply by the visible gathering of its people. It is measured also by the way its people expand and extend the kingdom of God into a world of skepticism, loneliness, and need."
When I look around and don't see as many faces as I'd hope on a Sunday morning, I am not always discouraged because I know the way we expand and extend the kingdom of God. We are kingdom people, and we are learning to live deeper and deeper into that identity. We're in it for eternity, and we're in it together. How are you expanding and extending the kingdom of God this week?
Serving with You,
Cantor Kurt R. Schmidt
