Old year, New year, Communion

It's almost hard to believe, but the year 2006 is nearly gone. This was our last Sabbath of this year. I spoke on Joshua 1:1-9 this morning. Recently I subscribed to kine of a a pastor's book club that sends out a hardcover book with a set of sermon outlines once every 4 to 6 weeks. The first one of these was on Joshua.

This being Christmas week and everything, Elise starting to work full shifts at the hospital (meaning I have to take care of many more things around the house), Elise getting sick... I lost a couple of days that I would have normally used for sermon preparation. So I needed some jumpstarting for my sermon preparation. I took one of the sermon outlines as a starting point in putting together this weeks Year-End/New Year's/Communion 3-in-1 sermon. It's amazing how God is able to bring together diverse thoughts and order them in such a way as to meet the needs for a given Sabbath. This hasn't been the only week where I struggled early in the week to both identify an appropriate message, and then work with ways to communicate it. You can listen in on the final result, titled "Imagine..."

As noted, this was also our Communion Sabbath. First of all, on Thursday as I was pulling out the buckets and the basins, I was utterly astonished to discover that these were not the run-of-the-mill hardware store plastic stuff, but quality porcelain/steel deals. I don't know when and where the last time I encountered something like these were. It might be way back when I was a small child. The problem with these is that after use, they have to all be set out individually to dry completely. Otherwise, they rust. So plastic may be more efficient.

And then this morning, the communion trays were brought out to be filled. I couldn't find them earlier because they were located way back in one of the top cupboards. Again, I was astonished! These were real glass juice cups. For as long as I can remember, all I've ever seen used were the plastic disposable cups. Again, the problem is that each of these have to be washed. Good thing our congregation is tiny!

We have one ordained deacon who was not present today. We have no other elders. This meant that for this Communion, my first one in which I lead out, I also was responsible for distributing the elements. This was ceratainly a very different experience from days past, when I was one of the many assistants in the Communion service.

Maybe I've mentioned this in the past, and if so, it keeps getting reinforced all the time: Small churches require just as much work and effort, and it seems even more, than larger churches.

The congregation has an assignment for this week, and maybe you might want to consider doing something similar, too. The assignment is that each person is to imagine how they want to grow spiritually during 2007, to write it down together with some ways of reaching the targets, put it in a sealed envelope and hand it in to me next week. Then after six-months I will hand or mail them back to each person as reminders and encouragements to continue on with the process for the remainder of the year.