Enthusiasm and Spiritual Passion
By Bill Jacobs
An article is taken from a transcript date July 31, 2008.
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The title of this presentation is Enthusiasm and Spiritual Passion . It's third in a series on Passionate Spirituality . The topic of Passionate Spirituality is the fourth topic of eight out of the Natural Church Development series on Healthy Congregations . So we're taking those eight topics and giving about four sermons on each one of them to give detailed coverage.
In the first presentation on this topic of Passionate Spirituality , we talked about the need people have to feel alive. When people come into a group who are fired up about the group, or about some common cause, it feels good because it's lively. We also saw earlier that passionate spirituality, as defined by the Natural Church Development people, consists of three elements: prayer, enthusiasm and boldness. We talked about prayer last time. We saw that praying about congregational things, both individually and in groups, raises passion. That's the first one of the three elements.
The second one is enthusiasm. What is that? What is enthusiasm? Well, the dictionary says, “intense enjoyment, interest or approval.” Etymologically, the word en in Greek means in . And the thus part is talking about God – you know, theology comes from that same root. “God in us” or “inspired by God.” That's what enthusiasm literally means. So, in our case, that certainly fits, doesn't it? To be inspired or fired up about some aspect of God by God. So we're going to talk today about how to express that enthusiasm or how to find it, if we don't have it.
Let's begin by asking the question: Enthusiastic about what? What should we be enthusiastic about? Well, there are a lot of things to be enthusiastic about. We can be enthusiastic about Jesus Christ and the fact that we're saved from death because of His sacrifice for us. All the blessings that come with being a Christian are something to be fired up about. But there are certain specific things in the Bible that we're told to be enthusiastic about that might be a little bit more difficult than some of those natural ones. Let's look at one in Titus 2, verse 11. He says here:
Titus 2:11 – For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age while we wait for the blessed hope – the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness, and to purify Himself a people that are His very own, eager to do what is good.
Now in the New American Standard and the King James, instead of “eager to do what is good,” it says, “zealous for good works.” Zeal is just another way to talk about passion and enthusiasm.
I was thinking about my life in the church. The first time I was ever around any people that I considered to be Christian was at Ambassador College. I came to a group of people who were zealous for good works. They were very excited about God and the things of God. It's unfortunate that some of them were also highly political and self-serving, but that's what you're going to find in any group of people. But there was zeal for God there. I consider myself fortunate that I was naive about the political side of it then, because my experience wasn't tainted by that because it just went right over my head. But the result of being around that group of people was that I became enthusiastic for God.
Now over the years that has waxed and waned. There have been times when I've not been so enthusiastic and other times when I have. And I've noticed that when my enthusiasm is running high, it's usually because I'm focused very tightly on something that's of import or interest.
There's a young guy about college age. He's going to the Feast this year and he's organizing a humanitarian work project. There's just something about repairing houses for the poor and the elderly that really gets him going. He's zealous for that good work. He's fired up about it! You talk to him and it's what he likes to talk about a lot . He went to a few of these activities and now he's planning his own. So the person who first taught him has a disciple of this thing. Now this young man is out doing this and there'll probably be people that will go home from the Feast, and they'll do some things like that where they are. So everybody's efforts are not just doubled, but multiplied – because the first person that taught him also has a hand in being responsible for all the people that he's going to teach. So it's a multiplication of effort.
We're going to talk – at some point in this series – about all the biotic principles that Natural Church Development talks about. That's sort of a scary word for some folks, but it just means that there are certain principles in nature that God has built into nature that we can take advantage of to make things happen for the church – for our work.
Another scripture is in 1 Corinthians 14:12 that we can look at, where Paul says:
1 Cor. 14:12 – Even so – talking to the Corinthians – for as much as you are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that you may excel to the edifying of the church. We know that the Corinthians didn't have the most wisdom in the application of spiritual gifts – at least in the beginning – but they were zealous for them. And that's a good thing. It's a lot easier to kind of tone people down than it is to get them fired up about something. And they were fired up! That's a good thing. They were fired up for something that God wants us to be fired up about – one of His greatest gifts.
