Bible Verse for Sunday Service January 26, 2025
Joshua 1:8
This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.
Announcements:
We welcome Danny Ball to our service today. He is a representative of the Gideon ministry, and will be giving us a report of the ministry of the Gideons as they are involved in the worldwide distribution of the Bible. You will have the opportunity to support their work through a donation. If you wish, you can give your offering directly to the representative at the end of service, or write the check to the church and designate the amount for the Gideons in your offering.
At the annual meeting last Sunday, we had an election. The results are as follows: Phil Witschi and Chris Flann Deacons, Paula Weschenfelder, Treasurer, Erwin Handel, Financial Secretary, Benny Hofer, Head Usher, Bree Hofer, Social Chairman, Natasha Zabel and Carole Roncelli, Assistant Social Chairman, Natasha Zabel, CE Superintendent, Lil Weschenfelder, Goodwill Chairman, Rosemary Witschi, Church Clerk. We appreciate their service and our prayers go out with them as they serve.
At that meeting, the church also decided to offer monthly support to Randy and Laurie Steel who are working in the Ehtrainnos 360 Bible Institute in Wisconsin. We committed to send them $360 per month. In addition to this commitment, we also committed to sending a one time donation of $15,000 to the Siliguri Bible Seminary to help train, pastors and church workers in India.
If you would like a report from the annual meeting, and did not get one, you may find them on the foyer table.
For your information, the offering amount needed to meet the budget that we set for the coming year is $2726 a week. Thank you for your faithful and generous giving.
Sermon:
Today, Pastor Jim continued preparing us for a new pastor by preaching on Titus 1:5 in a sermon titled “Understanding the Under-Shepherd.” To introduce today’s sermon, Pastor Jim related that a common question among men on meeting for the first time is what do you do? In his experience, the reply that I am a pastor is often greeted with unease. Perhaps that is because people do not know the work of a pastor. So today, Pastor Jim made sure we have that understanding in three points.
Firstly, Pastor Jim explained that the pastor’s primary responsibility is meeting the necessity of leadership in the church. From today’s scripture, pull observes without a pastor there is no leadership and therefore no direction. He directed Timothy to set in order the churches he was left in charge of.
The second important issue regarding leadership of the church is the names used in scripture for the leaders of the church. These names tell us something about the qualities necessary. Often the leader is described as an elder because of the need for maturity in a pastor. To put it rhetorically: can you lead if you are young? Pastor observed that this requirement for a mature believer is due to the fact that being a leader is not just telling others what to do. But, it is leading through living the life that demonstrates all those qualities.
Besides being an elder, the Bible instructs that a pastor is an overseer. This term speaks to his duty, what he does with the church. Scripture further teaches that the desire to be an overseer is a good thing. But, it also implies as a duty that one must take the role seriously, and a pastor is likely to be taken to account for a failure of that duty.
Lastly, under the heading of names or titles, a pastor is a shepherd. This role obviously relates to his ministry. Looking to the instruction given by Jesus to Peter after Jesus’s resurrection, Peter was instructed to feed his sheep. Moreover, Paul indicates in Ephesians that Jesus specifically gave people various roles in the church. Those include apostles, prophets, evangelists, and important in this context shepherds.
With our current search for a new Pastor, in the last point, Pastor Jim chose to emphasize was the needs of the leaders in the church. For his scriptural text with this point Pastor Jim pointed to Paul’s stating that pastors were worthy of double honor. Pastor Jim observed that the practical outworking of this is that a pastor should not have financial needs working for a church. Instead, he should have the respect due his position, one that involves appropriate remuneration.
A pastor treated in this way should have the trust and cooperation of the congregation. Biblical reasons for this are twofold. Scripture teaches us in Hebrews that we should obey those who rule over us being submissive because Pastor is to watch out for our souls, and they must also give an account. That account is described in James, where we are informed that pastors are held to a more strict judgment that we would be because of their position and duty.
All these are reasons for us as a congregation to pray for the well-being of our pastor, and to make sure we are thinking of these points in our search for a new pastor.
Accessing the Service, Bulletin and Sermon Outline:
Here are the pages from the bulletin, click on the images below to see them full size:
If you would like to have the sermon outline, you can download it here, a pdf file.
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