General Superintendent
Max Edwards
May 14, 2024
Today is the last Tuesday before we gather for our last “Journey” meeting of the year in Texas. The host churches in Arizona, Oregon, and North Carolina have been wonderful, and those meetings were treasured times of connection, training, excitement, celebration, and consecreation.
The gatherings this year have been centered around the theme of LEADERSHIP. The great Apostle Paul met with the local leaders in Ephesus and challenged them to lead well. After all, the church is not some side-line hobby that barely captures the interest of the Godhead. No, this is THE BLOOD-BOUGHT CHURCH - - that collection of souls for whom Jesus died! Paul asked them to not take lightly their opportunity to serve.
“Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” Acts 20:28
And if the leaders of the Ephesian church in the first century needed to take seriously their charge, how can we find any less urgency? Not necessarily because our times are any more or less critical than their time, but because every individual person we see and know is more valuable to God than the entire material wealth of the world. Our things will not live on past this life, but every little boy … every girl … every adult … every drug addict … every high society upper-cruster … every teenager confused about their gender identity … every single person we have ever met or will ever meet will live on past this life, spending eternity in either heaven with Christ, or in hell without Him.
Please pray especially for leaders across the EMC this week. Pray that we each would take extra care in the roles in which the Lord has placed us. Pray that our collective voice could be heard across the world: that there is ONE TRUE GOD, and ONE WAY TO HIM. Pray that we would behave in ways that people would be drawn to the Savior, not pushed further away from Him. And pray that the WORD OF GOD would be given its due place as not just our guide, but our very lifeline. Pray.