It looks to me, as I look at the landscape of the church, that a lot of us are kind of lukewarm about spiritual gifts. We're afraid of them. The whole idea makes us afraid and, some of us, tired, because we don't want to have to do any more work than we're already doing. And other people are just bored by it. To have a gift means that we should use it. So there's an implication there that implies effort on our part. And I think some of us really don't want to hear that unfortunately.
Another thing that we can be zealous for is the gospel. I'm not talking about major advertising efforts or media – any kind of media efforts actually. I'm talking about that one-to-one relational kind of thing that we need to do – to talk to those that we know about our faith.
In the past I've talked a lot about my friend, Bob – that fact that he and his wife lost their son when he was in high school and about how he doesn't know if God exists. He'd like to believe in God, but he says he hasn't seen any evidence that He exists. And yet he seems very eager to talk about the Bible and God. As it happened, I went to his mother's funeral just yesterday. I was just blown away to learn that she was a devout Christian all her life. She had asked for a number of scriptures to be read at her funeral. It's also true that just before she died – she hadn't been able to speak for weeks because she was so weak – she said that she felt God in the room. Observing that funeral and listening to what Bob said about his mother and what his brother said about her, I understood that Bob is the “church kid” who left the church. His mother continued to attend and I think his father did, too. He left the church. And yet he carries very strong Christian values. I was always amazed that he was such a good person. In fact, when I talked to him about it, it seemed that he derived these values from his psychological training – that it just seemed to make sense that one should be honest, and monogamous, and not steal things and all that. But I see now that he watched his mother model those things for him all his life. And that gets back to one of my favorite topics, which is the power of the lived Christian life. She was steadfast and she was very enthusiastic for God. That was one of the big themes that came through at the funeral. That renews my hopefulness for my friend. And it renews my hopefulness for the possibility that I might be able to say the right thing at the right time, if God is there. I guess what I'm saying is, I don't think it's going to be as hard as I thought it might be, because there's a definite hook there into his past. He has been called. He just hasn't accepted the invitation. So I know there's a way for him to connect to God and it's through his mother. So I'm going to continue to pray for Bob and pray that God will put the right words in my mouth when I'm around him so that I can do my part. Why is that? Because I would love to be involved in even the smallest way in his return to the faith. I'm enthusiastic about that.
So what can we be enthusiastic about? Well, besides all the blessings that we have – that come through Jesus Christ related to salvation – we can be enthusiastic about good works. We can be enthusiastic for the gospel. And we can be enthusiastic about spiritual gifts. Those things all affect what the congregation does. So that's why I bring those up – to be excited about the gifts we have, and about using them to do good work and to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ among the people that we know.
I also wanted to talk about zealousness another way. I'm going to call this developmental zealousness . It has to do with understanding the spiritual development of other people. I did a presentation recently called, The Underground Railroad . I was talking about the unmet needs of our children and the need to begin providing for them, which is primarily the need to be more included – which they unfortunately took to mean to separate them out more – to have more youth activities, which is not what I was talking about. The essence of the presentation is pointing to the difference in our developmental, spiritual needs.
Now what do I mean by that? God has designed humans so that we can learn things easily and naturally at different times in our development. The easiest time for a baby to learn to trust is in the first year of its life. And after that, it's like pulling teeth to learn to trust. There's also a spiritual correlation there, because that ability to trust – as we get older and we have the ability to think abstractly about God – that turns into faith if we have that. It's more easy to trust God if we learned how to trust with our mother and our father. That's just one example. I have plenty of examples for all the different human development stages – of things that we can learn physically and spiritually at each age. In fact, we did a series on it called, Spiritual Growth and Human Development . It's available on our Website.
Is there a scripture that actually directs us to think about a developmental approach to spiritual growth? One of my favorites – it's rather indirect – is Solomon's statement in Ecclesiastes. There is a time for everything. People think that kids...all they want to do is be together. They don't want to study their Bibles. So they think, “That's immature,” and all of that. But actually, there's a time in a person's development where they're wired to learn to make friends. That's when they're young and middle teenagers. So yeah, Solomon was right. There is a time for everything, including that kind of functioning in the church among young people.
