Vision Sunday 2026 - Pastor Tom Loghry
Pastor Tom outlines planned ministry efforts for the fall and offers clarity on when communion should be taken.
Transcript:
Galatians 3:26-28. So in Jesus, in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There's neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Let us pray. Dear Father, as we contemplate the things that are before us, as we head into this new year of ministry, and as we seek to be faithful to you, we just pray that you would unite our hearts together in Jesus Christ, and that you would fill us with the Spirit so that we would seek to walk in your ways and to glorify you in the life that we share here together. We ask all this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. You may be seated
So I believe this is our, our fifth year of having a Vision Sunday, because this past May marked five years that I've been here as your senior pastor. In those five years, I've learned a few things. I've learned the truth that many ideas can work, but it's the people, with God's blessings, who make them work. Otherwise, they're just ideas. I've learned that sometimes you get mixed results, because people and our life in this ever-changing world, everything is complicated. Sometimes we need to just persevere and, and not spin the new wheel of ideas. But above all, I've learned that ministry is not about numbers or doing things at scale.
Ministry, yours and mine, is about being faithful. Faithful even in smallness. This learned wisdom has shaped my outlook in forming a vision for our church ministry entering this fall. And I don't want you to be under the impression that I think that this is the end-all be-all. I, I know that it isn't. And there are other things that I'm thinking about and working through that aren't going to be mentioned here.
There's gonna be plenty, plenty for you to, to think about. And we're gonna be communicating more in the next few weeks ahead so you don't have to try to keep it all together in your head. But I am setting a vision before you that, if followed, I think will help us stay faithful. Faithful in our pursuit of knowing God and making him known to others, which is the mission of our church.
So there's three particular areas that I think we should be emphasizing entering into this fall. Emphasizing evangelism in fellowship, embracing collaboration, and also explaining communion with care. We're gonna work through the, those three sections. The reality is is that our church has a call. Not only to gather here and to learn about God for ourselves, we have a call to bring the gospel to the people of Scituate, to the people of Rhode Island.
That's certainly a call that's upon my life, but it is not only my call. And there's a trap that we can fall into, and I think part of it might be because of kind of the Roman Catholic culture that we're part of, the, where that seems like that's the priest's job, and it's not necessarily the job of the people in the pews.
But the reality is, is that if the growth of this church is dependent solely on me, we will come up well short. I don't know near enough people to reach out to in my life to bring people into this church, to help us grow as a community. The reality is, is that if this grows, if this, if this church is going to grow, if this church is going to flourish, it really depends on you reaching out to others and inviting them to taste and see, to come and know Jesus Christ for themselves.
And so this, this really kind of weighed upon me maybe six months ago, and I began thinking about that. Well, what, what's a, a really simple thing that I could do to try to invite you to make that commitment for yourselves? And it occurred to me that maybe rather than starting up some long-running program, if we could just every quarter gather together for a meal in which I might share some small resources with you to help equip you to be able to share the gospel with others.
But even more important than that, 'cause, I mean, if you really want to, you can find lots of things online. I'll, I'll, I'll offer you resources. But more than that, to, at that time, for that quarter commit that I'm going to identify three people in my life that I'm gonna pray for. I'm gonna pray that God would open up their hearts so that they might receive the gospel, so that they would know Jesus Christ.
That God would prepare me to be able to share the gospel with them, that he'd open up doors for that to occur. And then that's it. Just one meal each quarter to make that covenant, to make that commitment, and then seeing what God will do with that faithfulness. And truly, I mean, I'm hoping it's gonna be more than one person, but if it's just me and one other person, I'll be glad for that because there will be an increase of those that are committing to share the gospel with others.
So we're calling these meals Gospel Ambassador Meals, and the first one's going to be coming up on September 20th. It's just gonna be really simple, like pizza, you know, some drinks, chips, things like that. We're keeping it basic 'cause the real purpose is to gather to commit ourselves to sharing our faith with others.
Another thing that we struggle with here in New England, it's not a thing that's exclusive to our church, it's a New England issue, is the virtue of hospitality. Opening up our homes and lives to others. And this is something that I've personally struggled with. I think as long as I've been here, Sara and I have probably talked about how we wanna be better with this, and it's just been so difficult to find kind of the practical handholds for getting there 'cause our lives are busy. All of your lives are busy. And so I began thinking several months ago of what would it look like for us to try to make kind of a baby step in that direction, to try to be a more hospitable congregation beyond the Sunday morning. And I was inspired because I went to a pastors' summit in Alton Bay, New Hampshire, and one of the leaders there shared about a ministry that they're, they do at their church, which welcomes people into each other's homes.
