A single with cheese plus fellowship with a brother equals a great lunch!

I had a great lunch with my friend Kevin today, he came downtown to spend some time in fellowship over lunch. Although he had the strange meal combo of a bowl of chili and a Frosty, the conversation was an incredible encouragement to me. There is simply not enough of that in the church, men who have other Christian men as friends to talk with, be encouraged by and exhorted as needed. We spent a lot of time talking about the church, making disciples, unity in the Body, seeing the unchurched being reached with the Gospel rather than shuffling current churchgoers from one group to another. I am pretty humbled by the fruit Kevin is seeing for his efforts. We covered a pretty wide ranging set of topics but a great time!

Speaking with Kevin who is a far more mature brother in the faith reminds me of the importance of godly, mature men in the church to lead through their example of service and their accumulated wisdom. I have been tinkering around with a post on that idea for a few days, not sure when (if ever) I will post it but I think this is one of the most important issues of the day, i.e. servant leaders in the church, drawn from the local body and working alongside the rest of the church rather than ruling over it. Where are the older men mentoring the younger men? Where are the servant leaders with dirt on their hands laboring on behalf of the Lord of the Harvest? We need these men desperately and we need to pray that God will raise them up. We don’t need more armchair theologians to write more books, we need more regular men to do the work of ministry. That work may not get you invited to speak at conferences or asked to write a book endorsement but it is work that has eternal significance. Isn't that what really counts?