Ministries:
Adult | Teens | Children

Pastor's Pen's:
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Sermon Series:
Following Jesus
Earthly Cross
His Name Is
Apostles Creed
Dealing with Feelings
Jonah
Get Real
Promised Land Living

Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2008

Grace Church of Burlington March 16, 2008 “In youth, everything seems possible; but we reach a point in the middle years when we realize that we are never going to reach all the shining goals we had set for ourselves. And in the end, most of us reconcile ourselves, with what grace we can, to living with our ulcers and arthritis, our sense of partial failure, our less-than-ideal families; and even our politicians!”                                                 Adlai E. Stevenson             This past Monday, after my board meeting in Madison with Wisconsin Family Council, I visited with my friend, Dave Gagnon, who recently resigned from the pastorate at Grace Church in Walworth to take over the pastoral care ministry at Blackhawk Evangelical Free Church in Madison.  As I drove into their parking structure (please notice that I did not say “parking lot) that probably cost several million to build, I found my mouth nearly hanging open. The church has eight worship services each Sunday (they run two simultaneously) with over 4000 in attendance. Overwhelmed is just not strong enough to describe how I felt. It’s an exciting ministry and God is using them to reach Madison, particularly U-W Madison professors and students. Yet as I drove back to Burlington, I have to admit that I felt pretty discouraged. Here I am approaching the half a century milestone in my life and wonder if I’ve really made an impact for the Kingdom? The obvious question is: What am I doing wrong?             Perhaps to make sure that I had a strong enough dose of humility for the week, the very next morning I had a phone message from someone new to the area looking for a church. This individual stated that they wanted information on our church but asked only one question in her message, “How large is your church?” Ouch!             I’ll be honest. My carnal pride would love to pastor a mega-church but that is not what God has called me to do. That’s not my place in the harvest field. As Dave Gagnon and I were talking, he confessed that when he was in seminary, he thought that he was going to be the next Chuck Swindoll. He wasn’t and I’m not going to be the next Rick Warren (I don’t really like his Hawaiian shirts anyway ☺).             God, though, does not measure success as we do. Success is not numbers, huge budgets or even semi-professional worship teams with light shows. The fact is that while urban areas sometimes will have mega-churches, there are very few of them in rural America. There aren’t even that many in urban areas. The average church in America has 75 people on a Sunday morning. Most churches are either small (less than 50) or medium sized like ours. Large churches and mega-churches are just not the norm.              One of the major problems with the Church in America today is that we measure success by a lost world’s standards, bodies, bucks and buildings. But that’s not the way that the Lord measures success. God measures success by faithfulness. Now it’s not that we should  be “anti-numbers,” nor  should  we  be critical of  mega-churches just because they’re huge. Numbers represent people and we should rejoice when people are being reached with the Gospel. And we need to be thankful for every person that the Lord brings into Grace and be continually focused on reaching lost folk with the Gospel.             Have you ever thought about what communities like ours would be like if there were only mega-churches in the urban areas of our country? The truth is that while Christians will travel great distances to attend a mega-church, lost people normally will not. If Bible-believing churches like ours were not here, our community would be void of a spiritual lighthouse. That’s another sad trend of the Church. Sadly, we’ve forgotten that church is not just about us, having our needs met, having programs for us or our kids. We are called to reach the lost world around us. We are called to make more disciples. That is why God has left us in this world!             Tragically, every Sunday Christians from our community drive into Racine or Milwaukee or even the Chicago suburbs to attend church. While those churches may have bigger and better programs, the message is the same. And  their lost neighbors will never attend with them. It’s too far and just doesn’t make sense to them. Rather than a mission vision, too many Christians have a “consumer mentality.” They’re looking for “what’s in it for them.” We received so much more than we deserved with God’s grace and forgiveness. Now He wants every one of us to be a missionary in our world.             God has not called either me or you to an urban mega-church. He has called us to be His witnesses right here...in our community. If we’re not the light that He has called us to be in this community, then our community will be in total darkness and hopeless.             I doubt that Grace Church will ever be a mega-church. That’s not what God has called us to! But He has called us to be a missional church reaching out with the good news of God’s grace and love to those around us who do not know Him!  I can be satisfied with that...can you?