Turning your Bibles this morning to Romans chapter 11. We're gonna take a, a one Sunday break from our study of First Timothy and this morning we'll be spending our time at the very end of Romans chapter 11, and we'll look at the 1st 8 verses of Romans 12., this is, like Mike has already said, this is our kickoff Sunday. Most people are back from their vacations at this point, and the summer being over, and then September is the month where so many of our ministries start ramping up and and and getting started. Our Sunday school ministry, our Ana ministry, children's church ministry.
our youth ministry, men's Bible study, and our various women's Bible studies, as well as, our care group ministries. These are just some of the ministries that are starting up in, in September. So, we like to use this particular Sunday of September to, to, to think a little bit about doing church and to gather our thoughts around God's word along those lines. So that's what I want to do with the time that we have, today.
And if you want to give a title to what we're going to be talking about, it would be this, what you can do to help this church, all right, we need to help. And you probably already knew that. and we can use your help. And perhaps you are interested in doing what you can to be a help to this church, and today I want to give you 9 things from God's word that you can do that would really be a great help to us.
Now for our church to become everything that God wants it to be, for any local church to be everything God wants it to be, work needs to be done. In fact, in Ephesians chapter 4, we learned that Christ gave apostles and prophets and evangelists and pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, that's you for the work of the ministry. And that word that is translated work there is the Greek word we get our English word energy from. So to work, as you probably already know, means to expend energy....