And what he encouraged us is, you know, don't feel like you have to do a copy and paste thing, but think about how this might look in your church. And so I began thinking, their church is much larger than our church. They have several groups where 30 people meet all together in one home. I'm like, "Wow." Like, that's incredible. Just to even have a home that's big enough to like, could hold 30, 30 people. So I began thinking, "Well, what would that look like for us?" I think, I think it could really look like one group, and I think it could look like that group, if it's smaller, gathering in my home, or gathering here in the church. If you got to 30, 30, 30 people won't fit, fit in there, but we could gather here in, in the fellowship hall downstairs, and just doing that once a month. And so in keeping kind of with the verbiage that we've been using, you know, we've called Sermon Circle, Children's Circle, I said, I decided let's just stick with that theme and we'll call this Supper Circle. The first one we're gonna have is gonna be on September 9th. It's just once a month on a Wednesday, 6:30 PM. Some of you might already be here for prayer, so, and if, you don't have to find some place to go during that half hour, you can just come hang, hang out with us. But we're just gonna do this once a month, and the key is, is that we wanna be able to coordinate with others who're gonna be part of this group to bring meals, to really be committed to being at the group.
So we're gonna have a sign-up for a couple of weeks, and then this is just gonna go away. I'm not gonna even include it in the announcements. So if you can't do it, I'm not gonna be clouding up your head space with, with thinking about that. But for those of you that really wanna be part of this, we wanna invite you to be intentionally part of it.
We're gonna share a meal together, and then have a time of kind of family devotion afterwards. So not like a full-out Bible study, but maybe tapping into some of what I, I do with my own family. And it's something that if you're interested in joining, you know, a couple months in, and you reach out to me, you're welcome to do that.
And it's something that we wanna use as an opportunity to maybe invite people to the circle of the church who might be initially uncomfortable coming to a church service. That's one of the things that this leader shared was that actually, these groups had been kind of an inroad for people that wouldn't darken the doorstep of a church, but they would come over someone's house to share in a meal.
So we certainly wanna be open to that also. So that's what we're gonna be doing to try to cultivate a spirit of, of hospitality here at the church. We will have our women's small groups that are going to be continuing to meet. That's gonna be starting up the week of September 15th.
Although, the Zoom group is gonna start on the 29th because of a scheduling issue with, with Becky. And Becky wanted me to let you know that she's, she's not here this morning 'cause she's helping Atticus move back to college. So she's very much committed to this, leading this group. We're gonna have an in-person group on Monday at 10:00 AM here at the church, and then you have the 7:00 PM group the same, that same evening.
And I believe that group usually ends its kind of quarter of small group ministry with an in-person meal, right? So that's a nice, nice touch to kinda balance out the online and the in-person. So we have sign-ups for those in the back, and I encourage you to, to sign up for those, ladies. With our men's ministry, we're shifting in a new direction.
I have to say, I think in the past couple years our small group ministry among the men has not thrived in the way that I hoped it would, and my sense is that the men who do participate have been discouraged by this. And so this fall we're gonna try some new things. We're gonna experiment. If they don't go well then we'll try something else, but we're gonna try some, some new things.
And the new thing that we're gonna try is trying to collaborate with a neighboring church. As many of you know, I've been kind of creating a bit of a network with the other local pastors here in our northern part of the state, and I've, I've become really close with Lime Baptist Church, probably in no small part 'cause I play for their softball team.
But I'm really good friends with Pastor David Harden there, and he's a, he's a great man of God. That's a picture of him and his wife Brianna, and Thalia, and Eden, and they have an, they just had a newborn daughter, Naomi, who's not in the picture. But you can see they're not a huge church. They're a small church like us.
But they've been doing some great things with their men's ministry. Got together with him earlier in the month and just said, "Hey, is, is there a way we could work together?" And it was something that he's interested in, and he says that his church is interested in, in that, which is really important 'cause we've tried to do collaborative things with other churches before where the pastor was in but the people weren't necessarily in.
And so there's several things that are on the table here with this collaboration. The first is a monthly men's outing. David already has a man in his church who does organize some outings like that, and this camping trip is one of those things. And they'll go do things like hiking, maybe shoot skeet, camping, all sorts of, all sorts of different things just for whoever's able to come.
You know, we know it, these activities aren't going to be a good fit for all the guys. He said, honestly, like, one time he went to a hike gathering, it was him, him and the guy that organized it. And I was like, "Well, I know what that's like. That, that, that kind of thing happens to us as a church too." And so, but we had this idea that, you know, bringing our men together, we, we would just make these outings even more fun, and, and they're great guys to get together with.
