My First Blog

Dear Gano Family,

In my life, I have written many papers, sermons, letters, and even a book, but this is my first official blog. I’m not even sure where the word blog comes from. It sounds awful to me, but I’m sure there is some important acronym that I am missing. Maybe, it stands for Beautiful Linguistic Oration Generator. Maybe not. Either way, I’m glad to be your Pastor in such an exciting time as there is no limit to whom our correspondence reaches. How exciting to be able to reach around the corner and around the world. With such technology, I am amazed that every corner of the world has not been reached with the Gospel of Christ yet. Blogs cannot replace the church. However, blogs can assist in the equipping of the saints. In that light, I hope to inspire you with my sometimes, random thoughts that are hopefully always inspired and augmented by Scripture.

If I can be honest, my role as Pastor confuses me from time-to-time. I know I’m supposed to preach and counsel and visit people. But, sometimes I think that while I am helping people find Christ, I’m supposed to fix people. Helping and fixing are two different things. In my too frequent moments of confusion, I turn to Scripture. Ephesians 4:11-12 says, “11 And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, 12 for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.” These verses describe a five-fold ministry of Apostleship, Prophet, Evangelist, Pastoring and Teaching. All of these to some degree describe my job in the church.

Verse twelve however, gives a reason for my role, “…for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry…” It doesn’t say for the fixing of the saints, that is God’s job. My job is the equipping of the saints. I seek to do this by preaching, teaching, and counseling directly from the Bible. My goal is to equip all of Gano (and beyond) to find and do ministry both near and far. What that looks like will differ from believer to believer, but it will always include sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus has saved us for the good work of evangelizing the world.

I look forward to preaching and teaching so that we can all keep our eyes on Jesus so that we can all do ministry together and hopefully turn our world “upside down” like the first century church did. If we all work at our collective and individual ministries, our church family will not only grow by ten or twenty people a year, but by dozens and by hundreds. Let’s use every method at our disposal (like blogs) to honor God together as we work to tell our world about Jesus Christ and His offer of salvation to everyone we meet. God bless each of you!

Love and blessings,

Your Brother in Christ, Pastor Rob.