Pastor's Perspective, Sunday, October 9, 2011

“We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God's original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels - everything got started in Him and finds its purpose in Him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment.  And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.” Colossians 1:15-18 (The Message)

Think what would happen to your body if somebody removed your head. It doesn't appear that any of you has had that experience since most of you seem to be well attached. Pastor Ray Stedman tells when he was a boy growing up in Montana, they did not buy chickens at the grocery store all nicely packaged in plastic. I had to go out and run one down, and then remove its head. A chicken with its head cut off acts very strangely. It does not simply quietly perish, but jumps and runs around, out of control for a minute or two, before it finally dies. Churches that lose their awareness of the Head are like that---they too go out of control. They do not know what to do. They run about and become involved in things they ought not to have anything to do with. They have, for all practical purposes, lost their Head.
In Colossians, chapter two, Paul says they "have lost connection to the head." It is essential, therefore, that a church must have its Head in place and functioning: supplying direction, maintaining order, giving it health, solving its difficulties, coordinating its activities, and supplying to every single member its own kind of life. That is what your physical head does, and that is what Jesus, as Head of the body, desires to do.

We tend to be caught up in “individualism” and are controlled by “doing our own thing,” rather than recognizing that “everything got started in Him and finds its purpose in Him.” Jesus desires to hold the church together, like a head does a body.

One of the purposes of the Lord, for our church, is that He holds us together, and that we follow His direction in reaching and teaching people for Christ in the Kendall, Paradise Valley and Maple Falls areas. He has confirmed this calling in many ways. Please pray with me that the Holy Spirit will connect us, guide us, and use us to bring precious lives to Christ from the Columbia Valley communities. Let me hear from you as to your willingness to serve!

Pastor Richard and Merleen Strum