A Church By Any Other Name

 

This Sunday I will be preaching a revival at Grace Church in Meridian, Mississippi. Meridian is twenty-five miles from where I grew up in West Alabama, and the pastor there served my home church during some of its best years. His invitation gives me a chance to preach in my “stomping grounds” and to repay a debt to a pastor who blessed my family and friends for well over fifteen years.

 

Grace is a new church, established to provide a CBF option for Baptists in that part of the state. I will be their first “evangelist,” and I look forward to the opportunity to encourage them to live up to their name as people of grace.

 

As I’ve prepared my sermons, I’ve thought about every church, regardless of its name, is at its most faithful when it exhibits a commitment to grace. In a day when too many demand what they believe they deserve, I am always grateful that as a Christian, I have been given much more. And I am equally grateful to be a part of a church like ours that believes the same way.

 

So, I solicit your prayers as I will be preaching from Sunday through Wednesday. We have a great staff that will be covering the bases while I am away. Pray for them as well so that this Sunday may be all that the people who will come our way will need it to be.

 

I remember reading somewhere that it’s healthy for a pastor to be gone every now and then. Such planned absences are important reminders of where our strength as a congregation truly lies – as if you needed that reminder.