{"id":93,"date":"2005-05-24T22:25:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-25T04:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=93"},"modified":"2012-04-17T07:13:55","modified_gmt":"2012-04-17T13:13:55","slug":"church-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/church-flowers\/","title":{"rendered":"Flowers make all the difference"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally published as Church Flowers<\/em> in The Belton Journal<\/strong><\/p>\n

A pastor<\/a> in St. Paul, Minn. blogged<\/a> this week about a flower garden planted in front of his church.<\/p>\n

First of all, I love pastors that blog regularly. It gives a lot of insight into the ministry and what they go through and see throughout the week.<\/p>\n

Some even give insight into how their weekly sermon progresses.<\/p>\n

Fellowship Church<\/a> in Dallas has a blog set up for their entire church staff to post notes and journals on. (UPDATE: While Pastor Ed Young still blogs<\/a>, I can’t find the blogs for the entire staff anymore.)<\/p>\n

It gives you a connection with the staff that you might not otherwise have.<\/p>\n

But I digress…<\/p>\n

Pastor Pat Kahnke of St. Paul Fellowship Church<\/a> writes that he noticed a bunch of kids bustling around in the church parking lot earlier this week.<\/p>\n

As he walked closer he realized that a number of his church members had taken the initiative to plow up a weedy section of their church lot and plant a flower bed in its place.<\/p>\n

While planting the flower bed, one of the church members knocked on a neighboring house door to ask to borrow a water hose.<\/p>\n

The church neighbor said they could borrow the hose that day and year-round to keep the flower bed looking healthy.<\/p>\n

And as a result, another member volunteered to plow the man’s backyard for him.<\/p>\n

What a great sign of ministry on so many levels.<\/p>\n

They took the care of the church upon themselves<\/h2>\n

No one sat around and waited for a church beautification committee to tell them what needed to be done. No building committee hired out work that church members could easily do.<\/p>\n

People took responsibility for their church and went the extra mile to be sure their place of worship was taken care of.<\/p>\n

What if each of us looked for areas in our own churches or work places where we could go the extra mile without being asked?<\/p>\n

What if we quit shrugging responsibility for things in our offices or church and stepped up and said, “This needs to be done — and I’m going to do it. Even if it’s not in my job description and even if I may not be an expert on the subject.–<\/p>\n

They involved outsiders<\/h2>\n

One of the things I love about this story is that it involved people in the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Now granted, with a little planning they could have brought their own water hose, but think of the ministry opportunity they would have missed. In the process, they made sure that a neighbor of the church knew what was going on at the church and then found a way to meet him at his need.<\/p>\n

Wasn’t that Jesus’ entire ministry was about? He met people at their need.<\/p>\n

If we are passionate about what we do, or wherever we do it, it can be contagious – people will want to be a part of it.<\/p>\n

A business cannot grow without new customers and a church cannot grow without new members. We must rid ourselves of being exclusive or selective in who we reach out to. We must bring outsiders in.<\/p>\n

A few months ago I wrote about George Masters who was so passionate about Apple’s iPod, that he spent several hours designing a complete television commercial based on his favorite toy.<\/p>\n

“Why would a school teacher spend a good chunk of his free time, for five months, crafting a really slick ad for no money? For no real recognition other than a, ‘Hey, that’s cool,’ from a few friends? Because he really, really likes his iPod,– wrote blogger Andy Havens. “Masters frankly admits that he partly worked on the project as a way of teaching himself some computer animation basics, and to be part of a portfolio. That being said, why pick the iPod mini as his subject? Because he’s a huge fan. And let’s remember that ‘fan’ is short for ‘fanatic.’–<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If we can get people passionate about our product or message, people will become a part of the message and share it with them where ever they go.<\/p>\n

Little efforts can go a long way<\/h2>\n

Third, as Pastor Kahnke wrote in his blog that he was blessed and ministered to by seeing their effort and the beautiful flowers left by their effort.<\/p>\n

A pastor who was worn down was encouraged and blessed by a small effort by members of his congregation.<\/p>\n

I can’t imagine that this group of church goers would have realized the impact their thoughtfulness had on their pastor, or the impact it would have on a newspaper editor some 1,113 miles away.<\/p>\n

You never know what impact your willingness to serve will have on others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Originally published as Church Flowers in The Belton Journal A pastor in St. Paul, Minn. blogged this week about a flower garden planted in front of his church. First of all, I love pastors that blog regularly. It gives a lot of insight into the ministry and what they go through and see throughout the … Continue reading Flowers make all the difference<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,2090],"tags":[2088,422,3233,2091,3234,3235,2996,1834,1059,2092],"class_list":["post-93","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-columns-reflections","tag-belton-journal","tag-blogs","tag-church-flowers","tag-column","tag-flowers","tag-garden","tag-lifestyle-evangelism","tag-neighborhood","tag-neighbors","tag-newspaper"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-1v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}