November 19th, 2007 by Pastor Matt

I just absolutely LOVE Christmas!  It’s before Thanksgiving and my wife and I already have our Christmas tree up!  I absolutely love it!  We have these wonderful double windows right out in front of our house and we put our tree front and center.  I was thinking last night about how people will drive by the house and see the Christmas tree in the window and know that we are celebrating Christ.  Then it came to me… no they’re not.  They’ll have no idea that we’re celebrating Christ… they’ll just think we’re celebrating Christmas, just like (basically) everyone else does.  Then I thought about that for a little bit longer.

What else am I misunderstanding?  Could it be possible that this system or program that we have set in place appears completely different when looked at from the outside?  Maybe a program that was designed to serve the community is, for some reason, appearing to be a gimmick.  People are bombarded with “You’ve Won $1,000,000!” mass mailers, why would they see our “Free Hotdog and Burgers!” sign and think there wasn’t a gimmick behind it.

Today, try to get outside of your processes, outside of your programs, and try to see what they could look like from another perspective.  Be on the outside, and look in.