But that's not the only scripture. My favorite one is in Mark 4, and verse 26, where Jesus said:
Mk. 4:26 – This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain. Now that's always the part I've emphasized before. But notice what it says next. First the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. Everything that God has made develops in stages. It doesn't just boom out there all at once. The same thing is true of spiritual development. There's that example of learning to trust as an infant. And that internalized sense of trust becomes the foundation for faith. Then all through our lives we develop in stages. We don't learn everything at once.
The people I was telling you about were complaining that teenagers mostly just want to be together and not study their Bibles, so it seems to those who are older that that's sort of shallow spiritually. I don't think they realize that as a teenager, kids are predisposed to begin connecting socially with peers. Actually, it seems to me, a lot of times when people complain or criticize somebody, they usually have more fingers pointing back at themselves than they have pointing at others. It seems to me that many of us, who are older in the church, have, in a way, suffered developmental delay in that very area. Look at all the fussing we do about doctrine and when to keep the Passover. We disrupt relationships – rupture them – at the drop of a hat over stuff like that – that really isn't that important. I think we'd be well served to go back and learn what we apparently failed to learn, which was easy for us to learn when we were teenagers.
When I was at Lexington this year, there was this young woman there who was assigned the task of holding the attention of younger teens for three hours. Think about that. How would you do that? If you had a group of young teenagers – thirteen, fourteen, fifteen-years-old – and you were supposed to keep them busy for three hours – and make it fun – what would you do? Pretty daunting task. Well, what she did was she developed a Bible game show. For three hours a huge room full of teens demonstrated enthusiastically what they knew about the Bible. I was on one of the panels that was supposed to stump these groups of kids and, you know, it was really hard to come up with questions that they didn't know the answers to. We would ask them a question and they would get in small groups, and of course, there were lots of giggling and horsing around – they were having a lot of fun with it – but in the end, collectively, they always came up with the answers. Out of three hours worth of quizzing – I don't know how many questions they were asked – I only remember a couple that they didn't know. They were very knowledgeable.
I was thinking that while in the latter stages of elementary school, and middle school and even high school, kids brains are just like sponges when they just soak up that information. But the element of social connection is also really important for them at that time. What was interesting, too, was not everybody knew all the answers, but because their minds are like sponges, if there are ten kids there and one of them knows the answer, after he says it, all ten of them know. It's a great way to learn about what the Bible says. They also were learning other things socially. They were learning who knew their Bible and they were learning who didn't. And they were all learning to get along and make connections, as well. So youth is a time when we can take in huge amounts of information about the Bible, and then later we get to learn what it means. We don't really have much experience at that time of our life. We figure out what it means later. We spend the rest of our lives learning to actually apply the scriptures.
I don't think it's fair to criticize teens for wanting only to spend time together. I think that's what they naturally do. I think if we can help them spend time together studying the Bible and learning the Bible together, then we've really got a win-win situation going. I think wise parents foster times for their kids to be together with other kids.
I just think one of the best ways to help teens learn their Bibles – to get them together to study it – is to read, and then discuss it, and talk about how it applies in their everyday life. It's good if there's a trusted adult guide there, but I've seen them do that without adults. They're quite capable of doing that – especially if there's a strong young person in the group.
So what are adults developmentally able to do? They're able to do everything else, aren't they? Unless they miss something along the way. That kind of experience for our young people creates enthusiasm in them for the word of God. It makes them feel good that they can learn. And to be with other people and learn it together, makes them all feel a part of something spiritual – a very good opportunity for them in that situation.
Let's talk about putting enthusiasm to work in the congregation a bit now. This whole thing about the congregation's health is that healthy congregations attract people, and that helps us do the work that we're responsible to do. When new people come into a congregation – like I did when I went to Ambassador College years ago – I ran into people who were zealous for good works. That was a great example for me personally. In our groups, when new people come in, it's important that they see people who are zealous for good works, too – who are interested in the things of God and in taking care and doing those things. If they're being called by God, that will impress them. They will be excited about that. Or it will make them stop and think and they'll have to think about why they're not. Eventually, that turns into zeal on their part in the long run.
