Prayer for Zion Church

Jesus, Lord of the Church, give to the preacher grace to preach your word in truth despite my brokenness.  We pray that in everything, you would increase and we would decrease.  

As a church we ask for your forgiveness and your healing for our past and present sins.  Especially for forgiveness where we have not embodied you, the Lord of the Church, and have been a scandal or a stumbling block for those who seek to believe.  Forgive us for not giving to others the same grace and mercy you have shown to us, even to the point of death on a cross for us.  Forgive us that at times, we are apt to make our worship more about what we like than about giving you the praise and glory and honor and unity that are rightly do to you, our Lord, God and King.  

Restore us, we pray and equip us to better serve you in everything we do and in every situation into which you send us daily.  Move us to forgive as we have been forgiven and to be merciful as you have shown us mercy.  

Give us a passion to glorify you, Lord, in every aspect of what we do together and independently.  Teach us to be

a people focused on you and to desire you above everything else.  Help us to do what you want, to love what you love, to desire what you desire.  Make us to grow in love for you and for others.  Teach us to be patient, make us wise through your word, and strengthen us to be dauntless and courageous in doing what is right and pleases you.

May Zion Church be the catalyst for an epidemic of righteousness in this city.  May your word move us mightily into action in such a way that hearts and lives and eternities in this city are changed.  We pray especially that the special relationships with the Muslim community you have given us would lead many to follow you.  

May we be a church together where the lonely find community, the outcasts find  acceptance and understanding, the sick find healing, the addicted and the prisoners find true and lasting freedom, where the hungry are fed, the needy are clothed, the homeless find a home, and the thirsty find satisfying drink.  Let us be a place where streams of living waters flow forth and water a dry and thirsty land.  

We are a Church of many people:  People from Iowa and elsewhere in America, from Burma and Iraq, Congo and Liberia, South Sudan and other places.  We are people of every generation, station, and ability.  We pray in many languages and many ways but we seek our unity in you, Jesus.  Grant us grace to overcome all that divides us and make out of many, one holy people, a church of priests to serve our God.

We ask for the unity of all the congregations in our city that the unbelieving world would see that there is only one church in Des Moines and that that church belongs to Jesus and is truly the enfleshment of his body.  

Bless and keep our elected leaders and those who have authority over us in our nation, state, county and city.  Inform and guide their decisions by your mighty hand and may the laws they pass be for the good of all.  May justice and mercy be our goal and may righteousness and peace be the result.  

We pray that you meet all our needs.  Please give us neither too much nor too little so that we can pay our bills and help the poor.  Move us to give with kind and generous hearts so that people might see you as kind and generous.  Raise up leaders and helpers among us to do the work you have set before us. 

May our children grow up to love and serve you.  May parents lead their children to godliness and holiness.  Be pleased to fill all of us with your Holy Spirit and may signs and wonders be seen every day among us.

May we embody, you, Jesus, may we truly be your body.  May the people of Zion truly embody your grace and forgiveness and redemption.  May we be bold proclaimers of your word, your will, your way.  May we be doers as well as hearers of your word.  

All these things we pray in the matchless and mighty name of Jesus of Nazareth, Christ, Messiah, Lord of all.  Amen. 

Welcome to 2014 at Zion Church

Welcome 2014!  Welcome to 2014 at Zion Church!

This promises to be one of the most exciting years in the history of our church.  God is on the move and many miraculous and wonderful things are happening right before our eyes.

The most obvious is the fulfillment of Psalm 99:2, which says, “Great is the Lord in Zion
 he is exalted over all the nations.”  This year Zion truly becomes the place “where nations worship” as we become a church that worships weekly in four languages and prays in over ten.  Beginning February 2, Zion will add a Swahili service concurrent with our English 10:30 a.m. service on Sunday mornings.  The new Swahili service will be led by Pastor Gakunzi Ntwieri with whom we’ve been sharing fellowship and worship for over a year.  Every third Sunday the Swahili and English services will worship together.  We believe that after a year or two of keeping this schedule, the two services will merge into one.  And that is really exciting.  

One of the things that makes Zion different is our commitment to be one church together and not four separate groups sharing space and expenses.  The vision we have been given by God is that our future is not in separate services by language, but in united services where people from every imaginable background and generation and ability can worship the Lord as a single body together.  We believe this brings joy to our Mutual Master, Jesus Christ, and is a fulfillment of his prayer that we “should be one” as he and the Father are one.  

