We’ve been talk­ing about plan­ning for the past ten days now. If you missed any of the other posts (or just want to review them), you can find all the posts in this series by sim­ply click­ing “Plan­ning” under “Cat­e­gories” on the right side of the screen. So far, we have talked about deter­min­ing our pri­or­i­ties from Scrip­ture and prayer and plan­ning our year by plan­ning out a typ­i­cal week. This helps us to ful­fill the Great Com­mis­sion to make dis­ci­ples who can make dis­ci­ples by redeem­ing the time. Then we gave some sug­ges­tions for plan­ning daily times of wor­ship and sug­gested some good books to read on your own or with oth­ers this year.

Today we want to help you plan how you will serve God and oth­ers in 2012. Paul tells us, “And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due sea­son we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have oppor­tu­nity, let us do good to every­one, and espe­cially to those who are of the house­hold of faith” (Gal. 6:9–10). We should not serve to earn God’s favor; we already have His favor through faith in Christ. We should not serve to impress oth­ers; that is sin­ful self-service. Rather, our ser­vice should be done out of grat­i­tude for what God has done for us in the per­son and work of Jesus, and done with the moti­va­tion of express­ing love to God and others.

With that foun­da­tion, here are some ideas (sorted by cat­e­gory) to help you think through how God might be call­ing you to serve this year:

1. Doing Good to Every­one — Espe­cially Believ­ers. We have the respon­si­bil­ity to serve all kinds of peo­ple, as Scrip­ture makes abun­dantly clear. But God also teaches that we have a par­tic­u­lar respon­si­bil­ity to care for other believ­ers — help­ing them to grow spir­i­tu­ally and tak­ing care of real needs. The Book of Acts shows that when we take care of one another as we are called to do, it is a very pow­er­ful wit­ness to the world. Our care for other Chris­tians should start in the local church. Are you a mem­ber of a healthy local church? If not, con­sider join­ing New Life this spring. There are lots of ways to serve believ­ers through our local church, includ­ing on Sun­day evenings (Truth and Grace, preschool, hos­pi­tal­ity, wor­ship team) and through­out the week (bib­li­cal coun­sel­ing, lead­er­ship devel­op­ment, dis­ci­pling of new believ­ers, and more).

2. Doing Good to Every­one — the Poor, the Orphan, and the Widow. Our first respon­si­bil­ity as Chris­tians is to serve other Chris­tians, and the peo­ple who should be thought of first but are often thought of last (if at all) are the poor, the orphan, and the widow. We have both mem­bers and reg­u­lar guests at New Life who fit these cat­e­gories in a lit­eral sense, and oth­ers who fit them in a fig­u­ra­tive sense. I had the priv­i­lege of meet­ing a lit­tle girl just a few weeks ago who lives with her mother but is not cared for phys­i­cally, emo­tion­ally, or spir­i­tu­ally like she should be. We have both mar­ried moms and sin­gle moms who aren’t lit­eral wid­ows, but their husband’s work sched­ule or divorce has left them as func­tional wid­ows. In our com­mu­nity, we have mul­ti­ple avenues to part­ner with local and inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tions to help the poor, the orphan, and the widow. You can see a list of these orga­ni­za­tions on our Serve the City page and our Mis­sions and Church Plant­ing page.

3. Doing Good to Every­one — non-Christians.  The Great Com­mis­sion informs us that we need to be giv­ing our lives to make dis­ci­ples who can make more dis­ci­ples for God’s glory. In some way, every one of us should be involved in the lives of non-believers, serv­ing them and shar­ing the Good News of Jesus with them. This can include serv­ing our lost chil­dren at home, serv­ing the lost who attend events like cor­po­rate wor­ship, Life Group meet­ings, or Ele­ments Classes, and serv­ing the lost in our com­mu­nity. Many of our mem­bers got involved in the lives of non-Christians by see­ing a need and seek­ing to meet it. We have mem­bers who are min­is­ter­ing in local schools, to the home­less, to teenage moms and their kids, to wid­ows, and in many other ways. Non-Christians with real phys­i­cal, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual needs are all around us — we sim­ply have to choose a per­son or peo­ple to serve and get started.

