Message from Pastor

Thoughts from the Congregational Chairman...

Sunday afternoon, waiting for the Malachi Investment club meeting to start.  It’s a beautiful day, yet my outside time has been limited to the to and from trip to church, with a quick stop at Sam’s on the way home.

Today started the Stewardship emphasis.  Always a touchy topic.  Necessary, yet touchy.  It’s pretty easy to turn people off.  When you ask an un-churched person why they don’t attend church, often times the answer has something to do with money.  So anytime you start emphasizing the financial side of running a church, you’re at risk of pushing people away.  And yet, we can’t function without a budget.  Last fall I put the numbers down for you.  For every full chair on each Sunday, we spend $43.  And believe me; we cut every corner we can to keep expenses down.  So, financial stewardship is a crucial part of a healthy Messiah Lutheran.  But today’s stewardship emphasis caught me a little bit by surprise, as it wasn’t about financial stewardship; it was about the stewardship of time.  And it reached out and smacked me right upside the head.

Since all my write-ups have something to do with golf, you can probably imagine that this time of year can be pretty hectic around the Jenkins’ household.  Above and beyond the normal challenge of trying to answer the technological needs of a major hospital, all these golf leagues start up.  Peg’s got two leagues, I’ve got three.  I’ve been president of the Monday night league for a few years, which hasn’t been too bad, but this year I got “volunteered” to be the secretary of my Tuesday and Friday night leagues.  So I’m learning how to use the new software and getting the leagues organized.  This Tuesday is kickoff of the Tuesday night and then next week starts Friday.  So this weekend, I’ve been tweaking things for Tuesday night, opening our house for a Friday night league meeting,  getting all the paperwork ready for the Malachi meeting and oh yeah, one of those yellow sheets from Jeanne reminding me I’ve got this write-up due..today.

With all this going on, there’s a tendency to look for things to cut back on.  So it was timely when Pastor Downs started talking about how important it is to set aside time for the Lord.  It’s pretty easy to get caught up in all the other things that our life requires of us.  Family, work, recreational activities, all fight for a piece of us.  Way too often, it’s our Lord time that suffers.  We need to be reminded of this so that we can put our time emphasis where it should be.

Anyway, I’m going to work at giving the Lord a bigger piece of my time pie.  The funny thing is that I know how fulfilling the Lord is.  I left church this morning a lot more refreshed than I was when I headed in the door. 

Oh, and one final thing.  Please keep me in your prayers.  I didn’t have anything on Wednesdays, so starting in May I’m going to be playing on a softball team.  What was I thinking?

In His Service ,
Steve Jenkins