On Sunday mornings, we have continued our examination of
Nehemiah, his leadership, the building of the wall, and the response of the
people. The lessons in Nehemiah are abundant. Yesterday we took a very close
look at Nehemiah 4:14, “…Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is
great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your
wives, and your homes.” From this we drew three points: do not be afraid, remember
the Lord, and fight for your family’s sake. Specifically, we applied these points
to the future of Northside Baptist Church.
I shared with you that we are experiencing a slow erosion as
a church. Over the course of about five years, we have declined in average
worship attendance by about 60 people, a mere 12 people per year, which could
almost go unnoticed. We stressed that this is not a time for panic, but it is a
time for us to seek God’s direction and pray for a new outcome.
This morning as I was doing my daily bible reading I once
again read Acts 1:8, “…you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come
upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and
Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Even as I type that, I am struck by the
certainty of this, “you WILL be my witnesses.”
As I think back over my years as a Baptist boy, there is one
thing I remember as being consistent through the years; we have never stopped
talking about evangelism. We have talked about the need to do it, we have
trained to do it, we have tried to get creative to get it done, but nothing
changes; we fall short. The fact is, we make the simple complicated. To be a
witness simply means I tell someone what the Lord has meant to me and what He
can do for them.
Tell someone your story. Invite someone to church. Make
yourself available to others as they seek to journey with the Lord. I have a
sneaking suspicion that if we do these simple things the growth curve of
Northside Baptist Church will quickly and radically bend upward.
Honored to be your pastor,
Darrell
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