Our biggest challenge as a church is to find ways to share life and worship together as a united body.  We know it is not an easy task to bring so many different ethnicities together but we believe that He whom we love and all have in common is greater than any of the multitude of things that divide us.  We believe that our diversity makes us stronger, not weaker, and that it is “for such a time as this” that God placed us all here, to be a witness to the unifying power of the gospel.  

Greater than any challenge we face are the many opportunities that we’ve been given as a church to share Christ our Savior with the nations in our neighborhood and with the poor and the homeless and those in need.  We never run out of opportunities to share the love of Jesus with world around us.  Almost every day we have a new door open to us into the lives of families and individuals and even entire communities.  

One of the greatest blessings about being a part of the Zion Church community is that our families are all on a mission together.  Every day at Zion is like a mission trip and you don’t even have to leave your zip code.  Our children are taught about Christ in the same room as children who have never heard of him and this leads to interesting and exciting conversations.  All our events occur in the context of a Christian faith that is global.  You can’t be at Zion long before you realize that you’re part of world-wide Christianity.  When a bomb goes off in Baghdad, we feel it.  When a rebellion happens in South Sudan, we know people affected.  We believe that this perception of the church as more than the local congregation causes our faith to grow and gives us a perspective on what God is doing in the whole world.  

Zion has been uniquely positioned in our community to bring people and tribes and nations together.  We are virtually across the street from Hoover High School, the most diverse school in our state, with some 30 languages spoken.  We straddle the Lower Beaver and Meredith Drive neighborhoods, both of which are home to an increasing number of first time home buyers who were not born in the USA.  Lower Beaver is also home to a number of apartment complexes favored by resettled refugees.  This positioning has caused us to respond to the needs in our neighborhoods with a clothes closet, food pantry, furniture ministry and fueled educational, transportation and tutoring ministries.  

2014 promises to continue to call us to other parts of the world, as well.  Looks like we’re being called to help Syrian refugees in Jordan, build an orphan school in Rwanda, continue support and aid to communities in Tanzania and go to a number of other spots that our community members feel led by the Spirit of God to go on short term mission trips.  

We believe that these extraordinary opportunities come about because of the Word of God which calls us relentlessly to follow Jesus into the lives of other people.  We believe that the essence of discipleship is living daily with Jesus and letting him lead you into what he desires to accomplish in you and through you.  By serving others we are serving him.  By serving we grow spiritually and are brought back to the Word of God for nourishment and support and then through that same Word, sent back out to serve the least for the sake of the Greatest Name.  We believe that such a way of life, lived out together in a very diverse church community, will help our young find their own relationship with Christ and choose to follow him.  

Finally, 2014 provides an amazing opportunity for us to pray.  We didn’t choose this mission that God has us on, he sent it to us through prayer.  As we continue to seek out the Lord and his will for us together at Zion through prayer, we know that he who is faithful will continue to change and transform us to be more like him.  Through prayer we also express our gratitude to him who makes all things new, including us, for sharing his ministry with us.  It is the most exciting thing in the whole world to be a part of God’s plan. 

Thanks for reading.  God bless you.  May the life and love and peace and joy of knowing Christ and the power of his resurrection, bless you and give you daily grace to share.  PJ 

Will This Be Our Finest Hour?

Greatness is determined not by one’s successes, but by how one deals with one’s challenges.  

At Zion we are facing a great challenge.  This week we announced to the Zion community that we must cut our budget by another 12% and that these cuts necessitate the elimination of all our paid musical staff positions.  We’re losing both our director of worship and music and our organist/choir director.  Both men have served this congregation long and well and we are so appreciative of their efforts.  We simply can’t afford to pay for their services.  

How did we wind up having to cut the budget?  In 2008, Zion was hit hard by the Great Recession.  Our people cut back on their giving.  At that time we had to cut our budget but we tried to do so in a way that what we did wouldn’t be affected.  We held on for dear life and believed that when the recession was over, giving would rebound and we could add back what we had cut.  

Then in 2011, we saw an exodus of long time members to another church’s satellite in a neighboring suburb.  We again lost giving.  We again had to cut our budget but we didn’t cut it enough.  We held on for dear life and believed that things would change for the better and giving would rebound and we could add back what we had cut. 

