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Hi everyone! I hope you’re having a great week.

Mine has included a very special event. I shared about it briefly with staff earlier this week, and thought I might share just a little with you all as well.

This Tuesday I attended a special commemorative luncheon for the consortium of seminaries that operated at Trinity Western University over the past 38 years. Many of you will be familiar with ACTS already. If not, you might be interested to know that for a long time a group of independent schools connected to different denominations partnered together to offer education in a way that they couldn’t achieve separately. It was a crazy experiment in education. (When do schools and denominations ever partner rather than competing?!) It was also highly successful. When it was in full swing, ACTS was the 3rd largest seminary program in Canada, and it was viewed as a leader among training programs for pastors, missionaries, counsellors, and people in ministry in North America.

The ACTS partnership has been going through a transition in the past couple years, and as of this next month it will be discontinued, with a new model for seminary training taking its place at Trinity Western. So a whole lot of current and former faculty, staff, and board members gathered to remember, to celebrate, and to re-connect out in Langley.

In an earlier stage of life, I spent 17 years at ACTS. I guess that means I qualified to be invited, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing old friends and colleagues (who are, indeed, a lot older now!) and reminiscing together.

One of the most encouraging moments I had during the luncheon took place when a lady I didn’t know came up to me and thanked me for a seminar I had done at her church a million years ago. I vaguely remembered the seminar. I remembered that things didn’t go the way the church’s leadership had expected, and that I ended up not being as involved with them as expected. It was an OK experience, but definitely not one that I would have included among the highlights of my career. I haven’t thought about it for years.

Apparently, the seeds that were sown that day produced way more fruit than I ever knew. So my new friend thanked me, and I went away encouraged.

And I was reminded, again, that God often does things through us that go way beyond anything we realize or expect. I know this is true. I’ve seen it often in my own life and in the ministry of others. But it’s easy to forget, and always good to be reminded again. Often, the lecture I gave that I thought was stuffy and uninteresting had an impact on someone that I didn’t know about until much later. Sometimes the sermon that felt unexciting ended up touching somebody in a way I didn’t plan. Often, the casual meeting and conversation that wasn’t expected and didn’t feel all that important actually had a real impact, only learned about much later.

Often, we never do hear about what God has done through some word or act of service. We’ll only find out when there’s an eternity to talk through all the ways He’s been good, when we gather together in heaven. 

I appreciated the reminder with its encouragement, and thought it would be good to pass it on to you. After all, I’m sure there are many times when we as individuals, and when we as a church together, share words and do acts of service and minister in other ways, and we wonder whether anything was really accomplished. Maybe we felt “flat.” Maybe we didn’t see the result right away. Maybe we were disappointed by the initial response, and maybe we’ve forgotten all about that conversation or act of ministry.

But be encouraged. More often than any of us realize, God has taken those words and acts and our presence in Jesus name, and He has used them to do things that go far beyond what we knew or hoped. Someone at Tuesday’s luncheon pointed to this by quoting from Isaiah 55:10-11, where God says: “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth, making it bud and flourish … so is my word that goes out from my mouth. It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”  This is true of God’s Word, for sure. And in my experience, it’s also true of acts of service by God’s people. He takes our little attempts at ministry and does things through them that go way beyond what we could plan or even know.

He will probably do that for some of us this week. I expect He’ll do it again in one or another of our ministries on Sunday. He’ll do it over and over, because that’s just how He works. And it’s very good, and very encouraging!  If you ever find yourself wondering if serving Him is worth it, keep that in mind. God doesn’t let our efforts at ministry come away empty.

On other fronts, for those who are looking ahead to Sunday, this week we’ll be considering the story of Noah. Since we’re in a sermon series on family, we’ll focus on the “family” part of the Noah story in 9:18-27.  If you have time and you want to review the larger Noah story for context, it runs from chapter 6 through 9, with some follow-up family tree info in chapter 10. It’s all good stuff. But if time is limited, the section in chapter 9 will keep you thinking.

Meanwhile, have a great week. And may God send encouragement your way this week, as He has for me. Blessings!

—Pastor Ken