I am glad to be able to report the ‘results’ of this past weekends elections, vote, selection process, etc. We certainly did not want to turn all of this into some sort of organizational “mumbo-jumbo” and get distracted from simply being the church, from being the body of Christ, the people of God who are living out our days with purpose and meaning because we have come to know and love the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of life here and now as well as in eternity. In fact, we wanted all of this activity to be filled with the beauty of gathering the members of the body into unity, we wanted to establish a God honoring ‘agreement’ as to how we function together, and we wanted openly and honestly ask those whom God had established as elders to serve us.
Therefore:
The proposed ‘membership’ was unanimously affirmed!!!!!
The Constitution and Bylaws were ratified by a vote of 121 Yes’s, and 0 No’s!!!!!!!!!!
The Elders were all strongly voted in……in fact, of the 844 total votes for the seven different men there were only 5 ‘no’ votes on all of them put together. Three of those votes were against me, Kevin. That was a humbler! But, honestly it was good for me. I needed to remember you can’t please all the people all the time. I needed to remember that the goal is not to be liked but to serve. I needed to remember that I certainly am not without my faults. I needed to remember that being up front gives me a lot of opportunity to rub people the wrong way even without meaning to. I needed to remember that a church is about speaking the truth in love rather than just going along with the majority. I needed to remember that the church is about Christ being the leader, the king, and the one we serve. I needed to remember that there are some days I vote against me! So, thanks for helping me remember what is important and to help me remember that I am simply a pioneer who is on the trail with all the other pioneers and whose job it is to simply feed the weary travelers the food supplied by the Holy Spirit…..the Word of God…..which is able to keep us going and keep us going strong.