We managed to just barely maintain a “break-even” scenario until August of 2013.  During the height of the summer travel season, we had several weeks of bad offerings in a row which put us into the red.  We were only able to get back on track through a miraculous and unexpected gift.  At that time, the leaders of the church realized we that had to make some cuts for the sake of the mission of the church.

We looked at everything we could cut.  Truth be told, we could cut every outreach and ministry program we have and still not come up with enough savings to make it worthwhile.  We’ve cut so much from the budget over the years that there simply isn’t anything left to cut.  That meant we had to cut bone and muscle.  We had to cut our staff expenses because the only other expenses we have of any size are building and mortgage and we’ve already cut everything we can there.

For some of our church community these cuts will be very, very difficult to make.  Some may feel that we’re making the wrong choice and sacrificing the wrong things.  That somehow, we have not properly discerned what is important to God.  We are definitely challenging what many people believe the church was created to do. 

Other churches may choose to define themselves on the very things that we are cutting: the strength of their choir or worship music.  But we were called to define ourselves based only upon our obedience to Jesus.  Jesus could choose to send us remarkable amounts of money.  But he hasn’t.  Jesus has instead brought us more and more of those in need.  So we feel that obedience to Christ requires us to make these painful cuts.

Please know that we prayed and prayed and deliberated for months on this.  We are simply responding to a situation in the way we believe Jesus, our Master, would have us respond. 

Zion has been given a truly amazing ministry in our community.  It’s completely a God thing and very exciting.  But there is no doubt that God has called us to hard things.  Some people ask, “If you’re doing what God wants, why isn’t he blessing you?”  Truth is, He is blessing us.  A lot.  We get to see people come to Christ and be saved.  We get to see literally hundreds of neighborhood children come rushing through the doors of the church every week.  We get to minister to the needs of our Muslim neighbors and talk to them about Jesus the Messiah.  We are so blessed by God!  

I’ve prayed for years that God would “bless us financially.”  After all, selfishly, it doesn’t reflect well on my reputation that I’m pastor of a church that struggles all the time to pay it’s bills.  I want to be blessed financially.  I want people to give us more and more money.  But God has a plan.  Whenever I’ve prayed about it, God has always answered:  “I have already provided.”  At first I thought He meant that we had money in the Trust Fund and we should use that.  But I now understand Him to mean that He has provided us enough to do what we’re supposed to do, and perhaps, the reason we’re struggling so much is because we’re doing things we no longer need to do.  

Watching my friends lose their jobs makes me feel ill.  At the same time, it opens up for Zion an opportunity to pull together.  We must rely on our volunteers now for music to praise the Lord each week as we gather together.  It forces us to change the way we do our services and makes working together with the various cultures we minister to more appealing.  In this current crisis, God has given us an occasion to make His name great by coming together and being His people in a new and exciting way.  Change is hard and frankly, this church has seen unprecedented changes in the last few years.  But change is also a gift from God to allow us to better serve Him in our neighborhood and to grow by hanging together and learning to trust Him in new ways.  A church without serious challenges, where everything is easy, is a church always in danger of losing it’s faith.  A church in constant need and facing constant change, must hold on for dear life to Jesus himself, because no one else but the Lord can save us and deliver us.  

So I ask you to come together with me and our entire church family and cling to Jesus.  Let’s keep on meeting together and worshipping Him and serving Him by serving others and keep on loving each other.  Let’s show the devil and the watching world that we followers of Jesus don’t measure our worth by the size of our staff or programming or by the greatness of our buildings or organs, but rather, our worth comes through holding on for dear life to Him who is worthy, Jesus Christ our Lord.  This could be our finest hour.

If you have questions or concerns about our transition in worship, please feel free to contact me or any of our staff or board members.  Thanks for reading.  God bless you.  PJ

Our Greatest Challenge

Our greatest challenge at Zion isn’t money; though you’d think so by how often we talk about it.  

Our greatest challenge at Zion isn’t having enough volunteers;  though you’d think so by how often we talk about it.

Our greatest challenge at Zion is to make disciples of Jesus Christ who make disciples and so on.  

We have amazing ability in our community to serve people.  Our serving has made us a hub of activity throughout the week.  But what good is it if we aren’t making disciples of Jesus who make disciples?  

You should never measure the success of a church by how big the crowd is.  Or by how much money it gives away.  The big question must always be:  does the church make disciples who make disciples?

