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THE BEACON
April 2010 …A Word From Pastor Gus: Luke 9:10-16 There are some problems pastors and church leaders enjoy having. You may be thinking, what? Problems we enjoy? Usually when you associate problems and church in the same context it spells out disaster. Jesus was confronted with what seemed to be a serious problem in Luke 9:10-16 (also recorded in Matthew 14:3-21, Mark 6:30-44 and John 6:1-15) with the feeding of the five thousand. Here are some major problems that Jesus had to resolve that I wish as pastor to have. I know what you might be thinking, how strange is your pastor? Let’s look for a moment at the text. According to Luke’s account, Jesus couldn’t easily get away before the people wanted to know more about where Jesus Was “But when the multitudes knew it, they followed Him” (verse 11). Imagine what a great problem it would be if God’s people who know Him would follow Him to the church building with a crowd numbering 5,000! I could handle that problem. Look at all the problems that would come with the super crowd. How are we going to adequately fill their spiritual needs? We would have to find ways to warmly reach out to them as Jesus did “He received them” (verse 11) and to teach them about the kingdom of God (verse 11) and to minister to “those who need healing” (Verse 11). These are the kind of problems I want to struggle with here at Lighthouse Baptist Church. I would love to see our church leaders struggling over where and how we are going to adequately solve our over crowding of 5000 new members into our 320 seat auditorium! I would welcome the problem of how we can get 2,000+ cars in our 100 car parking lot. I really wouldn’t mind defending our church and our right to use the streets up and down Hilby and Wheeler during our worship hours. I would work with the police on how we can best direct traffic into our narrow streets off of Fremont for the folks coming in from Marina and Carmel Valley! Oh, and lets not forget our “final phase” problem that this church committed to dream about back in the 1980’s to build our Family Life Center on the east side of the fellowship building that could accommodate basketball, handball and volleyball courts for all the members and various church ministries to enjoy. This would be a huge financial problem that I wouldn’t be afraid to solve with God’s help. Now look what happens when we take the problems and attempt not to solve them, as the disciples did. Look how they wanted to solve it. “Send the multitude away” (verse 12). Obviously this is not problem solving that the disciples were demonstrating, but problem dodging. Think about it, God was about to demonstrate a great miracle in the midst of this tremendous problem of feeding 5,000 people with no more than five loaves of bread and two fish. Jesus was about to demonstrate one of his miraculous works and the disciples were choosing to dodge the problem. I really believe our church is beginning to show problems that come with growth on Wednesday night. We average over 30 and we may need to expand our eating areas to accommodate more. This is a great problem! Our Sunday School may need another pre-teen class to accommodate more children to solve our over crowded second-sixth grade class. Great problem! I want us to pray for an over-crowding problem in our developing youth program as we prepare to lead them to summer camp. Jesus was the ultimate problem solver when he fed the 5,000. He simply had them “sit down in groups of fifty” (verse 14) and passed the loaves and fish to them and “filled” them all, taking away any hunger they may have had! And let’s not forget the abundance of leftovers that were taken up afterwards. You see God blesses us when we are looking to solve problems that glorify His Son. We should welcome problems that show signs of perpetuating the gospel. Good problems, growth problems these are all the problems we should welcome. Jesus solved the problem by simply assuring his disciples that he would solve the problem. All they needed to do was trust that He would provide the answer to the problem! Praise the Lord! Pastor Gus |
