by Pastor Tim White
One of Jesus’ most powerful statements was “To love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind. And then the second is equal to the first love your neighbor as yourself.” It is so exciting to love our Lord more and more. To deepen our love of His Word. To enjoy worshiping him and feeling the stress, worry, and self-centeredness all bend to the power of God working in us. But Jesus makes the point that it is equally important - to love your neighbor as yourself. You can’t authentically love God without loving the people that He loves. If you are in a family and you love your parents, then you need to love the other children in the family that your parents love. The Apostle John put it this way. “Beloved let us love one another because love is of God and everyone that loves loveth God.” 1 John 4:7-8.
As you might know, when I was 17 years old, I had a vision for my life of trying to build the greatest caring network the world has ever seen. To me that was the local church. It could be efficient because it was hands on. When we help the homeless or support a school in Kenya or Honduras, we know the names of the kids. We love them and they love us. It is face to face. The blanket approach of many organizations really reflects our times. Because most people would like to give their gifts in a “fire-off and forget” way, like a missile or something. But it is so powerful when the people you are helping get in your heart and you are loving them as you would yourself. Our mission to try and build a great caring network has seen every one of our dreams fulfilled. And even though we are much smaller than we were, we are still very effective with the people that God loves. And it is fun.
Now the corona-virus pandemic has struck, it is an event like WW2 or the Great Depression that will define our generation. The world is changing fast. And the landscape of Christianity is going to change under the pressure of churches being forced, by logic and by governmental direction, to close-down all public gatherings. When this was rumored to strike our society our staff and church leaders began to envision transforming our church to meet the challenges. We launched our weekly worship on-line on multiple platforms. Eliot is doing a great job innovating the program and our staff has really enjoyed working together closer than ever. Our attendance is over a thousand a week and finances have miraculously responded in a healthy way. Tiny Little Churches which have always made up our church have converted to on-line meeting with the ability to draw broader audience than ever. The staff has responded by spending much of their week calling the friends of Washington Cathedral and keeping contact with our precious church family. And we have actually grown closer as a church while reaching an unprecedented number of new families.
God is remaking our landscape. Our church will be better because of this time. So, let me give you a picture of the new improved Great Caring Network.
1. Worship is continuing to grow in quality and quantity. The heart of any church is worship. Our worship is growing into the mold that God has created for us. And there is a need for a positive Christ Centered Faith to Share.
2. In the two weeks following Easter we will be launching the WAC Live Channel that will be made up of Bible Stories for Kids, Bible Classes for adults, Worship and Prayer times with Rhonda, Meditation and Music with Eliot. Discipleship Class, Book Clubs etc. We have lots of ideas and we will have to roll them out slowly, but I wish you could hear all the creativity. WAC Live is going to be innovative and far reaching.
3. A Focus on Discipleship. This was the way we started the church and had such unprecedented growth. We are back to discipleship. Imagine if we can have at least 24 disciples willing to disciple others that we will eventually reach exponential growth as the movement that is reaching the world with the good news of Jesus Christ.
4.Continuing and expanding faithfully with all of our Charity Alliance commitments. Face to Face establishes a transformational base. We continue to sponsor 100 children who are the poorest of the poor. We will build new wells, new schools, new medical brigades, new construction brigades to do the work of the heart of Jesus. And locally we will hold tough continuing to provide food for the homeless in Tent City 4. We will dive into the task of making masks and giving encouragement to front line heroes in this battle against this pandemic. There is so much we can do together.
5. Each One Reach One. If our members continue to be caring Christians, we can all reach out to our neighbors from a safe distance because never has there been a time in our lives to better reach out with loving our neighbors as ourselves.
It is an exciting and fun time. Let’s move ahead with the opportunity of this breakthrough. Let’s show the world a love they cannot resist. And let’s have fun doing it.
Your Friend for the Rest of My Life,
Tim White