And so we're gonna be joining them on those outings and working together with them on that. Another thing that LBC is doing is they, they offer a men's Bible study, which is really a book study. They're not studying like a book of the Bible. And they offer that on, 8, at 8:30 AM on Saturdays, every other Saturday, kind of the similar pattern that we follow.
It actually starts on this camping trip, but there's no problem with you joining later 'cause I know not all the guys here are up for, are, for camping. So the next, the, the real kind of practical first time will be September 26th. And we're gonna be working through a book called Serving Christ in the Workplace: Secular Work as Full-Time Service by Larry Peabody.
The description of the book is, "Bored and frustrated with your work? Do you feel like you're a second-class citizen in God's kingdom because you're not a pastor or a missionary? Here's a how-to manual on finding fulfillment in the work God has given you. Peabody focuses on changing your attitude towards, attitude towards what you do, not in changing what you do."
And so I'm going to be going to these Bible studies. I imagine I'm going to be taking part in leading some of them. Dave and I were talking about how we wanna get other guys involved with leading them. And they're gonna be hosted at Line Baptist Church. So, and if you don't know where Line Baptist Church is, it's, it's called Line Baptist because it's right on the border between Rhode Island and Connecticut off Cucumber Hill Road.
So we'll be gathering there for men's Bible study on Saturdays at 8:30 AM. And then the last piece, and this is kind of really our contribution here to this equation here, is having what we're gonna call a monthly men's guild. And this idea came to mind as I began reflecting on the success of the Pastors' Summit that I organized for our Advent Christian pastors at Alton Bay.
Not all of you are aware that I did that, but we had about 34 pastors come together, and the philosophy of that summit gathering was we really wanted to create that to be a space of fellowship, of worship, and also for a kind of forum discussion. So more than just someone teaching at you, but actually someone presenting and then encouraging conversation among everyone on the topic.
And so here is a gathering of our men from both churches every month first starting here at, at RCC, and we'll have a forum discussion on some topic, talk for about 15 minutes, and then we open it up to discussion to the rest of the men. We'll have a meal together, and we'll probably sing one or two songs, and then end the time just in breakout groups of, of prayer.
So we'll, the first month we'll be at RCC. In October, we'll gather at Line Baptist, and then it'll switch back to RCC. So that's the basic rundown of the new things that we're gonna be doing this, this fall. And obviously there's a number of options, and we have the signups in the back there, and I encourage you to sign up for these things.
And the, and the reason why we are providing these things is for you to be able to have an opportunity to dig in deeper beyond the Sunday service. And again, these are often really great avenues to bring other people into the life of the church beyond the Sunday morning service.
There is one more thing that I felt I wanted to explain to you before we begin implementing some change, and that's with explaining communion with, with care. Over the past six months, I began to really grapple with my responsibility as your pastor, my responsibility to give you clear instructions about who should partake in communion. Now, I've always emphasized that it is a meal for those who have faith in Christ, but I've honestly felt short, especially since we do this every week, by not also explaining that if you have Christ, that you should be baptized first before you begin partaking in the meal.
And I've, I've told that to a few people individually, but it's a little cumbersome to just wait till, you know, someone starts partaking in the meal and then go to them and say, "Actually, you should stop before you get baptized." It'd be better just to be upfront and cl- and offer clear communication and teaching from the outset.
When we look at the scriptures, we see how closely faith and baptism are tied together. We consider in Acts 2:41-42, after Peter's gospel message on the day of Pentecost, it says that those who accepted his message were baptized. Follows right, more or less immediately after. When we look to Galatians 3:26-28, as was read previously, we see the relationship between faith and baptism.
So in Christ Jesus, you are all children of God through faith. Certainly, yes. For all of you who are baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. When we see the New Testament talking about faith, it's never separate from baptism. It's assumed that the two go hand in hand and it's also assumed that if, if, if you've been baptized, then you have faith and that's, and this is why our church does, does not practice infant baptism.
Baptism is the visible manifestation of one's faith and their union with Christ. It confirms that they're a member of Christ's body. And, and so we see that there's this, this equal parallel between, we have this visible testimony of faith and baptism, and then we have this visible token of assurance in this meal, this assurance that, that we are saved, that we are united with Christ and with our fellow believers.
In Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, we find his well-known instructions on communion in chapter 11. And when we read that passage in light of the chapters and verses that precede it, it becomes clear that Paul understands the church as being those who have confessed their faith and been baptized.