What is a disciple of Jesus who makes disciples?  It is someone who lives their life with Jesus.   When Jesus says, “Follow me,” he’s actually saying, “Walk with me.”  In other words, he’s inviting us to share his life and make him a part of everything we do.  A disciple walks with Jesus every day and submits to Jesus’ instruction and guidance in his/her every move.  Spiritual growth is found in making Jesus a part of everyday life.  Disciples are made when they see Jesus in you.  When others can tell that you’ve spent time with Jesus and are drawn to you so you can introduce them to Him.  And then they go on to walk with him and eventually invite others to come and walk with Him as well. It requires time and relationship.   

How does this happen?  It’s more than inviting someone to church.  It’s inviting someone to share your life with Jesus so that they, too, can learn from him and become obedient to him.  Discipleship happens best outside of programming.  It happens best in the sharing of life.  

Are we willing to share our lives with others?  To open our homes, our families, our everything to others so that they can see how a disciple lives?  When we are, then I believe that the Holy Spirit will work through us to draw others to Jesus so that through us, he can teach them how to live.  

Jesus has to do the heavy lifting in disciple making.  Our chief concern is that we are walking with him and mindful of the others who are waiting for us to invite them along for the journey.  

In over 200 years of Christianity in the US I’m not convinced we’ve actually made many disciples who makes disciples of Jesus.  I think we’ve focused on getting people to go to church and go along with what we want to do.  Now we are reaching the end of our supply of recycled Christians who were born into faith.  Now we have no choice, for our own survival, let alone the command of Jesus, to go and make disciples.  This is our learning edge.  This is where we must concentrate our efforts.  Thanks for reading.  God bless you.  PJ  

How We Make Disciples and What Zion United Means

The Zion Way: 

How we make disciples of Jesus.

The way we attempt to introduce people to Jesus is called STAR, an acronym for  Serve, Teach, Advocate, and Reach.

Serve:  Jesus told us in John 13 that the world would know that we are his disciples by the way we love.  He gave us an example for the kind of love we were supposed to have; he washed his disciples feet.  We understand that Jesus washing feet is metaphorical for those who have been given much to humble themselves and serve those with less.  When we’re talking about being given much we’re not talking about income or property or the things of this life.  We’re speaking about the fact that Christ has already given us all things and now we are so blessed by knowing him humbling ourselves in order that those who don’t know him might come to know him through us.  We understand that Jesus came not to be served, but to seek and serve the lost.  We also understand that the point of our service isn’t only evangelism, it’s also worship.  We serve others because by doing so we believe we are serving our Lord himself (Mt 25).  

Teach:  Teaching is really a form of serving but our society makes a distinction.  Our goal is to teach people how to live a better life.  The content of the teaching might be practical, like “How to Stock a Medicine Cabinet” or “How to Buy a House.”  Or the content might be instructive like an ESL class or English tutoring or homework help.  The content might also be spiritual and have to do with knowing Christ and his teachings.  We have many, many things to teach.

Advocate: Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines an advocate as, “one that supports or promotes the interests of another.”  Many people in our community have no one to support them or promote their interests.  They are lost in the system and falling through the cracks.  In many cases this is because they don’t understand our society, our systems, or our language.  In other cases it’s because they are discriminated against because they are a different race or color or creed.  Sometimes it’s because they are not physically or mentally able to represent themselves.  So we find ways to promote the cause of others.  Like going with them to the doctor’s office to be certain treatment is obtained and understood.  Sometimes we work within a political or organizational system to promote change.  We might go to schools or banks or realtors or immigration offices to support and encourage and promote the cause of others.  

Reach:  We want to reach people where they are.  It all begins with a relationship.  Many people are on the fringes of our community.  We believe that they are the ones to whom Jesus would go first.  We want to follow him to the edges of our society and reach the ones who live there.  We want to befriend them, know them, and love them.  And then, when we know them, we believe that the Holy Spirit will create an opportunity for us to share Christ with them.  

How we believe our own discipleship is lived out.  

Likewise, that we all learn how to:

Receive grace.  We must all learn how to receive grace from God and from each other.  We believe it impossible to truly give grace or love without a full knowledge and experience of receiving the grace and love of God through Jesus Christ (salvation/forgiveness) and from others (love and forgiveness). 

