From the Pastor: Weekly Word 5-8-19

Greetings Everyone!

Dianne and I returned home Monday evening after spending a very inspiring weekend at the General Conference of Elders in Cincinnati.

The General Conference is meeting of all elders around the world with some elders coming from such far flung places as the Philippines and Australia.

There are many many reasons to be positive and optimistic about United Church of God as we go about the work of preaching the gospel and preparing for the kingdom. I wanted to highlight just a few things that were very encouraging:

1. Our internet presence continues to grow. A company called Alexa tracks how many visitors websites amass and ranks them. Currently among all Christian denomination websites United Church of God is number 13 in the world. To put that in perspective we are up there with most Catholic websites. For perspective 7th Day Adventists are number 14.

Among ALL Christian websites of ANY kind United Church of God is number 36. There are hundreds of thousands of websites, if not millions, that have a Christian based theme.

What all this translates to is that A LOT of people are going to United Church of God for information. Most of the people visiting the site, 98% plus, are NOT members of United.

There is no other word to describe this other than miraculous. Our tiny church is ranked up there with denominations that claim hundreds of thousands or millions of adherents.

2. The New TV Studio - The new studio that was built for the church’s television and webcast mission also has some remarkable results. ALL of the shows produced in the new television studio have far surpassed audience response of every program produced in the old studio. This excludes Christmas and Easter programs which always have very high response rates. What this means is that the television and webcasts are reaching more people then ever.

3. The eldership is united - The budget, strategic plan and operation plan were all approved with overwhelming majorities. This means that there is great agreement and harmony among the elders which of course translates to the church as a whole. This was evident in the spiritual instruction and lessons of humility and service that were the focus of many of the seminars.

All of these factors add up to a tremendous blessing of God in our efforts to fulfill the mission of preaching the kingdom of God and the role of Jesus Christ in bringing that about.

What does the future hold for United Church of God? One elder said “We don’t know when or if or how many people God is calling or going to call.”

I firmly believe that SOMETHING is going to spur people that are currently getting all this information to come to services some day. It could be tomorrow. It could be in five years.

Are we ready?

Take care and see you soon!

Doug