Winning Ways: “The Church of God Grill”

“Hello,” said a cheery voice on the phone, “Church of God Grill.”

In one of his books, Charles Paul Conn recalled this unusual beginning to an unusual phone call. Conn had seen a Yellow Pages listing for a restaurant in Atlanta called Church of God Grill. Curious about the odd name, he dialed the number and got the owner. Conn asked how the diner had been given such an unusual name.

“Well,” the man began, “We started a little church down here, and we started selling chicken dinners after church on Sunday to help pay the bills. People liked the chicken, and we did such a good business, that eventually we cut back on the church service. After a while we just closed down the church altogether and kept on serving the chicken dinners. We kept the name we started with, and that's Church of God Grill.”

Churches that don’t have a clear sense of purpose simply drift toward what seems to please the greatest number of people.

So, what is our church’s purpose? This Sunday morning we’ll begin a 3-week series to answer that question. Now that we’ve completed our study of Christ’s call to join him on mission, I thought we should spend some time looking at the specifics of our church’s mission. We’ll find that our job is to

invite our world

to find and follow Jesus with us

one step at a time

We’ll conclude the series on March 2 with a combined worship service. If you attend Sunday School and the second worship hour, nothing changes for you. But the Common Ground Café will meet in the gym at 9:30am instead of 10:45am, and then we’ll all join together for worship at 10:45am. Mark your calendars!

Also, we’ve scheduled a “Baptism Celebration” for Sunday evening, March 2. We’ll begin at 5pm and conclude by the start of our regular Sunday night program at 5:30pm. If you need to follow Christ in baptism, this half-hour service is dedicated exclusively to celebrate your baptism! Of course, we also can schedule your baptism during any Sunday morning worship service. For more information, contact me or my assistant, Jami.

One more thing: I’ve started writing about “unChristian Christianity” in my other e-newsletter, LeaderLines, distributed by e-mail every Thursday. Sign up for LeaderLines at our website or stop by my weblog every Thursday.
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Each Wednesday I post my article from "Winning Ways," an e-newsletter that goes out to over 880 subscribers. If you want to subscribe to "Winning Ways," sign up here.