Four things for the church family

1. Turn up
Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy. Make Sunday the best day of your week. Begin the day with worship and close out the Lord’s day with worship. Devote the day to God and his people. Come and do what you were created to do: ‘Worship the Lord’. Come in the morning and in the evening to worship if you possibly can. Make Sunday a priority and be with the family of God here at Tenth whenever you can. Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together.


2. Pray
2 Chronicles 20 tells us that ‘we have no strength but our eyes are to you’. Pray for your minister and his marriage, his family, his own walk with the Lord. Pray that God would protect him and bless him. It was a joy to meet together with the church this morning to pray. Make those times together times you won’t miss, where you seek God’s blessing on the work. The elders of this church: pray. In the midst of all the decisions you have to make and the shepherding there is to do: pray. ‘The Session that prays together stays together!’. Unless the Lord builds the house, we labour in vain. So make Tenth Presbyterian Church a place where the Lord is sought for his blessing.


3. Give
Jesus says that where your treasure is there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:21). It’s an interesting way to put it. We would often think of it the other way round, but Jesus is telling us something very important about the power of money. He is teaching that if we want to have a heart for God and for his church, we should give generously, and our hearts will follow. If you desire to see this church grow spiritually and be more fruitful, get your wallet out. Invest your resources in the work of God in this place.


4. Love
This church, over the past number of decades, has been known for preaching. There are both good things about that, but also dangerous things. 1 Corinthians 13 teaches us that you can have great sermons, wonderful music, incredible buildings, beautiful liturgy, but if you have not love you will be ‘a resounding gong and a clanging symbol’. You need to ask yourself: what do you want Tenth Presbyterian to be known for?
In church life, ‘love covers over a multitude of sins’ (1 Peter 4:18). It is the grease for the wheels of congregational life. But it is even more important than that. If I can paraphrase John, ‘By this will Philadelphia know that you are my disciples, if you love one another’. (John 13:35)

And so Tenth Presbyterian Church I give you this charge:

Turn Up. Pray. Give. Love.

You can watch the installation service here