LAITY CIRCLE NEWS

Our August meeting was held in the Gathering area where we enjoyed a luncheon of summer salads and dessert. Our program was led by Gail, who told us many interesting and amusing things about the lives of Charles and John Wesley.

We are going offsite for our September meeting. It will be held at the home of Jeannie Draper, assisted by Sandy Williams, on Wednesday, September 9, at 1 pm.

Lunch and drinks will be provided. Weather will decide if we are inside or outside. Please come prepared for either!

********************************************************************

PASTOR'S NOTES. We are witnesses.

As they were talking about these things, Jesus Himself stood among them, and said to them, “Peace to you!” …

Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” (Luke 24:36, 45-48, ESV)

Notice how once Jesus is risen from the dead, the task assigned to His disciples is for them to be a witness. They are to tell the story as people who have experienced it firsthand. In case this passage isn’t clear enough about this, consider these:

^“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” (Acts 1:8)

So one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day when He was taken up from us—one of these must become a witness with us to His resurrection.” (Acts 1:21-22)

This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. (Acts 2:32)

But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, Whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. (Acts 3:14-15)

God exalted Him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that He might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses to these things, and so is the Holy Spirit Whom God has given to those who obey him.” (Acts 5:31-32)

We are witnesses to all that He did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree; but God raised Him on the third day and allowed Him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with Him after He rose from the dead. (Acts 10:39-41)

The early church began as people shared what they had personally seen and heard, they told their story. Notice the difference between telling someone information and telling them your story. When you give information to someone, they can easily tune you out – this person doesn’t know me or my situation, they are trying to manipulate me, etc. But when we tell our story as simply our story (without making it a “you” statement), we have no defense mechanism for that. We hear it, and it might not change our minds about things at first, but we won’t easily forget it. So I believe that even today, our story of faith is the best tool we have for reaching a world for Christ.

Now, clearly we do not have an experience of Christ like those of the apostles in the passages I quoted above. They lived with the human and the resurrected Jesus. But the apostle Paul gives some insight on this. In one of his first messages, he says:

But God raised Him from the dead; and for many days He appeared to those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they are now His witnesses to the people. (Acts 13:30-31)

I suspect that while the words recorded in Acts 13:16-41 do not include a personal witness, at some point Paul would share his own experience of Christ. His experience as he understands it is no less valid than that of those who lived with Jesus (see Acts 9:1-19; Acts 22:3-16; Acts 29:4-18; 1 Corinthians 15:3-8; Galatians 1:13-16). His experience makes him also a witness for Christ (Acts 22:14-15; Acts 23:11). Each of Paul’s letters (except perhaps the Letter to the Romans, where he had not yet been) assumes that everyone knows his story.

In a similar way, we have our own story of our encounter(s) with Christ. Your story might not be as flashy as another person’s, but it provides a way to enter another person’s life that mere information does not. If we tell it right:

It is PERSONAL. This is important, because ultimately we are trying to introduce someone not to information or an institution, but to the person of Jesus Christ.

It makes us VULNERABLE. We begin by “showing off” our weaknesses and mistakes. In doing this, we invite people to consider dropping their own defenses.

It is NONPRESUMPTIVE. We aren’t telling people we know what is best for them.

Even though we might tell a part of our story that relates to something they said, it is NONMANIPULATIVE. We are not telling them what they should do, we are simply telling them what happened to us, whether negative or positive. We leave it to them to figure out how that applies to their life.

This might go against our natural inclination to tell people what we think they should do or try to win them to our side. It might take some patience, and a willingness to let it be in God’s hands. Not everyone will respond positively to our story, but they will not easily forget it either.

In my own life, I’ve had more than one encounter with Christ. That is not a boast; most of these were because of the mess I had made of my life. I’ll just briefly mention that though I grew up in a pastor’s family and attending church every Sunday, I entered age 14 with severe depression, mental illness, and thoughts of suicide. Over the course of most of that year I struggled with this in silence. There were people who were God’s angels to me during that time, though I did not recognize it then. But I finally came to hear the voice of God and asked Him to put my mind back together, and life became different for me from that point on. I still had a lot of growing to do, and I’ve had other issues over the years, but I’ve been able to face them without the self-hatred that consumed my early life.

I don’t know if you needed to hear that part of my story, but perhaps I just needed to tell it, to remind myself where I’ve been, and to challenge any twinge of doubt that arises about God and my relation to Him. Maybe that’s another reason why we are called to be witnesses: we need to tell our story just as much as the world needs to hear it.

So I hope this encourages you to tell your story.

Kevin

MISSIONS NEWS

Missions will meet on September 14, at 12:15 PM.

Thanks for Coming to Aug. 30 Luncheon!

The Missions Team hopes you enjoyed our light luncheon on Aug. 30. We hope you enjoyed the change-of-pace with the lunch in the Gathering Area, and some of the diners wearing “Ask Me About…” name tags. We will report in the Sunday bulletin how much money you donated for our missions projects.
We anticipate our next event will be a pie auction in October. This is usually a lively event! Watch for details to be coming soon! Could you make a pie, or maybe a special dessert, you might contribute to be auctioned? We’ll be asking!

************************************************************************