Bible Verse for Sunday Service December 01, 2024
1 John 4:9
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
Announcements:
Welcome to our missionary guests, the Steels! Randy and Laurie Steel are with us today and will be sharing with us the needs of the mission field. They have many years of experience as missionaries to Paraguay and are presently serving in the Ethnos 360 Bible Institute.
We will provide you an opportunity to show our support of the Steels today by giving them a love offering. To do so, please use the offering envelopes located in the chair pocket, or designate your check to the Steels, but make it out to the church.
On Tuesday at 10AM, the Ladies Bible Study group will be decorating for Christmas, and going out for lunch afterwards.
We will be printing a new directory for 2025, and we want to be sure we have everyone’s correct information. If you are not in our present directory, or if you have any change in information, please fill out the directory update form, and place in the offering plate or leave it on the foyer table.
The deacons will meet on December 5th at the Witschi’s home.
Sermon:
Pastor allocated his preaching time to our missionary visitors. Randy Steel of Ethnos 360 spoke on his missionary life along with his spouse. His journey started in Paraguay and is currently in Ethnos360’s Bible college in Wisconsin. Along the way, he learned a lot and shared with us.
Beginning his journey in Paraguay in 1987, he thought that the most important point to share from a retrospective view was that his journey was a testimony to God’s grace. Anything he accomplished, was of God. He started with Ache tribe in Eastern Paraguay, he observed that some had come and shared the Gospel previously, but not well. Jesus’ parable of the sower is in view here. Randy believed that an imperfect understanding the of language by the first evangelists caused this problem. He was cleaning up a mess. After working here, he transferred to a different tribe and different region of Paraguay.
With this next assignment with the Chamacoco tribe, he learned a valuable lesson. Talking to people is different that talking with people. Just like Mormons who can listen a good Gospel message, and then reinterpret in a bad way through the lens of false prophets, the tribe had a bad understanding of the Gospel. Randy’s work here bore fruit in his organization could ordain tribal leaders, and provide a Bible in their language. To conclude his summary of his time there, he noted problems in the local church and asked us to pray for them.
As time wore on in South America, Randy changed roles from direct involvement with the tribes to more of an administrator coordinating work in Paraguay. While he enjoyed success in this role thanks to God’s support, he felt that was telling him his time in Paraguay was coming to an end.
For his next act, Randy and his wife returned to the US and remained with Ethnos 360 to work in the Bible institute in Wisconsin. He took the role of director of student ministries. He related his efforts to not just be an administrator, but to be involved in the lives of the students as mentor, someone who disciples his charges.
In conclusion, Randy stressed the importance of a world view in effective ministry for Christ. He reminded us that a bad way to enter missionary work is that of guilt, a guilt driving work for God. Instead, the appropriate view is that everything is God’s plan and success comes from being aligned with it. He shared the scriptures that have guided him, Philippians 3:10, John 17:3 and Ephesians 3:19. Any other motivation, will lead to problems. Lastly, he challenged us to question whether we are growing in Christ? What a great question. Let’s pray for Randy’s continued success in submitting himself to God’s plan for his life, and the Kingdom of God.
Accessing the Service, Bulletin and Sermon Outline:
Here are the pages from the bulletin, click on the images below to see them full size:
Randy did not provide an outline for his talk. So, no outline to download this week.
If you would like a link to this service you can find it here. It starts a little later as we had difficulty with our camera at the start of the service. Perhaps you would like to share it with your friends. You could also share that link on social media, if you use any of the providers. We use Rumble, a safe alternative to Google’s YouTube.