Church Directory Letter

As you know, we are in the midst of putting together a new pictorial church directory. I’d like to give a special “thank you” to everyone who has taken the time (and in some cases even endured the “more than direct” sales pitch) to have your picture taken. I also would like to say “thank you” to Charlene Mummau, our staff member who undertook much of the responsibility. For the directory I was asked to write an introductory letter to go in the front of the booklet. Below is a “pre-screening” of my directory letter:

Dear Grace Church Family,

Why even bother having a church directory? The answer is so simple, yet so profound. People matter to God! That’s the answer to the question! As a result, they need to matter to us as well. That is what this church directory is all about. Its pages are full of families and faces. Each person represented by name and by picture matters to God. As a result, each person involved in these pages needs to matter to each one of us as well.

In a larger church, it becomes more difficult to communicate this principle. It is easy to become just a face in the crowd. It is our hope and it is my fervent prayer that here at Grace Church people will know from their first drive onto our property that they matter to us. It is only then that we can effectively communicate to them how much they also matter to God.

Remember the old television sitcom called, “Cheers”? It was a show about a bunch of losers who regularly visited a Boston bar. The biggest loser of them all was a man named “Norm.” Yet, every time Norm walked into that bar, everyone stopped their conversation and they all yelled in unison the greeting, “N-O-R-M!” Remember the theme song to that show? The chorus of it went like this:

Sometimes you want to go
Where everybody knows your name,
And they're always glad you came;
You want to be where you can see,
Our troubles are all the same;
You want to be where everybody knows your name.

I can’t help but think that this would be a good theme song for our church. My prayer is that Grace Church will be that place in your life where “everybody knows your name” and “they’re always glad you came!” With this end in mind, my prayer is that this directory will help each of us to accomplish this goal. As we use it to place names with faces and even use it as a daily prayer and encouragement tool, may people who the Lord brings to Grace Church realize that they matter to us because they matter to God!

Glad your part of the family!