A great way to lead people into all of this is to have informal, comfortable Bible studies with plenty of time to ask questions and explore topics of importance as they come up. If you have only a formal church service, new people come, and they sit and they listen, but they don't really have a chance to address the issues that concern them . So, if you have these informal meetings, and people get invited over and they join these groups, that's how they learn. I know in all the churches I've been in in the past – that were larger, organized churches – there was always an informal church, where people read their literature, and they had their questions, and they would ask people when they came to church about these things. And the brethren would help them understand what they needed to know – or at least steer them in the right direction.
I think that at college I learned at least as much from my roommates as I did from the classes that I took. Every Friday night after Bible study, we would always sit around in the dorm and have a big discussion about some topic. Everybody usually knew what the topic was. It was usually picked by the guy who was the RA in the dorm, and he usually picked it because somebody suggested it – somebody in the dorm. So it was always something that was relevant to what was going on. Every Friday night we'd just sit around and...I know that I learned more about real life in those sessions than I did in the Bible studies that were prepared. I learned more about Bible learning in those studies that were prepared, but I learned the application – real time – informally.
In our group, it was interesting last year at the Park City Feast.... You know, we advertised this festival site for what it was – a learning experience instead of a vacation – a time to go hands on and learn spiritual skills. One of the most important skills that we taught there was community outreach. Okay. So we really emphasized that a lot, didn't we? We emphasized in the letters we sent out. We emphasized it on the Website. We talked a lot about it from the pulpit when we gave presentations – and they went out on tape. In spite of that, when it got right down to actually showing up at the community outreach activity, only about half the people that were there came. Remember that? About half! So it all sounded good on paper, but when it came down to actually do something, half of them were afraid to step out and do something new. Of course, some of the ones who were afraid complained about wanting to hear more good Bible preaching and not willing to go live good Bible preaching. At one point in my life, I was afraid like that. So I'm not really putting anybody down. I know what it feels like to be there, but I also know that if we are going to grow as a group of people, we've got to get past that and become enthusiastic about doing things, even if it makes us a little bit uncomfortable. It's like swimming. You jump in. The water's cold. After you're in awhile, it's okay. It's always like that. Same with everything.
More than just learning more, we need to do what we have learned. I believe that's why our church is so spiritually weak and small – because we talk about it a lot and we don't do much of it. I'm reminded of what D L Moody said. He said, “I'm not afraid of what I don't know of the Bible. I'm afraid of what I do know in the Bible.” There are a lot of things in there that are hard to do, but we still have to do them.
We have to be involved in community outreach. We have to be involved in helping new people assimilate into the group. We have to have some ways to do that. We have to not be afraid to reach out to people.
We talked last week about praying. A lot of people are really afraid of that. Elaine and I were watching a reality show last week – I forget which one – but there were two girls that were angry at each other. One of them said, “I'm going to pray for you,” but she meant it as an insult – “You need praying for. You're bad.” The other said that she was going to pray for her, too. It was double insult. That's how they were insulting each other. We've all seen people preach in prayers, correct other people in prayers, politic in prayers. All that's doing is showing how physically minded we are. Prayer is supposed to be to God. And when we pray in groups, it's to God, but it's also to help the group become more connected to the purpose of the group. When we pray in groups, it should be to help the group to become more unified – not to slap people up side the head with our prayers.
So what else can we think of that people who are zealous for good works could do in their congregation? Well, that would be a good thing to get together and talk about, wouldn't it? What could we do to express enthusiasm for God in our group, so that when people come they'll see that and understand what it is?
I want to talk now a little bit about roadblocks to enthusiasm. One of the first ones I think of is depression . I've never seen an enthusiastic depressed person. It's impossible to be enthusiastic when you're depressed. We've been pounding away on the importance of mental health and Christian life. If a person is depressed, it's just so much harder to do the things that God wants us to do. So what can we do about that – if we're depressed? Well, we can begin to pray for help with it. Of course, what undercuts all of this is when you're depressed everything's harder. So it's harder to pray for help. We can begin actively to look for support – either through friends or therapy, or something that helps us get outside of ourselves and become less depressed. We can begin to take measures to get over it. We can start doing something.
