When the team wins, the players get the credit, when they lose, the coach gets fired. That\u2019s the way it is in the sports world. Unfortunately, that attitude spills over into churches. I\u2019ve known of far too many friends, former students, acquaintances, who were terminated (or sometimes, simply encouraged to leave), not because they misinterpreted their call from God, nor because they were incompetent, nor because they were ineffective, but because things did not work out to the satisfaction of the followers (be that church family, deacons, personnel committee, or some power group\/person in the church). Granted there are situations where a minister, or a coach, needs to be assisted in moving on, but far too many are sent packing for wrong reasons. We ought not to need a special month to appreciate ministers, but October is \u201cMinister Appreciation Month.\u201d Your act of appreciation will please both the minister and God, as well as fulfill the admonition of Paul to, \u201cRecognize those who labor among you, and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and . . . esteem them very highly in love for their work\u2019s sake\u201d (I Thessalonians 5:12-13).<\/p>\n
Join me this week in praying for the following global concerns:
\n\u2022 Join in on the \u201c40 Days of Prayer for European Peoples\u201d through October 11.
\n\u2022 Give thanks for Eastern Hungary missionary Kimberly\u2019s successful surgery in September and pray for her as she continues to recover.
\n\u2022 Pray for Tom and others who will meet with Albanian believers to explore evangelism and church planting among Albanians in Italy.
\n\u2022 Pray for many and others who work among the Jewish people as they celebrate Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles) beginning on Oct.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When the team wins, the players get the credit, when they lose, the coach gets fired. That\u2019s the way it is in the sports world. Unfortunately, that attitude spills over into churches. I\u2019ve known of far too many friends, former students, acquaintances, who were terminated (or sometimes, simply encouraged to leave), not because they misinterpreted…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}