Mt Beulah Evangelical Baptist Church, Point Fortin, Trinidad & Tobago, c. 2007

Whenever God’s people gather together to worship our risen, ascended, and coming-again Christ, it’s an extraordinary day.

I’ve been around people who, though they are Christians (and some even in ministry), who find little hope and joy in church people–and when they do, it’s only when everyone submits to their thinking on things. This is a tragedy of the first order.  If pastors and staff come in to a situation already having no hope and joy in their church and little love for people, no amount of talking, counseling, or anything along this line will help unless there is repentance.

And if church members find little hope and joy in church because it’s not going their way, they risk putting themselves as the mediator of all that’s good and right rather than Christ.

But our worship gatherings (for us, Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m., but others meet at various times over weekends), the ordinariness of worship gatherings is extraordinary.

1. Even after 2000 years, we gather every week to honor our all-sufficient Christ, make hopeful and joyful disciples of Jesus, and share the gospel to those who have not yet surrendered. We in this generation take the baton and pass it on to the next–joyfully.
2. We realize that the church may be for us in a sense, but it’s not about us!  Young pastors come out of seminary well-read with theories and ideas, having sat under experts (some with pastoral experience, others with none) and if that church resists, then that church is apostate.  New members may join, but expect their new church to conform to their old church and its ideas. We elevate personal preferences to tests of faith. We can also be right about changes that need to be made, but wrong in how we approach it.  But we go at the speed of God! We want to reach all for Christ–whether it’s reaching the reached, or the unreached–and say, “Jesus is enough!”
3. We read, sing, pray, give, listen, respond, and are sent all in ordinary ways to our ordinary lives because of the extraordinariness of our Lord Jesus.  With this comes an intentionality! If Jesus is enough (and He is), then we must drink in all He says, we must do all He commands, we must grow in the gospel, love one another, serve our neighbors, and go to the nations! In our ordinary, ‘as-you-go’ lives.  On mission! Where we live.

What an extraordinary joy in our ordinary lives serving an extraordinary Savior.

Another reason that Jesus is enough!