Serve Day

Happy serve day. Yes. We'd like to wish you a merry serve day. I would even go so far as to say top of the serve day to you, whatever way you want to say it. This is a big day in the life of our church.

We're grateful that you've been a part of it. You know, I love this weekend for a whole bunch of different reasons. For starters, it's just fun to serve together. Anybody else have a good time this weekend? Absolutely.

Days like serve day give us the opportunity in a very short window to get a glimpse of what is possible when lots of us come together and serve in a common direction. I love serving with people in our church family that I haven't met yet. How many of you met someone from GCC you didn't previously know this weekend? That always happens. It's just a sort of a melting pot.

It brings us all together. I love that we get to partner with others who are doing good in our community. How many of us learned this weekend about a local organization that's doing some really important work? Yes, we have some great community partners. And I love seeing all of your project photos on social media.

Kind of between plays and the Colts game and between, you know, this afternoon and tomorrow, there's just this flood of social media activity. I love all of that. Now, having been a part of serve day for all eight years that we've been doing this, I can tell you that we don't do serve day because it's easy. John Veach and his team have been working for months to plan this weekend. You know, shifting from our usual Sunday morning services to deploying hundreds of people to 16 plus locations involves a lot of work and logistics.

I'm curious, anybody feel a little bit sore after the work that you did this weekend? Yeah, it's just a part of the process. We don't do serve day because it's cheap. You know, all of these projects cost money to pull off, and we believe that's an important investment. We don't do serve day because it's convenient.

You know, going someplace else and rolling up our sleeves and serving is a whole lot less convenient than just showing up here on a Sunday morning and attending a worship service. Serve day challenges our love of convenience. Now, I'm not going to speak for you, but I can tell you guys that Allison and I have banked at 5th 3rd for 26 years because they have a branch that is right on our way to just about everywhere we go. Now, that was true until the Averitt and Smith Valley Intersection got taken out of commission. We need a helicopter to go to the bank right now.

But. But when that's all over, that is right on our way to everywhere else. So we, we continue to go there because it's convenient. There are several places where we can donate clothing and furniture and other things that we no longer need. But I often take things to Goodwill because I can do it almost anytime and a lot of the other organizations have very limited drop off hours.

Goodwill is just convenient. If I just need to buy a couple of two liters, not a big grocery trip, but just a couple of two liters, I will often just go to a convenience store. I'm going to pay a little more, but I will get in and out much more quickly than going to Kroger or to Walmart. It's convenient. Could I just ask by show of hands, how many of you regularly make decisions on the basis of what is most convenient?

We do it all the time, right? My friend Brad Long, who's one of our elders, recently sent me a photo of this announcement slide where Autocorrect tried to help but got it wrong. Indian Creek High School was getting ready to play Covenant Christian, but as you can see here, Autocorrect changed that to Convenient Christian. Now, as a word guy, I found that typo amusing because it accidentally brought up something that many people are looking for, but that doesn't actually exist. Convenient Christianity.

The reality is Jesus calls his followers to the opposite of ease and convenience. And we see that played out over and over again in Jesus life and in his teachings. For example, Luke chapter 10, Jesus summarizes the entire Old Testament Jewish law in two sentences. Love God with everything you've got and love your neighbor as yourself. And there's a Jewish man listening to Jesus who wants to prove his own righteousness.

So he asked Jesus, well, who exactly is my neighbor? And Jesus responded by telling a story in which a man was ambushed and beaten up and robbed and left for dead in the desert. And then two Jewish religious leaders come along and they each see this man in need and they walk right on by him. And then a Samaritan, an outcast in the eyes of most Jews in those days, saw this man and he felt compassion for him. The Samaritan bandaged the man's wounds and he took him to an inn and he cared for him and he paid for the rest of the man's stay while he recovered.

Now, to ensure that he made his point, Jesus asked which character in his story behaved as a neighbor to the wounded man. And the man who asked this question had to reluctantly acknowledge that it was the Good Samaritan who showed mercy. See, loving and serving others often means embracing inconvenience. We get another example of this in John chapter 13. In first century Palestine, people often wore sandals and they walked on dusty roads that they shared with all sorts of animals.

