Priorities

Today at the Church of the Resurrection we had a convocation of all the churches in the Georgetown deanery. We started with coffee and breakfast foods before we began in the church. Next our contemporary music leaders led worship songs and after prayer Bishop Lawrence spoke. His message was excellent but the most amazing part was that he was there at all. His daughter was getting married in Charleston this afternoon, but he felt this event was so important that he came all the way up from Charleston and headed back immediately after his address to us. He will be there for the wedding but made the day more complicated, of course with his wife's permission, because he saw this as vital to the work of the church and an example for other deaneries in his diocese. The program that followed looked at the ways the church looks out upon the world. First the nearby world especially the young adult crowd often missing from our churches. The speaker was excellent and spoke with clarity and passion about the method and practice of drawing young people to Christianity. Not to invite them to our church but to engage them in Christianity perhaps before ever attending church. The other main presentation was by a man who with his wife had spent sixteen years as missionaries in Muslim Turkey. He was raising the vision of the need to bring faith in Christ to a world that has never had the chance to know him. Priorities involve putting first things first. Majoring in the majors and minoring in the minors is one way I have heard it said. We live in an I world trying to understand a you God. Our priority needs to be God's priority, our focus God's focus and that is not the church. The bishop was clear that bishops love the church, priests love the church, vestries love their church buildings and programs, but God loves people. We need to put people first as God does. Let that continue to grow as my priority.