I have a young man that came to me – he's twenty-four – who's been depressed since he was eighteen. He was telling me, after I'd been seeing him for about six months that he really wanted to start doing something. And I said, “Well, you already have, haven't you? You've come here. It was hard for you to come here, but you have. You've come here. You come in this room every week and we work on not being depressed. That's doing something. You've already taken the first step.” He was so depressed he didn't realize it. But that made him feel better. It helped him to understand that he was taking charge of the situation. And that's good. A lot of times people are depressed because they have a bad case of learned helplessness. And he was feeling like he couldn't do anything about it.
What's another big roadblock? Well, I think this is probably even a bigger roadblock than depression. And that is the roadblock of distraction – zealous, but not for the things of God. Some people really get excited about video games, or TV, or computers, or money, or relationships, or cars, or shoes, or their appearance, or their house, or sports, or any and everything. There are so many things anymore to be enthused about that it pushes out the things of God, if we don't watch out. It's always fun to be enthusiastic. We know that, don't we? We like to have fun. And we like that the things we're enthused about are fun. If we're enthused about the things of God, then those things will be fun, too. They will! Isn't that great? It is. So we have to watch out for that. We have to watch out for all the stuff that can crowd God out of our life. So, a balancing act – “I have to make a living. I am responsible to take care of my family – my kids. And I want to provide them the things so that they can be involved in all the church activities and everything, so I've got to work hard.” Yes, but how hard do you work? And how much time do you spend on that? And how much time do you spend on the things of God?
Another thing that I think is a distraction is intimidation . Right now, at LifeResource, we're faced with the prospect of reorganizing our Website. And in anticipation of that, we bought some new, more powerful software that doesn't look anything like the software we used before, of course. There's just so much to do and so much to learn, it's daunting, if you just think about it in that way. Where do we start? And where's the time going to come from? You know how that works, don't you? So what's the solution to that? Where are we going to find the enthusiasm for the job? Well, I think the solution to that can be seen in one of the stories about Elijah. The story about the widow from Zeraphath. It's in 1 Kings 17, if you want to look at it.
The long story short: There was a terrible drought. When he came upon her she was out gathering sticks to build a fire. She was going to go in and take the last of her flour – she said she had a handful of flour and a little bit of oil left in the jug – and she was going to make some cakes out of it – some bread – for their last meal. Then, as far she knew, they would just die, because they didn't have anything else to eat and there was this terrible drought on. So Elijah asked her to make him something to eat. She told him the situation, but then she went and did what he told her to do. And you know, the flour never ran out, and neither did the oil. What's the lesson? Well, the lesson I learned from that is, we take our meager resources – the little bit of time we have every week, or the few dollars that we might have to spend, or the house that might be too small to invite people over, or maybe we're too ill to do too much – but we just do that little bitty thing that we can. We start in a little bit at a time. We make a tiny, little snowball. Then we ease down the hill a little bit, and as it rolls, it picks up some more snow. And then as it gets heavier, it picks up more snow yet, and you know how the snowball rolls. After awhile, we can just get out of the way and let it go, and it will continue to roll and grow all by itself. It just starts out from just a little handful of snow.
I was thinking about my friend, Jim O'Brien. He started out four years ago with a newly independent congregation. On their highest days, they would have seventy-five people, and on their lowest, it would drop down to twenty. I was interested to see that in just four years, just recently, they hit a hundred and fifty. So I called him up and I said, “What's the lowest it ever gets?” He said, “Oh, it hasn't dipped below forty for a long time.” So I said, “You've doubled in four years – both the lowest and the highest numbers.” You know, if they double again in four years, it will be three hundred people there. Same thing with that congregation's tournament in Lexington . It looked, to me, twice as big as it did four years ago – a lot more people there. You know, they just kept plugging away. There's a lot of their congregation that doesn't do much, but there's a core of people that are really involved. And they put in what time they can, and they just keep plugging away at it. The bread has not run out. So now they're really starting to develop some momentum. It's a lot easier to generate enthusiasm in a larger group. You're going to run into more talent, so they're going to have more capability. You walk in now and it's a lot easier to feel the good energy that's there.
So why be intimidated when we have a God that makes our meager resources go as far as they need to go. What else can we do to get past the roadblocks of depression, distraction and intimidation. Well, there's a guy named Stephen Covey who said.... He wrote a book called First Things First . It's about priorities. It's about putting the things that are most important first. Luke 12:27 – let's go there.
