A  WORD  FROM  PASTOR  HANK

Dear Fellow Members of Christ’s Family at Resurrection,

A BIG QUESTION FOR ALL AT RESURRECTION: 

“Will they return?”

         God continues to bring “worship guests” (visitors) to Resurrection (I mean, you don’t actually believe the devil brings people to church, do you?!).  Many Sundays new folks come through our doors, hunt the nursery, wonder where to sit or when to stand, and try to understand things that we take for granted.  We usually label them “church guests” or “worship guests” or “visitors.”  Yet they are much more than that!  God calls them His FLOCK!  These worship guests are part of the future church, spiritual gifts waiting to be unwrapped.  They are your unmet best friends.  God brings each by divine appointment to HIS house, through the disguise of their needs … problems … worries … illnesses.

       How do we … you and I … receive them?  Contemplate this sentence:  “If THE CHURCH does not intentionally make visitors feel IMPORTANT, we will unintentionally make them feel UNIMPORTANT!”  Read it again.  Do you enjoy being with people who ignore you?  Or do you enjoy being with people who make you feel a part of their lives?

       Everyone wants to belong to a friendly church.  No one believes their church is unfriendly.  So SOMEONE has to be friendly for a church to be known as friendly!!  Whose job is it?  It is EVERYONE’S job … mine, yours, hers, his!  For a church to be known as friendly, EVERYONE needs to be friendly!

       Let’s be honest … we all know (and often use!) many excuses not to be friendly on Sunday mornings!  “I don’t know them!”  Tell them your name … they’ll respond!  “I’m not good at names!”  Get good!  Take notes!  “I’ve got things to do and people to see.”  We all do, but let’s not let it interfere with our primary task: saving souls!  “They don’t look like ‘my kind of people’.”  Jesus spent much of his time with the “less than righteous,” and with those who don’t look like His kind of people.  Don’t know what to say?  Ask what you can pray for in their lives (its why they came, remember … they have needs).

There is a tremendous harvest to be had for the kingdom and it happens EACH SUNDAY!  Are you ready?  I pray I am!