So wherever they went, they got there with dirty feet. So when guests came over for dinner, a servant was responsible for washing their feet. But at Jesus last supper with his disciples where he was the host, he personally washed each of his disciples feet. And then Jesus said this to them. He said, now that I, your Lord and teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet.

I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly, I tell you. Jesus said, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them. Jesus loved and served his disciples by tackling a dirty and undignified job.

And he said that we will be blessed if we follow his example. Loving and serving others often means embracing inconvenience. Now we get a third picture of this in Matthew chapter 20, where two of Jesus disciples asked him for special places of honor in his kingdom. And as you might imagine, the other 10 weren't very happy about that. And Jesus said to all of them, he said, guys, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and their high officials exercised the authority over them.

Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant and whoever wants to be first must be your slave. And then Jesus went on to say, just as the Son of Man referring to himself did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. See both then in the first century and now in the 21st century. Lots of people want to let the world know how important, how talented, how popular or attractive or wealthy or intelligent or influential or powerful they are.

But that is the exact opposite of how Jesus kingdom works. Jesus said that greatness isn't something we climb our way up to. It's actually something we serve our way down to. If Jesus had chosen what was easy and convenient, he never would have gone to the cross. Jesus gave his life as a ransom for many, demonstrating that loving and serving others means embracing inconvenience.

Now at Greenwood Christian Church we prioritize Serve Day because Jesus calls us to serve the church is so much More than Sundays, we are the body of Christ, which means we are called to live on mission with Jesus 24:7. So while it's important that we gather and what we do when we gather here in this room is important, it is equally important that we serve. You're here on a Sunday evening after tackling a slew of serve day projects this weekend. So I know I am talking to some of GCC's most dedicated, most energetic, most high energy people and I'm really, really grateful for each of you. Many of you serve regularly in ministry and we're so grateful for that.

But we want to say tonight that because serving is the way of Jesus, we just want to make you aware of some strategic ways in which we can all continue serving and encourage others to join us. Beginning with a really simple thing that I'm going to share tonight. Just because this is more of an insider crowd than we typically ever have on a Sunday morning. That is, we want to encourage you to make room for more people by moving forward and scooting in. I don't know if you've noticed this or not.

Tonight's not a good indication because we've, we've thrown everybody off kilter by doing the 6 o' clock Sunday evening business. But on Sunday mornings we're beginning to see more and more people. We have more new faces with us every week. And one of the simplest, most important ways we welcome people is by making sure they can easily find a place to sit. And one frequent barrier to that is our tendency to fill the back rows and the aisle seats first.

If you're sitting on an aisle right now, I want you to just look to your right or to your left and notice the number of empty seats between you and, and the people at the other end when people walk in here. I've seen it happen even tonight, where there are obviously still plenty of seats available when we're all standing up in worship. The service has started. People come in looking for a seat. There could be 15 empty seats between those two aisle seats and it's really hard to see them.

Nobody really wants to climb over a bunch of people to get to seats, even if they can find them. Every new face that walks in these doors is an opportunity to, to point someone toward Jesus. So we really need to ask for your help in serving and welcoming our guests by moving as close to the front as you're able to and scooting toward the middle so that the seats behind you and on either side of you will be readily available to people who Join us late, as our guests often do for followers of Jesus. We believe that every day, every day should be serve day. So let me tell you quickly about a few ways that you can find a regular place of ministry if you haven't already.

There's just a few key areas where we especially need help right at the moment. One of those is in our GC Kids ministry. We have a need for candy donations coming up very, very quickly here. We renamed our Trunk or treat event because there are no cars or elephants involved in it. It just didn't seem like it was the most accurate name anymore.

So it is now called Trail of Treats and it's coming up October 25th. This event draws hundreds, I mean hundreds of kids and their families to our campus. So we need about 80,000 individually wrapped pieces of candy. So would you please help us over the next few weeks with purchasing some large quantities of candy and bringing that and dropping it in the bins, the collection bins you'll soon see out in the commons. Another GC Kids serving opportunity is for some one on one buddies.

