March 2013

It is Check Up Time

Well friends, it is the end of February!  Time for a check up on our resolutions!  As you looked at your successes of 2012, do you rejoice at your accomplishments?  Did you make promises to yourself and before God for 2012?  If you did as I did, you made resolutions about diet, fitness and other matters of self care.  Well, as we move toward the end of the first quarter of the year, it is time for a check up to ascertain your progress.

The matter of checking on progress also applies to our faith community, our congregation.  We had a successful past year.  There are many accomplishments to our credit that are reflected in our annual report.  That report also evinces plans -- or resolutions -- that we have identified for this year to achieve our vision of being a more externally focused, radically hospitable, and mission oriented congregation.

In each ministry, we need to examine our status. Are we engaged together in service to realize our objectives for this year in a timely fashion?  As faithful, God-loving individuals, we each need to appraise our involvement as members of this faith community.  With God's help, we can achieve our objectives in due time.  Regular check ups all year will help to keep us healthy as we seek to keep our individual and congregational promises.

Let us keep the faith.  We can confidently quote Paul who said, "I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion...”. (Phil. 1:6).  As Mary Darden noted in the January issue of, These Days, "Through Christ's sacrifice, God has given us a new beginning that is protected in, "the promise of completion -- not by us, but by God’s beautiful design."   So church family, let us go forward in God's name!

- Helen Bessent Byrd, PhD, MDiv