I pray that your Lord's Supper service was as inspiring and motivating as ours here in Pasadena!
The addition of songs of praise, worshipful music and prayers of repentance and thanksgiving made our celebration of Jesus' triumph over sin and death a powerful experience of adoration and honor of our Lord and Savior. How grateful we are that our Savior has brought us to himself, and that by his grace we stand before him redeemed and ready to follow wherever he leads!
I am convinced that the months and years ahead promise many new avenues of rich spiritual joy and fulfillment along with plenty of challenge and opportunity for the Worldwide Church of God. And, I truly believe, they promise unprecedented growth and expansion for our revitalized fellowship, by the grace of God, with the sure help of Jesus Christ.
As a Christian fellowship, we come from all backgrounds, all races, all economic levels, all nations. Yet, as brothers and sisters of the Savior of the world, we all find unity and hope in his family, through the power of his sacrifice and resurrection.
"Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ?" asked the apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 10:16). "Because there is one loaf, we who are many, are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf," he wrote (verse 17).
Jesus said: "Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day" (John 6:53-54).
What blessed hope we have in Jesus Christ! What comfort and reassurance we can have in him, even in a turbulent and ever changing world that now stands on the threshold of a new century!
Just think of the advancements humanity has achieved during the past 100 years--in transportation, in communication, in agriculture, in education--in all kinds of endeavors. Now think of the possibilities the next century holds: in computer technology, in medical science, maybe even space travel. But one fact won't change.
The world has, and will always have, a desperate need to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. The world needs to know that the Creator came to earth to give his life to save us from sin and death.
The world needs to hear that Jesus was raised from the dead by the power of God, and that he now lives in those who give their lives to him, to lead us, to sanctify us and, ultimately, to share eternal life with us.
The world will continue to need to hear the gospel no matter how long before Christ returns. All people need to respond to the call of their Creator! The gospel needs to be preached as long as we draw breath, while we await the hope that brightens the heart of every Christian.
That's why the work of the Worldwide Church of God exists. And there's plenty of work yet to be done.
But times do change. And the ways in which we do the Lord's work sometimes change, too.
As the next century approaches, we believe it is time to incorporate the media-ministry arm of the Worldwide Church of God as an interdependent entity of our fellowship, just as we did with Ambassador Foundation several years ago. We are currently taking the necessary steps to make this happen.
During the past few years, Jesus has led us to see our need to empower the work of the gospel at the local level. We have come to recognize that the gospel's brightest light shines through the personal lives of God's children in action in their various communities.
We have come to see the need to downsize our once-massive headquarters operation. To be sure, economic realities have played a part in this decision. But our growing awareness of the responsibility to mobilize the individual talents and spiritual gifts of each of God's people has been a driving--if not the overriding--force as well.
Christianity amounts to more than just having Pasadena do all the proclaiming of the gospel message, while even our closest friends and neighbors may have no idea what we believe in or why.
Each individual Christian, as a vital part of his or her local congregation, is commissioned, as an able minister of the New Testament, to set apart Christ as Lord in word and deed and to be prepared to give a reason for the hope that lies within us (1 Peter 3:15).
Besides every congregation's local work of being salt and light in its community and developing plans for reaching out in the love of Christ with the gospel, we are also, as a denomination, able to have a powerful collective impact by pooling a portion of our total resources to enable mass media and other broad-based Christian support and outreach programs.
These programs include our magazine, the booklets and brochures, the videos and other Christian resources we make available, and the new radio program planned for later this year, as well as the support we provide Ambassador University and many of our churches in other countries.
Reflecting again on the Lord's Supper, we are reminded that by participating in the body and the blood of Christ, we are united with all fellow Christians, sharing our exaltation of the Savior. We embrace our forgiveness and cleansing through Christ's shed blood. And, because he was raised from the dead, we embrace the marvelous hope of sharing eternal life with him through the resurrection.
"God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross," Paul wrote of Christ (Colossians 1:19-20).
"Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation" (verses 21-22).
As exciting as this 20th century has been, especially for the propagation of the gospel, the next century will no doubt afford opportunities that at present we can't even imagine.
We feel that the local empowerment of each of our ministers and members, led by the Holy Spirit, will produce tremendous growth. This empowerment will strengthen and stabilize the Worldwide Church of God for the work ahead.
Thank you for your generous, and I know sometimes longsuffering, support. You are all in my prayers daily. We are all in this work together, and I consider it a privilege and an honor to serve with you.
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