Have you ever stopped to think about what you get out of church?
After all, we encourage people to carefully evaluate whether their investment of time or money or emotions is returning a good dividend.
So, if you had a membership with an organisation that didn’t give you sufficient benefits, then you might decide to leave and join elsewhere.
But church is very, very different.
That’s because the Christian church is the ultimate service organisation.
At its heart is Jesus, who is the ultimate example of the greatest servant of all, giving his life for those of us in his church.
And our response must be to serve, too.
Sometimes, when you’ve been coming along to a church for a while, it’s easy to start to feel less connected with what’s happening around the place.
My experience with joining a new church many years ago as a parishioner (not as the minister) was that it was only when I got myself ‘on the roster’ that I really felt that this new church was now my church.
If you’re new and you’re not yet ‘on the roster’ then we’d love you to be part of the action.
And if you’re a regular who has fallen off the roster for some reason, then you’re invited to jump back on, if you’re willing and able.
After all, as we read in 1 Corinthians 12, we are all members of the one body, and that one body has many different parts.
And as we look to the inspiration of Jesus as we seek to serve each other, we may well find that as we give to others we then get a whole lot more out of church than we did before!
For, we all have a part to play, and as we play that part, we all feel more a part of the place!