We have a growing ministry to kids and families with special needs and we need some adults who are able and willing to work one on one with with these kiddos. Our GC Kids director, Lydia Midkiff would love to tell you more about this opportunity. There she is.

Lydia will be glad to give you all the information training is available. We just need people with willing hearts who can also successfully complete a background check. That's a really important piece of this too. Okay. Our worship ministry right now needs both electric guitarists and bass guitarists.

So if you have musical gifts these areas and you're ready to serve God by helping us lead our congregation in worship. You can contact worship minister Joel Hensley, whose face you already know, and Joel can tell you more about the audition process. Our production ministry needs people with good eyesight and physical stamina to operate cameras during our worship services. Our cameras help all of us in the room to to connect with whoever happens to be leading at the moment. But they're a really key part of our engagement with several hundred additional people online each week.

You can learn more about this opportunity by reaching out to production director Chris Esslinger.

Chris would tell you there's no experience necessary. Training will be provided. And then John Veach, who you've already heard from tonight, would just love for me to share with you that our host ministry is is building volunteer teams for our new coffee bar which will start next Sunday. This will just be an opportunity for us. Every Sunday morning to show hospitality in the form of a free cup of gourmet coffee to anybody who'd like one.

And you can learn more about that by reaching out to John, who is not only our outreach minister, he's also our resident coffee junkie and he drinks about 16 cups of coffee a day. So we'd love for you to know about any of those things. We, we all have a part to play in the church, and I mention these things not to say that if you're already doing something, we want to double or triple stack on top of that. We just want everybody to have a role. We're grateful for those who are already serving.

And our goal is to help every single person who calls GCC home find a place to serve. Church was never intended to be a spectator sport. So one more simple way that you can help us in mobilizing our entire congregation to serve is to invite others to serve with you. I'm curious how many of us signed up for Serve Day with a friend. We see a lot of that life groups serving together or families serving together.

It's just more fun that way. We know from experience that not everyone will take the initiative to volunteer just because we say, hey, we could use your help with this. But there are a lot of people who will serve if someone that they know and trust invites them to serve with them. So we want to encourage you if you see a place around here that you're already engaged in ministry or a place you'd like to get that way, we would love for you to invite someone else to come and be a part of that process with you. Our church's mission, to love God through a life of worship and grow together as disciples of Christ and inspire others to follow Jesus, requires us to regularly take our eyes off of ourselves.

You know, loving and serving others. Like I've said several times already this evening, it means embracing inconvenience because we believe that glorifying God, we believe that becoming more like Jesus, we believe that reaching lost people is worth some inconvenience. Would you agree with me about that? That's why we serve. Not always because it's easy, not always because it's cheap or convenient or hassle free.

It's because it's important to. Now, there's one more thing we need to ask your help with, and this is always a part of our Serve Day celebration evening. And to tell us a little bit more about that, I'm going to invite my friend Nate Hedrick, who is one of our elders and will be the chairman of our leadership team this year. Would you guys welcome Nate as he joins us here on stage.

Well, good evening everyone. Thanks for being with us and thanks Matt for the introduction two weeks ago. We began by sending out information about three key things for for us, the 2025, 2026 annual budget, some key leadership positions, and then also some practical changes to our bylaws, all of which we need your help in affirming. That information was sent via email to anybody who signed up for our GCC email list. It was also available in the Connection center via print.

As of now, our online balloting is accessible will be a QR code coming up here on screen here in a little bit which you can use. It was also emailed at 6:00 clock 6:00pm to your email so that you can have that in your inboxes. And the ballot will also be accessible via print once again at the Connection center that will be available through Sunday so you have a full week in order to affirm those three different areas. And also once again, if you need that print copy, you can both get it and fill it out and return it at the Connection Center. If you have any questions on any of those items, you're welcome to reach out to Darrell Slevin, Adrian Leach, Matt Giebler or myself and we'd be happy to answer any questions for you with that.

Will you please join me in prayer before we sing one last song together?