Through­out the years, peo­ple have asked, “Why doesn’t New Life have a pro­gram for _____________?” Our under­stand­ing from Scrip­ture is that the lead­ers of the church and the church as an insti­tu­tion exist to equip the saints for the work of the min­istry (Eph. 4:11–16). We want to give you the tools you need to get the job done. The tools can be bib­li­cal train­ing, money, vol­un­teers, or many other things, but our hope is that our peo­ple would be about the work of the min­istry in their every­day lives. If you have a pas­sion to serve either inside or out­side the church but aren’t sure how to get started, we’d love to help you. Con­tact us and let us know what we can do to bet­ter equip you to serve in 2012.

For the past week now, we’ve been talk­ing about plan­ning and actu­ally doing the hard work of plan­ning how we will spend 2012. Today, I’d like to help you think through what you might read this year. Not every­one is reader, and that’s ok. You don’t have to read a book a week  (or a month, or a quar­ter) in order to be a godly Chris­t­ian. Books can be used by God to help us under­stand what the Bible says and to help us apply it to our lives. Keep in mind that Jesus never applauded any­one for know­ing what the Bible says, but for doing what the Bible says.

Con­sider Matthew 23:1–7: “Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples,“The scribes and the Phar­isees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe what­ever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not prac­tice. They tie up heavy bur­dens, hard to bear,and lay them on people’s shoul­ders, but they them­selves are not will­ing to move them with their fin­ger. They do all their deeds to be seen by oth­ers. For they make their phy­lac­ter­ies broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the syn­a­gogues and greet­ings in the mar­ket­places and being called rabbi by others.”

In other words, Jesus is not upset that the Phar­isees have good the­ol­ogy. In fact, He is happy about that — He tells the peo­ple to do and observe what they say. But He crit­i­cizes them because they preach truth but don’t prac­tice truth. They are hypocrites.

Our goal should not be merely to increase our knowl­edge of God, but to increase our knowl­edge of God so that we might increase our wor­ship and obe­di­ence to God. With that said, here a few books I believe you should plan to read this year:

1. The Bible. If you have time for one book, this is it. Again, here is Justin Taylor’s list of great Bible read­ing plans for 2012.

2. Total Church by Steve Tim­mis and Tim Chester. Steve and Tim do as good a job as any­one artic­u­lat­ing the impor­tance of the Gospel and com­mu­nity in the con­text of the local church, and they do it in a very acces­si­ble man­ner. I love how they call the church to really be the church rather than Chris­tians sim­ply lean­ing on paid pro­fes­sion­als to do the work of the ministry.

3. Gen­er­ous Jus­tice by Tim Keller. Far from another book attempt­ing to guilt you into serv­ing the poor and mar­gin­al­ized, Keller shows from Scrip­ture that God’s grace should lead us to give up our lives to serve those whose lives are neg­a­tively affected by injus­tice in our world.

4. You Can Change by Tim Chester. Obvi­ously, I like guys named “Tim.” My friend Jacob Van­Horn said that this book should really be called “You Can’t Change” because Chester does such a great job of show­ing how God alone can change our hearts and lives through the power of His Holy Spirit. If you are strug­gling to under­stand what the Gospel has to do with your daily life and daily strug­gles, this is the book for you.

If you are look­ing for some sug­ges­tions to read with oth­ers, let me sug­gest a title or two for each type of per­son you might be read­ing with:

1. Devel­op­ing Lead­ers — I’ve read plenty of lead­er­ship devel­op­ment books, and I’ve appre­ci­ated many of them. But I think Dave Kraft’s short paper­back, Lead­ers Who Last, is just the best book for Chris­t­ian lead­ers of any kind. And if you own a Kin­dle, you can down­load it for $1.99. Crazy.

2. Matur­ing Chris­tians — many matur­ing Chris­tians want to learn to dis­ci­ple oth­ers, but they aren’t sure where to begin. If you are plan­ning to meet with some­one in this cat­e­gory, I don’t think you can beat Colin Mar­shall and Tony Payne’s The Trel­lis and the Vine. It’s finally avail­able in paper­back this year!

3. New Christians/Non-Christians — for new Chris­tians, I think Greg Gilbert’s book, What is the Gospel? is an excel­lent choice. Pas­tor Jason will be teach­ing through this book again in our Spring Ele­ments Classes, which will begin in March. If you are plan­ning to read through a book with a non-Christian, I’d rec­om­mend Mike McKinley’s new book, Am I Really a Chris­t­ian? In our con­text, many non-Christians have grown up with some Chris­t­ian expe­ri­ence and may even claim to be Chris­tians. While Gilbert’s  book can be a good choice in this case as well, I think McKinley’s book could be even better.

I hope these sug­ges­tions will help you out this year. Happy read­ing (and applying)!