By Rick Vacek
GCU News Bureau
Chad Moore has a way with words, and he used that skill to get another big Chapel turnout laughing and nodding their heads in agreement Monday morning. His message was simple: “You’re never more mature than when you give and when you serve.”
But the lead pastor of Sun Valley Community Church got his message across to the estimated crowd of 4,500 with a series of one-liners, such as:
- Our prayers tend to sound like the Spice Girls’ song “Wannabe,” which starts out, “I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want.”
- “You don’t really start to have a ‘mega-life’ until you start living for something bigger than yourself.” Focusing on your own wants and needs, he said, creates a “mini-life.”
- We tend to think only of “me, me, me, me, me” instead of focusing on doing God’s work. What we should be thinking instead is “He, He, He, He, He.”
- “You know what giving and serving is? It’s love with skin on it.”
Moore saved his most clever plays on words for his descriptions of Jesus, whom he called “God in the bod.” Turning the water into wine, he told the audience, was changing “H2O to merlot,” and healing the sick made Jesus the “Master of Molecules.”
After asking for a show of hands of people who have said to themselves “What was I thinking?” (which was just about everyone), Moore cited two passages from the book of Mark to drive home his point about how Jesus taught us to serve.
When Jesus told His disciples how He was going to die and rise from the dead and then James and John responded by saying, “Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory,” that was their “What was I thinking?” moment. But then Jesus used it as a teachable moment.
In Mark 10:43-45, He said, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”
Moore added, “Jesus Christ is not just nice, he’s brilliant. …When you’re reading the Bible, know that every time He talks, He is saying something brilliant.”
Moore noted that “serving is what makes life work, serving is what makes life possible,” and he pointed out that just as the Trinity works in concert, so does every part of the universe. It should be a lesson to all of us, he said.
It was the right message for the start of Global Outreach (GO) Week, and Moore didn’t mince words in his closing remarks:
“The more selfish and self-centered you are, the more miserable you will be,” he said. “Some people think Christian learning is all about Bible knowledge, but at some point you’ve got to apply it. Whether you realize it or not, that’s what your soul is longing for — to serve.”
Next week’s Chapel speaker will be Jeremy Jernigan of Central Christian Church.
Contact Rick Vacek at 639.8203 or [email protected].