Learn.  We are all students of Jesus and will be so until the sanctifying and edifying work of the Holy Spirit is completed in us in the kingdom yet to come.  So we all need to be learners.  We need to be in the Word of God, the Bible, every day, so that we come to know everything we can about the Word of God Made Flesh, Jesus Christ.  We need to be in prayer every day, both talking to our Lord and also listening to him.  We believe that in prayer God teaches us through the Holy Spirit to understand and desire his good and gracious will.  We also need to be learning from our leaders and teachers and each other as well.  We believe that the best way to learn from Jesus is to live out his teachings, especially the parables.  

Reconcile.  As surely as we advocate for others, we ourselves need to be in a constant state of reconciling our relationships.  We need to be actively encouraging one another, forgiving one another, speaking the truth in love with one another.  Romans 12.

We ourselves need to be reached by the love and compassion of God through daily prayer and conversation and listening to God.  

Invite.  Jesus invited us to follow him.  We accepted his challenge.  So, too, we must invite others on his behalf.  “Come and see.  We have found the Lord.”  

Give.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son....”  We understand that when Jesus calls us to follow him, he calls us to give ourselves to him fully and completely.  We understand that our life is not our own, it is his, because he paid the price for us and redeemed us from sin, death and the devil.  How can we not, in turn, practice generosity of property and spirit with others?  We believe that all we have is God’s, he gave it to us.  And since it belongs to him, he has claim on it to use it for the benefit of others.  We also understand that beyond the giving of property or money, we are also called to give of our time and also that we must give grace to all because we have been shown such amazing grace by our Lord.  

Zion United:  The Concept.

We understand that Jesus has called his people to be in unity with each other and with him and then when his diverse people are seen as one in him by the world, the world will come to know that Jesus is the Messiah (John 17).  So we seek unity for the sake of  the glory of Christ with fellow Christ followers. The world seeks to make unity as difficult as possible.  Churches in the USA must be registered as corporations, non-living entities.  Except that the church is very much alive.  The Bible understands a church as a living thing, an organism, a body made up of living parts.  Corporately, (in a legal understanding), to achieve unity we would need to reconcile our boards, our bylaws, our constitutions and our bank accounts.  Followers of Jesus also come from all kinds of different cultures, languages, traditions and theological distinctives.  So when you take two bodies of Christians, it is very hard to achieve unity in all things.   

We are in unique situations as a church:

Several years ago, a small group of Burmese refugees who self identified as “Des Moines Mizo Christian Fellowship (DMCF),” approached us for help.  They needed both pastoral leadership and a place to meet.  We suggested that they join our church and become a part of us.  So our Mizo members identify as both Zion and DMCF.  We have also never merged bank accounts, although all accounts are in the Zion name.  We decided not to do this because the Mizo’s understanding of what the money is for is different than ours.  We might use the money to patch the parking lot.  They use the money to help their people.  This unique relationship of being one thing and another together is Zion United.   

We host a pre-school, WEE, in our building.  As such, they are identified in the community with us. This preschool is a first class operation and has an excellent reputation in our community.  They came to us in desperate need of a site.  They were homeless.  We felt led by the Spirit to offer them a place.  It’s a beautiful relationship.  They contribute a few thousand dollars a year that doesn’t actually cover the expenses of their being here.  But they bring kids into our building and find other ways to improve the property.  We don’t want to be in a landlord tenant relationship with them.  We want to be able to bless them and support them and prosper them as they serve our community.  We don’t want a corporate merger, (we don’t want to take them over),  but we seek other ways of being one together.  They are a part of Zion United and we must consider them and their needs in all our planning.  

We are seeking merger with another immigrant church from the Congo.  We will go through the same process that we wen through with the MIzo.  For a while, two types of identity will exist, but one day, we will all simply consider ourselves brothers and sisters.  This is Zion United.

We have many, many volunteers that come from other churches to help us with the ministry God has given us.  We understand that they may give money and time to us and still attend another church on Sunday morning.  But we are still in a relationship with them and them with us.  They haven’t found a church that worships as they want to but also serves as they desire.  So they really attend two churches.  This is Zion United.  We don’t need to be the only church in town. 

We serve many, many children.  Some of them attend our church exclusively.  Of these, many of their parents don’t attend any church.  We have to understand that these children are a part of who we are as a church.  There are also many children who attend an immigrant church on Sunday that can’t offer the rest of the programming we do so they attend one place on Sunday and they attend Zion during the week.  That’s OK with us.  That’s the concept of Zion United.  

