Over the last month we have been looking at our core values:
- The Theology and Practice of the Kingdom of God
- Experiencing God
- Reconciling Community
- Culturally Relevant Mission
- Compassionate Ministry
Today we are going to be completing this series with a look at why we engage in compassionate ministry with the lost, the poor, outcast, and the outsider. Along those lines, I have asked some folks to come and share with us a little bit about why they work at the food pantry.
{Click here to listen to the full audio version of the sermon including testimonies}
Thank you both for those wonderful stories… God is moving and changing lives! Isn’t it exciting to be used by God? To be a part of what He is going in this community?
God is good….all the time.
Why?
Why do we do it? What is our purpose? Good questions to which there could be many, many answers….each person in effect has a story about why they do what they do.
Yet as a community I think it is important to have an overarching answer to these questions – to why we engage in compassionate ministry. Why we feed the hungry and clothe the naked….
It all goes back to our very first core value – the theology and practice of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God – this was Jesus’ central message throughout the Gospels. He was declaring that God’s rule and reign had entered into the world and was driving out evil.
Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension was for one purpose – to overcome evil, deliver humanity from its power, and to bring us into the blessed covering of God Almighty.
The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. -1 John 3:8b
Continue reading Vineyard Values Series: Compassionate Ministry