Dear Preacher,
I am writing to you today to express deepest heartfelt appreciation for your dedication to the ministry!
You pour your heart and soul out each time you preach. You sacrifice time with your family to spend time preparing a message to that God has put on your heart. You visit the sick, the homebound, and the lost while putting yourself and your family on the back burner. You care enough about your flock to tell us the truth from the Word of God regardless if it hair lips or not. Your heart’s desire is to be used by God to be an echo chamber to what is being taught at home. Your heart’s desire is to see everyone desire God and pursue Him wholeheartedly.
In the church today, we often use metrics created by man to measure our success in the ministry. Numbers are good, they give you an idea of what is going on. Numbers of souls saved, baptized, attendance and decisions to follow Christ are very important. However, there is something they do not always measure accurately. They do not measure my spiritual growth or that of my family accurately. What do I mean? Your messages stir my soul, but I don’t always go to the alter because I would have to slide past half a dozen people and even step over an elderly person. Your messages provoke me to follow Christ with even more passion and consistency, but I don’t always go down to the alter because I have four children ages 6 and under to pick up after service. God uses you to push me to grow spiritually, but I am not always in church on Wednesday nights because my 10.5-hour shift turned into 12.5 hours and service would be over by the time I rounded my family up and got to church.
However, there is one metric that can accurately measure how God is using you in life. I keep coming back. I keep bringing my family back when there are a thousand other churches to choose from in the Bible belt. I keep bringing my family back and my children are getting saved one by one. I keep bringing my family back because I believe in you. I keep bringing my family back because God has planted us. Be encouraged. Be proud of our vote of confidence in you by our returning time and time again. Never give up. Never forget what numbers don’t always measure. Never lose hope. When you hit rock bottom in the ministry, just remember that Christ is the rock you hit. Christ is our hope!
Sincerely,
John Toomey
Project Hope Again