“Please listen to the following menu options, and then press or say the number that corresponds with your choice. You will need to have in your hand your Social Security card, a family Bible and family tree that contains all the names of your entire extended family for three generations, 54-digit account number and your eighth-grade locker combination. Even though you enter these now, we’ll ask you to repeat them over and over again, because even though you’ve been sending us truckloads of money every month for our services, we still have no idea who you are.
Jeff JohnsonIf at any time you wish to speak to a customer service representative …”
Electronic purgatory is real and drives me nuts. Sometimes I just need to get what I need when I need it.
This is true spiritually as well. As a Texas Baptist, when I need encouragement on my connection with God, I go to a group that is connected and helps me connect. Sandra Wisdom-Martin and her team at Texas Woman’s Missionary Union remind me each year I have a direct connection to God, and that makes all the difference.
Imagine you’ve called your insurance company in a panic and, lo, a person picks up the phone and it’s the CEO himself waiting and wanting to address your needs. How would that make you feel? That’s essentially what happens when Texas Baptists get us focused on prayer. That’s some serious personal contact. Texas WMU helps us focus and “keep the main thing the main thing.”
Sunday, Sept. 14 begins our annual emphasis on the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions. It begins with our Week of Prayer for State Missions, Sept. 14-21. I encourage you and your church to pray and sacrificially give to the Mary Hill Davis Offering. When you make contact, you will find there is indeed a menu, but it’s a menu of loaves and fishes, a menu in which Jesus says, “Ask ,and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened unto you.”
The good news for us is that we don’t have to wade through a myriad of messages and corporate minions in order to have access to Jesus himself. We bring our needs directly through prayer, and the CEO of the universe makes the connection with us.
Texas Baptists, we also can be the “real person” that makes all the difference in someone’s life.
As God’s customer service reps here on earth, shouldn’t we be as accessible? Let’s connect this year.
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Jeff Johnson is president of the Baptist General Convention of Texas and pastor of First Baptist Church in Commerce.
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