On Monday I spent the day with a young African man named Ernest. Ernest is a Christian who is eager to serve God. He lives in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. Some five million people live there! This is the same city that one of our members, Stephen, has returned to in order to be a professor.
A while back one of Ernest's friends got on the internet and googled the words Christian University, and found out about Lincoln Christian University's online degree program. So Ernest applied and got accepted! Last year Ernest was one of my students. It's pretty amazing how I can be sitting in my home, in my basement, on the internet, equipping a young pastor to do ministry who lives on the other side of the world in a city of five million.
What's even crazier is that Ernest began saving up money and bought a plane ticket to come to Lincoln. He spent most of the summer living on campus and hanging out with my father-in-law! Before Stephen returned to Ghana, he was able to meet and exchange information with Ernest.
It was a high point to be able to sit down with Ernest on Monday and talk about ways his church in Africa could more intentionally develop leaders, with the goal of reaching people in their great city with Jesus' message. His church in Ghana is near a lake. He told me that he wants to name his church Lakeside. Wouldn't it be cool if Lakeside had a Ghana extension?
Ernest talked about some of the personal challenges he has when he is serving God. For example, the people in his youth group have to give him food. He's always very grateful! Because of work schedules, the people have to meet at 4 A.M. They take sunrise services to a whole new level!
The church provides Ernest just five dollars a week for transportation-- barely enough to buy a gallon of gasoline. Actually, Ernest doesn't have a car. Instead he has to hitchhike twenty to thirty miles to get from his home to his church. Sometimes the weather is bad. Sometimes he's unable to hitchhike and has to walk for hours. Sometimes, after all that trouble, nobody is even at the church to meet him!
But you know, Ernest is filled with joy. He takes deep pleasure in serving the Lord. Despite the challenges, he's helped plant a number of churches. God is using him in exciting ways. And he's just a simple, ordinary guy, willing to serve, and willing to trust God. And for him, every day is like a new adventure.
I wonder, have you ever considered serving God? When you came in today, you were handed a "Plugged In" brochure. Go ahead and pull that out. We want you to take a couple of minutes right now and fill those out. Ernest could make a lot of excuses for not serving God, but he wouldn't dream of not serving God! What about you?
It's a beautiful thing to serve God. There are a lot of people serving at Lakeside. On these boards behind me, we've written the names of everyone who is serving at Lakeside. We're pretty sure that we've missed some names! But if every act of service in this place were a color, these boards capture the kaleidoscopic array of what is happening.
Now what's impossible to capture are the thousands of acts of kindness and service all of you do Monday through Sunday when you aren't here at church.
At the end of every episode of "Undercover Boss", the boss always reveals his or her true identity and thanks each person for their investment in the company. Grown men and grown women usually break down crying! Even the bosses start crying when they see how important it is to appreciate their own people!
So then we got this idea. What if there was a simple way all of us could really appreciate one another? On each of these boards there is a card containing the name and address of a person serving at Lakeside. If you've been around, you know we have awesome volunteers at Lakeside!
So here's what we thought. What if someone from your family took just one of these cards, prayed over the card, and came up with a creative way to bless one of our hundreds of volunteers?
The very simplest way to bless someone is just to recognize a person for what he or she does, and say thanks! But we want you to do more than that. Use your creativity! Write her a note. Insert a gift card for a free slice of pie or a cup of coffee at Starbucks. If you're more ambitious, you can do what they do on "Undercover Boss" and pay off the person's mortgage, send him on an all expense paid vacation, put his kid through college, or buy her a car!
Seriously though, find a meaningful way to bless and appreciate those who are serving. This is a big deal. As Nic plays some music, why not have one person from your family come forward and take one card? Help us bless and appreciate one person. Now, only take a card if you plan to follow through! If you need help identifying who a person is, or what they do, just ask around. It's easy to find out.
Before you come to take a card I want to finish with one last thought. This is something Ernest and I talked about while we were together. Appreciation is a big deal. It really hurts when it feels like people are taking you for granted. But the other side of appreciation is that God sees you. God appreciates you. And God rewards you. What is unseen by men is always seen by God. And what doesn't always get rewarded in this life gets rewarded hundred-fold in heaven. Ultimately, what God sees matters most. Nobody saw you walk thirty miles to church. But God did.