The Start of a New Year
Following Jesus as a Minister of the Gospel
Happy New Year!
It’s hard to believe that 2024 has arrived and 2023 is now in the past. I’m always thankful for the arrival of another year, as the alternative isn’t desirable.
All kidding aside, there are plenty of reasons to embrace another year around the sun. Life is a blessing from God. Therefore, I look forward to what the year will bring. I’m sure the days ahead will encounter moments of surprise filled with laughter and some tears, as that seems to be how life goes.
One thing I don’t do every year is make any so-called New Year’s Resolutions. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with making resolutions, I just don’t do them. What I do have is a commitment to living as a follower of Jesus called to serve as a minister of the gospel. That is, I have a Christian commitment to Jesus Christ that involves living a life of vocational ministry.
2023 was a challenging year in many aspects. Helping lead a church past Covid-19, in the new post-Covid era, was difficult at times. I’m not complaining because every church and pastor I know encountered many challenges. But if the local church is likened to a ship, for two years it felt like the ship was waiting out the storm in a harbor. That’s okay, as there are certainly times when an ocean vessel needs to drop an anchor in the harbor for a time. However, ships are made to sail rather than sit safely in a harbor.
Helping lead a church in 2023 to start sailing again was more difficult than I imagined but the Newark Church is sailing again and my commitment remains the same. I will continue living as a follower of Jesus called to serve as a minister of the gospel, doing so with the Newark Church.
I’m always fascinated by what the Holy Spirit accomplished through a small community of believers who were committed to following Jesus.
As I write this, I just started reading Mark Love’s new book It Seemed Good to the Holy Spirit and To Us. In the first chapter Love calls attention to the way scripture should shape ministry:
Ministry emerges naturally through a long habitation with Scripture. Good ministry is an art, requiring a well-funded imagination. In shaping a theological imagination, Scripture must be more than a tool one uses to solve puzzles. Instead, the deep structures of the text—the way they move, their rhythms, the peculiar way they name things—must become deep structures for ministers as well.1
I also just finished reading through the book of Acts again. I’m always fascinated by what the Holy Spirit accomplished through a small community of believers who were committed to following Jesus. Reading through Acts reminds me of what happens when believers live in the name of Jesus Christ (in submission to his authority as the Lord) by the power of the Holy Spirit (allowing their lives to be animated and led by the Lord).
Reading through Acts isn’t done with the intention of doing all things church just like it was done in Jerusalem and later among Gentile churches. Quite differently, reading through Acts inspires me to ask, as a minister, what it might look like for the church I serve, the Newark Church, to live in the name of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit among our community in 2024.2
Such living also requires an attentiveness to God, seeing the work that God is already doing here in 2024. But I’ll confess that my hindsight is better than my foresight. So within my commitment to living as a follower of Jesus called to serve as a minister of the gospel, my challenge is to be more attentive to God. It’s a challenge that will require me to embrace more silence where, by the grace of God, I can become more aware what the Father, Son, and Spirit might be doing.
And if reading thus far encourages and inspires you to a deeper life lived in the name of Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, then all glory be to God!
Thank you God for what you will do in this Two Thousandth and Twenty Third Year of our Lord!
Mark Love, It Seemed Good to the Holy Spirit and To Us: Acts, Discernment, and the Mission of God, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2024, 10. Knowing the author personally, I am confident that this book will be well worth the read.
This is also the question of how churches read scripture as participants in the mission of God, which is why I wrote my book Gospel Portraits: Reading Scripture as Participants in the Mission of God, Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2022. And yes, that’s a little self-promotion.
Keep up the great work Rex!