So we look, first Paul, in opening his letter, addresses the Church of God in Corinth in chapter 1. And then we look at 1 Corinthians 10, verses 16 through 17. He says, "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? Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf." So the question is this: well, how do you become a member of that body? 1 Corinthians 12:13, "... baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body." And the baptism that's speaking, that's being spoken of here is baptism in the Holy Spirit.
But again, this is something that we don't see normatively separated from water baptism. When Peter, again in his message on the day of Pentecost, offers an invitation to the, those who are listening to him, he says, "Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."
So it's repent, believe, be baptized, you receive the Holy Spirit, you're a part of the body of Christ. And so by the time you get to 1 Corinthians 11, we again see clearly that the you here, the people that Paul is addressing, are people baptized in the Spirit. He's talking to the church, and so he says "I hear that when you come together as a church," and then he expresses his concern. So it's these just indications that we have, and they also have writings and tradition of, of the church.
And one of the earliest of them being the Didache. And the Didache was a well-known early text of Christian instruction that is sometimes dated within the first century AD. And in the Didache we find a very clear statement along these lines. It says, "But let no one eat or drink of your thanksgiving," Eucharist, communion, "but they who have been baptized into the name of the Lord. For concerning this also the Lord has said, 'Give not that which is holy to the dogs.'" So you won't, when you turn to the scriptures, you won't find baptism before communion explicitly commanded in the New Testament. There's no proof text for that. But it is clearly assumed. The apostles could not have fathomed any confession of faith that was not promptly followed up by baptism.
And so if it was acceptable for those who are not yet baptized to take, to partake in this meal, we would've expected to find some stream of this tradition in the historical record. But the record instead indicates that baptism before communion was the assumed norm and universal expectation. Now, this does not exclude the possibility of salvation before a person is baptized.
You think of the, the thief on the cross. Guy didn't get a chance to be baptized. Is he saved? Absolutely. But it does remind us that the communion meal has always been carefully stewarded by the church to not only, to, to only include those who have been physically joined to the body of Christ in baptism. And when we care for the meal, we care for others by encouraging them to openly profess their faith and see them baptized as the Lord desires.
So with that in mind, I'm going to be clearer in my invitation moving forward, inviting those who have faith and have been baptized to partake in the meal. And because we celebrate communion every week, we have produced cards, which, I don't know that they've been set out yet, but we've produced cards to help orient those who are new to the church so they're not caught by surprise or blindsided or, or they don't know what they should do when we begin sharing in communion.
Now, I have to say the explanatory text is a bit smaller than I hoped it would be, so we might have to do a, a reprint with a little bit larger print on it. But in the meantime, I'm hoping that this will be helpful for people that show up at our church for the first time. And my hope and desire, which I believe that you share, is that we will f- faithfully lead people closer to Christ, bringing them deeper in the faith, help them, helping them to walk in obedience to His ways.
God has been faithful to us. He's been so faithful to us. He's been faithful to us from, from our founding. I mean, we've been around for 184 years, and he's inviting us to be faithful to him in all things. So I invite you to share in this vision. I invite you to share ideas that you have.
I know, ladies, I didn't have as much, like, new things for you, and it's, it's because I, I don't wanna suppose that I necessarily have all the insights in that regard. And so I wanna invite your insights and, and ideas so that our church can truly flourish. Um, I invite you to share in the faith, the trust, that a ministry of faithfulness will bear fruit in God's good time.
Let's pray
Dear Father
We submit all the things that have been brought forward to this, this day to your will. If it be your will, Father, we pray that these efforts of bringing our people together, that these efforts of discipleship, that these efforts to reach out to others, that they would flourish, that they would bring forth good fruit.
We pray, Father, that you would stir within us a desire to commit ourselves to sharing in your work, to sharing in the goodness that you offer to us as we participate in the life of this body, in the life of this church family.
Father, we pray that you would give us wisdom and discernment in ordering our, our days and weeks. That for those who are leading these ministries, Father, that you would give us wisdom in, in knowing when changes should be made. We pray all together, God, that you would guide us. Guide us so that we can be obedient to you, so that we can be useful to you, so that we can bring in a bountiful harvest
Father, we pray that you would be glorified in us as your church. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Hey there, Pastor Tom here. I hope you enjoyed this sermon I offered to Rockland Community Church. Rockland Community Church is located at 212 Rockland Road in North Scituate, Rhode Island, just around the bend from the Scituate Public High School. We invite you to join us in person or virtually this Sunday as we worship God together. It's our joy to welcome you into our community
Intro/Outro Song
Title: River Meditation
Artist: Jason Shaw
Source:http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Jason_Shaw/Audionautix_Acoustic/RIVER_MEDITATION___________2-58
License:(CC BY 3.0 US)