I once heard Jack Hayford — long time pastor of The Church On The Way in Van Nuys, CA and the author of the contemporary hymn Majesty — say this about growing a church:
You don’t want to grow a big church. You want to grow big people.
I like that concept.
And I saw much evidence of “big people” — people living unselfish, Spirit-filled lives — in our Christmas Eve celebrations. Here are the Top Five:
5. Parents teaching their children the value of sacrificial giving at a young age by taking them to the altar to present their offerings to What Child Is This.
4. Volunteers who gave up their Christmas Eve to work in the decidedly un-glamorous ministries of welcoming, blessing seats, candle wax removal, and crowd control.
3. Staffers who approached me throughout the night with the question that is music to a pastor’s ears: “What do you need me to do?”
2. The brilliance of the actors at the 5:00 G-Force children’s experience and the skill of the musicians at the 7:00 and 9:00 praise and worship services.
1. Most remarkably, we had a team of people host our Room In The Inn ministry on Christmas Eve. RITI is a ministry with and for our homeless neighbors in Charlotte, and each Friday night during the winter we house 12-14 people who have no other lodging. It takes between 20 and 30 volunteers to pull off a RITI night. This year — again, on Christmas Eve — we had two young men with small children volunteer to spend the night at church and we had another crew of people come in early on Christmas morning to serve breakfast and clean up. Big people indeed.