Zion United seeks the unity of Jesus followers in our community so that they might worship, serve, witness and grow together for the glory of God.  the property.  We don’t want to be in a landlord tenant relationship with them.  We want to be able to bless them and support them and prosper them as they serve our community.  We don’t want a corporate merger, (we don’t want to take them over),  but we seek other ways of being one together.  They are a part of Zion United and we must consider them and their needs in all our planning.  

We are seeking merger with another immigrant church from the Congo.  We will go through the same process that we wen through with the MIzo.  For a while, two types of identity will exist, but one day, we will all simply consider ourselves brothers and sisters.  This is Zion United.

We have many, many volunteers that come from other churches to help us with the ministry God has given us.  We understand that they may give money and time to us and still attend another church on Sunday morning.  But we are still in a relationship with them and them with us.  They haven’t found a church that worships as they want to but also serves as they desire.  So they really attend two churches.  This is Zion United.  We don’t need to be the only church in town. 

We serve many, many children.  Some of them attend our church exclusively.  Of these, many of their parents don’t attend any church.  We have to understand that these children are a part of who we are as a church.  There are also many children who attend an immigrant church on Sunday that can’t offer the rest of the programming we do so they attend one place on Sunday and they attend Zion during the week.  That’s OK with us.  That’s the concept of Zion United.  

Zion United seeks the unity of Jesus followers in our community so that they might worship, serve, witness and grow together for the glory of God.  

Our Values: Numbers 3 and 4

Our Values:  The Principals that Inform Our Decision Making

We “get” globalization. #3

We are very much a local church with a global perspective.  We currently worship together in four languages and pray together in over 10 languages and that number is increasing.  We understand together that the world is coming to our city and to our very neighborhood and that means that everything must change as we seek to find ways to connect with our community and our world in order to serve people as if we were serving Christ himself.  We believe in reaching out to those both next to us and across the world.  We understand that God’s Plans are bigger than our ideas and we seek ways to glorify Him in the midst of a rapidly changing world.  

We are a part of something bigger than ourselves.  #4

Jesus taught us to pray that God’s kingdom would come and that things here would be the way they are in heaven.  We believe that God’s kingdom is comprised of all his children and so we seek ways to work with others for the sake of making that kingdom real to the world around us.  We seek unity with other believers and churches and partnerships with others who are engaged in doing good things in the world.  We do not believe that we have to own every idea or ministry.  In fact, we believe that our Master taught us how to die to ourselves and to our egos and so we hope that we can find ways to bring people and groups together without having to “own it” or take credit for it.  We believe that this attitude will bring many good things into being without our egos getting in the way.  In all things we seek a kingdom orientation. 

Our Values: Number 1 and 2

Our Values: Numbers 1 and 2

Our Values:  The Principals that Inform Our Decision Making 

Values determine how you make decisions.  If your value is that you never go into debt, you might decide not to charge that trip to Disney World.  If your value is that you will live for the day, you very well might decide to charge that trip to Disney World.  As a church, we have determined the things that we value, the things that determine our decision making.  We're preaching about them in order to introduce them to the congregation.  I hope you enjoy this synopsis.  We'll be introducing two at a time.  Thanks for reading.  PJ  

Aren’t they all our children?   

Jesus was particularly fond of children and he used them in many examples of what the kingdom of God is like.  Our neighborhood is blessed with many, many children.  Many come from disadvantaged families or broken homes.  We seek to find ways of incorporating them into our church, our families, and our shared life together.  They are the first thing we think about when we’re making any plans.  Even if their parents never attend our church we seek to find ways to show them the love of Jesus Christ and include them.   

Let’s do something beautiful for Jesus.

In Matthew 26, Jesus is anointed with a lavish amount of perfume by a woman who saw in him her Savior and Redeemer.  In verse 10, Jesus says, “She has done a beautiful thing to me.”  Those with Jesus complained that such extravagance was a waste of money and could be better spent.  But we understand that when Jesus is present, extravagance is called for.  We should pour out our lives and all we possess upon Jesus and His great work.  Mother Teresa once said that Jesus travels the world in distressing disguises.  We seek to find ways to intentionally welcome him and poor ourselves out for him in every disguise he can wear, especially when he visits us as the poor or the “least of these.”   This attitude leads us to “see the need and meet the need” because by serving others we are serving our Master.  “What so ever you did to the least of these you did so to me.”   Our constant question to others must be, “How can we bless you?”