Father, we're grateful that we can gather together tonight in Jesus name. We've seen a year of increased giving which we recognize is simply our stewardship of what was already yours. The church staff and the Finance Cabinet have prayed and worked hard to maximize the giving as reflected in the coming year's budget. I ask that my fellow Greenwood Christian Church members will prayerfully consider that budget and then we'll take the time to affirm it as they feel led. Father, we also want to thank you for the blessings that you've poured out on Serve Day, all of the projects which were completed over the course of this weekend.

We thank you for the faithful service of John Veach, the rest of the staff and the volunteers who helped with the organization beforehand. And we ask that Serve Day will not only have had made a lasting impact on those who were served, but we also ask that will be a catalyst for us to serve more regularly. We know that you have good works prepared for us to do, Father. You've blessed us richly and we ask for those blessings to continue and we ask that you will spur us to share those blessings with the ones around us in our community, we ask all these things in your son Jesus name. Amen.

Well, we're going to stand one last time and sing this song together. Scripture. In John 17, Jesus prayed that his church would be a united church. That when the world looks at us as his people, that they would be able to see the unity we have and point to Jesus. So let's sing this out together.

It says, beyond the crowd.

Beyond the crowd, beyond the music, beyond the lights, beyond the preaching, beyond the atmosphere. You're welcome here.

Beyond the penny, beyond emotion, beyond religion, beyond our devotion, beyond what we can bring your working here.

And you said, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail. Jesus, who do you start with? Us.

Come on. Church together. Sing Unite us. Unite us, we praise Unite us, we pray make us one like the Father, Spirit and Son O God, make us holy one.

Come on. Beyond the walls of this place Come on, Sing together. Beyond the walls beyond the building Every people and every nation beyond what we can see. You're moving.

Oh. And you said I my church in the gates of hell will not prevail Jesus, when you start with us Unite. Unite us, we pray Unite us, we pray make us one like the Father, Spirit and Son oh God, make us holy and God make us one Unite us, we pray Come on, lift your voice and sing. Unite us make us one Jesus make us one Spirit is. Oh God and God, make us one Unite us Come on.

Would you. Would you just lift your hand right now in this moment? If you know of somebody in your life that doesn't know Jesus. Okay. All around this room, we can trust that there is a world around us in desperate need of the gospel today, in need of the forgiveness that Jesus alone offers.

So we're going to lift our voices as we sing this together.

So make us one with the heart for the one make us one with the heart for the one make us one with our eyes on one Unite us, unite us make us one One with the heart for the one make us one with our eyes on one make us one with a heart for the one make us one with the heart for you make us one with our eyes on one Would you Unite us One with the heart for the one make us one with the heart for the make us one with our eyes on one Would you? Unite us, Unite us Make us one with the heart for the one make us one with the heart for the one make us one with our eyes on one who would you? Unite us Unite us Unite us we Pray. Come on, church. Unite us make us one make us one O God make us holy and God, make us one Unite us, we pray Unite us, we pray make us one like the Father to you Spirit inside oh, God, make us holy and God make us one oh God, make us holy and God make us one oh God, make us Come on, turn.

Unite at home.

Serve Day isn't just a day. It's a way of life. And so Serve Day doesn't end, it just relocates. It goes with us wherever we go. From here, work, school, the store, restaurant, neighborhoods, we have the opportunity to love and to serve others in the name of Jesus, wherever we go.

We're grateful that you've been a part of Serve Day. We hope this has been a great experience for you, but we want to encourage all of us to continue to serve. Would you pray with me, Father? God, thank you for this day. Thank you for this place, for these friends, for the.

The projects that we've been able to tackle. Father, we know that that's just a drop in the bucket of the need in our world. But we're grateful, God, for every place where you put us, where the gifts and the abilities and the resources and the people, connections that we have intersect with the needs and the hurts of a lost world. And so we ask that you would help us, God, to open our eyes. Help us to follow the example of Jesus.

Help us to be willing, Father, to wash feet, to lower ourselves, to serve, to meet needs. And we pray, God, that you would use.