Growing Things Change

It’s been about one month since Awana started back this year, and I am excited to be experiencing something I’ve known to be true:

Healthy things grow, and growing things change.

Two years ago we chose Awana as part of our discipleship strategy for the next generation. I am so proud of all of our volunteers who continue to make Awana better and better every week. In addition to adding a high school Bible study on Wednesday nights, we also launched a middle school component to Awana. We currently serve around 40 students each week, including many families that are new just in the past month!

As Awana continues to grow, we’ll continue to change to accommodate that growth. There are some key volunteer spots we need to fill, including lining up substitute leaders to fill in when someone is out of pocket. We are trusting God to provide those volunteers, and maybe he is leading you to step out and jump into one of those roles.

We continue to look forward to an amazing year sharing the love of Jesus with the next generation. We look forward to continued growth in the future, and we know that with God’s help, we’ll be ready when it comes!

More...

If you are a Star Trek fan like me, you are no doubt familiar with Spock’s maxim that, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few…or the one.” It illustrates his sacrificial love for his friends. But that’s a spiritual metaphor for another day.

Spock’s maxim reminds me of a useful phrase about ministry, albeit somewhat inverted: “Do for some what you wish you could do for many.” It’s an important reminder for us today.

When ministry begins to make positive differences in people’s lives, it feels natural for us to want more.

More time.

More volunteers.

More resources.

We become confident that we could effectively serve “the many” if we simply had more.

And maybe we could.

But the reality is that God has already provided us with what he knows we need for today, even if it’s not our definition of more. Faithfulness to God is serving him with what we do have. It might not be as much as we want, but like the apostle Paul writes in Philippians 4:11-13, we can learn to be content in this circumstance. We might want more, but God has given us enough for today.

Using what we have today, we do for some what we wish we could do for many.