Old School Ministry

Transition in…

I really appreciate you all coming out tonight. I love the idea of us spending an hour together a few times a year to celebrate together and rolling out new ministry initiatives that can help us stay on mission. As a reminder, our state mission here at Cap City is, “Every person created in the image of God was designed with a purpose. This purpose will always involve other people. Therefore, we believe that we fulfill our purpose by helping others fulfill theirs. This will always be a unique manifestation of what God has called each person to do.

With that in mind I have a short devotion for you tonight that will orient us to this quarter’s focus of old school ministry. I’m going to read from…

James 1:26–27 “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

We consider ourselves religious. Some consider religion an ugly word because they have seen bad religion. You might say I’m about relationship over religion, and I get what you are saying. But Jesus didn’t separate religion and relationship so we really shouldn’t either. Let me show you why you have been turned off by religion right here in this text, look at verse 26 again.

James 1:26 “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless.”

BAD RELIGION

Our negative experience with religion comes those whose words and actions don’t line up with one another. That’s basically the Websters definition of a hypocrite right? Someone has misrepresented religion for you by saying they were good then treating you poorly. They have put demands on you that they would not carry out themselves. They withheld grace from you when you started out because they have forgotten how sloppy they were when they started out. And this verse says when words and actions don’t align, worthless religion is the outcome. So it’s not that you don’t like religion, you just don’t like bad religion. Good for you.

True religion is then spelled out for us in verse 27, let’s look at it again

James 1:27 “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

TRUE RELIGION

Taking care of widows and orphans is true religion. So why don’t we make this the mission statement of our church? Am I allowed to take care of people whose husbands or wives haven’t died? Can I lookout for children that still have parents? Why widows and orphans. Oh and by the way, we would find out later as we keep reading the New Testament that you didn’t just automatically get taken care of as a widow if your husband dies. In 1 Timothy when Paul is giving instruction to his protege Timothy He said, 1 Timothy 5:9–10 “No widow may be put on the list of widows unless she is over sixty, has been faithful to her husband, and is well known for her good deeds, such as bringing up children, showing hospitality, washing the feet of the Lord’s people, helping those in trouble and devoting herself to all kinds of good deeds.”

So now true religion is orphans and only a certain select group of older, once married, foot washing, good deed doing women. So all you 72 year old women here tonight that want help from the church better get to washing feet right? No, let’s talk about the essence of this verse.

True religion is this, that we do for those who cannot do for themselves.

You show up to someone’s house who doesn’t have a mower and mow their yard, and say nothing. They are going to say that’s good religion. They can’t argue with it.

This quarter’s ministry focus highlights a few different areas of our vision which we all know is “One more for Jesus”. Reaching one more, doing one more act of service, serving one more meal, meeting one more need.

Our values are Prayer over Programs, People over Processes, Purpose over Preferences. And our strategy is engage equip mobilize multiply. In this quarter we really focus on people over processes using our 3rd of 4th strategies to mobilize the church.

Pray

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