Lk. 12:27 – Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin, yet I tell you not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will He clothe you, O you of little faith. And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink, and do not worry about it, for the pagan world runs after such things, and your Father knows that you need them. But seek His kingdom and these things will be given to you as well.
That's what we're supposed to do – no excuses. It's a promise – that if we put the things of God first – if we put the work first that He's given us to do – then all this other stuff is just going to fall into line. There's this big thing going on right now about the law of attraction . That's what this is.
I'm not a very obedient Christian sometimes. I must have read that scripture – Consider the lilies, how they grow... – hundreds of times, but I never considered how the lilies grow. I didn't. Small at first. Then they grow in stages. After we tend them and nurture them, they grow. They get bigger. They get beautiful – just like Jim's congregation – dedicated and enthusiastic group there with a core of them working to tend the congregation – small at first and now growing. Or like our ministry – LifeResource. Four years ago it was just an idea. That's all it was. The idea was to build a body of work that would serve as resources for the lived Christian life in people and to help the children of the church, who were spiritually malnourished. I was looking today and we've published – what is it? – eighty-nine presentations. And we probably have another fifteen in the can – maybe not quite that many. But we're closing in, right now, on doing a hundred of them. We've covered topics on how the lilies grow. We've talked about how to reclaim our lost children. We've talked about real spirituality, instead of posturing and politicizing. Of course, there's so much more to do, but we are planting, and tending, and nurturing, and doing what we can with what we have, and it's growing. It's a dream come true. We're excited. We were enthused when we started, but when we saw what God was doing, it made us even more excited. I have a couple other jobs, but when it comes to our time, and our money and our energy, LifeResource always comes first. And that's why we're enthused about it – because it comes first. Other people are starting to get enthused about it, too, and that makes it more easy for us to be enthused all the more. The snowball is rolling. A lot of people are partnering with us to do good things for the church.
So that's all good, as they say. There is a way to grow past boredom, past distraction, past intimidation, past depression. There is a way to be enthusiastic for God. And the way is found in the word itself. Enthusiasm means God in us. And if we let Him, if we start thinking about Him in our life, then we're going to become enthused about God, and the things of God, and about our congregation.
I mentioned earlier that there's quite a bit of resistance toward the Natural Church Development approach to congregational health, and I found out not just in our church, but across the board, actually. There are a lot of Christian people in other groups that don't like it either. One thing that people who don't like it say is, “It's too mechanical. You can't break love down into eight categories, for example.” Of course, they forgot that the eight categories that Natural Church Development uses were the eight categories that Paul put out and have become a part of scripture, which is irrefutable. And NCD takes the things that are in the Bible, and it examines them in a literal and specific way that most of us have never really done. Consider the lilies, how they grow. We read right over it. I learned to consider how the lilies grow at an NCD conference – a training. That's an instruction. Now, how many of us have ever taken time to examine the scriptures and see how a lily grows? Well, I didn't. When we do, we learn something that's extremely helpful. NCD does the same thing with lots of things out of the Bible.
It really reminds me a lot of working with people in therapy. One of the things that we do to help people is to get very specific about what they're thinking and doing. I notice that often people become uncomfortable when we do that. They would rather just generalize about the problem, instead of getting down to brass tacks. You know, “I try to love my son.” “Okay, so what I want you to do this week is to keep a log of all the things you do that demonstrate to him that you love him.” “I don't want to do that.” See, generalization and being non-specific keeps us out of the realm of change. And getting specific and defining what things are very clearly bring about change. I believe that the same thing we do in therapy is going on in the church all the time, too. People get uncomfortable when we get too specific because it points out things that we need to do differently. It's just so completely human to want to continue down the same road as always, instead of being zealous for good works. That's hard to do. It takes effort. The problem with drifting along as always is pointed out to us by Isaiah, who says that when Jesus returns, He will come wearing a helmet of salvation for us. And He is going to be wrapped in a cloak of zeal and enthusiasm. But He is also going to bring judgment with Him. And we will be judged according to our works. And enthusiasm is one of the things that causes works to happen. So, it seems to me that unless we want to be caught late for the wedding, it would be good to become zealous for God and salvation, and also zealous for the work that we are to do through our congregation. And it's in that spirit that this series is presented.
