Where am I needed to serve in the church?
Children’s Ministry: Sherry needs your help in children’s ministry. We are now regularly running over 100 children during the 11:00 worship service. We need you to get outside of your comfort zone, take up an uncomfortable service of love and gentleness, and help minister to our children. It’s a well-established fact that most people come to salvation while their hearts are tender as children. We want to minister well to our kids and help those dedicated workers that are already in place. What is needed:
- Assistant teachers that can periodically fill in
- A few good men. Some of our more rambunctious classes need a stern male hand to keep order, so the teacher can teach. The horse play can get out of hand and is too much for one teacher to handle.
- An end-of-service-kid-wrangler to help Sherry, and others, gather and check out the kids. When it’s time to go, each and every child must be checked out to make sure everyone is accounted for. This can be chaotic, and we need some extra hands right at the end of the 11:00 service.
Musical Worship Ministry: Katie and the musical worship team need tech help. They need people willing to rotate duties of preparing and presenting the song lyric slides. For a tech oriented and careful person, this is an immediately needed area of service.
Greeter Ministry: Vanessa needs help welcoming people at the door and handing out song sheets. Her substitute list is short at the 9:30 service (2nd and 4th Sundays) and 11:00 (1st and 3rd Sundays).
Please pray about these needs and speak to a church leader about jumping in to help!
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.” Acts 1:8
The Apostles’ Creed
I believe in God, The Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord; who was conceived of the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried. He descended into hell. The third day he arose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, whence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
I believe in the Holy Spirit …
Do you believe in the Holy Spirit? The earliest Christians included this belief as essential to Christianity because it is essential. The work of God cannot be accomplished only by the power and charisma of people. Only by the power of God can the work of God be accomplished. In this way God gets the glory instead of us!
I was raised in a church tradition that minimized the work and power of the Holy Spirit by seldom speaking about the third person of the Trinity. Little was said of the fruit of the Spirit, the gifts of the Spirit, or directly asking for the power of the Holy Spirit to be at work in the church. As stated in the Apostles’ Creed, believing in the unseen Holy Spirit is a matter of faith. I have had to grow in my faith over the years to see the absolute necessity of the Holy Spirit from the work of regeneration in salvation all the way to the seal of hope that we might one day enter eternal life in the Kingdom of God.
The Holy Spirit is the gift of God’s real and abiding presence bestowed in a special and continuous way during the age of the church. The ministry of the Holy Spirit to individual believers, and to the church jointly, is complex, multifaceted, and far too much to cover in a newsletter article.
I strongly encourage you to read “The Mystery of the Holy Spirit: Discover the Work of the Living Spirit of the Living God” by R.C. Sproul. This is the most clear, balanced, and compelling explanation of the ministry of the Holy Spirit I have read in a short book. Chapter six is invaluable in explaining the work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit in bringing us to salvation and spiritual life. It is by the work of the Holy Spirit that we are born again (John 6:23).
The ministry of the Holy Spirit is spoken of continuously throughout the New Testament. You cannot faithfully or truthfully speak about Christianity without struggling to understand, believe, and then actively seek the work of the Holy Spirit in your own life.
First, I will focus on Jesus speaking about sending the Holy Spirit to continue the work of salvation after the ascension of Jesus. The key chapters here are John 14-16. I encourage you to carefully read them. In these chapters we first find that the Holy Spirit abides with those who believe. The Holy Spirit is sent from God as a Helper and a Spirit of Truth who abides (remains or dwells) with us. This means the presence of our merciful, wise, and gracious God is always with us. The presence of God is with us and in us through all the turmoil and struggle of this life. What hope to know that God has not forgotten us but remains always with us to minister to us in so many necessary ways.
Second, Jesus says that one way the Spirit will help us is by teaching and reminding us of truth (John 14:26). This ministry of the Holy Spirit is also called illumination. It is only by the work of the Holy Spirit that a person can authentically believe what they understand from the Bible. One of the fruits of the Holy Spirit is faithfulness. God gives us the ability to believe what we thought was foolishness before. By this work, we respond and act in obedience and boldness for Christ.
Third, the Holy Spirit bears witness about Jesus (“He will bear witness about me” John 15:26-27) and guides us into truth (“He will guide you into all the truth” John 16:13-14). The Holy Spirit always brings glory to God by turning our hearts toward Jesus. If you don’t understand what you are reading in the Bible, or the love of Jesus has grown cold in your heart, it’s time to ask the Holy Spirit to help you understand or stir up again a true love for Jesus in your heart. It’s the Holy Spirit that will pursue you and keep reminding your heart about the mercy, truth, and holiness of God. The Holy Spirit is the one that will convince you of the truth revealed in the Bible.
Beyond this basic foundation there are the gifts given by the Holy Spirit, the beautiful fruit of the Spirit (which far surpasses any general virtue!), the comfort of the Spirit, the creative work of the Spirit, and much more.
I believe in the Holy Spirit. Do you?
May the Lord pour out His Spirit upon the church as we walk in love and obedience to God’s will,
Pastor Vic
< This is part ten in a series of articles on the Apostles’ Creed. To learn more about the Apostles’ Creed read: “The Apostles’ Creed: Discovering Authentic Christianity in an Age of Counterfeits” by Albert Mohler. >