News > North America

Waterloo UBF, Canada

March 12, 2013

Our lives and our ministries are in the end all about God. Loving God is the first and greatest of all the commandments and the essence of the will of God for us. And the second commandment is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus told us that we must love one another as He has loved us. These are high and beautiful ideals that we long to see realized in our personal lives and ministries. The problem is that we naturally have no love in us, and so we try to do so many things without being empowered by the only power source and we just fail and mess everything up. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19). We cannot do it on our own. Without Jesus, the love of God, empowering what we are and what we do, in the end it will all amount to nothing. So we need to prioritize receiving love from God, getting ourselves in position to be empowered from above. We need the love and affirmation of our Father ringing constantly in our ears, just as Jesus had it in His ears from the time of His baptism when God said to Him, “You are my beloved Son; with You I am well pleased.” This, then, in a nutshell is the direction and vision and strategy of Waterloo UBF and of my own life for 2013. Our pastor in Waterloo UBF, Joshua Yoon, is taking a sabbatical year this year and he asked me to take over his role as pastor during this time. I am tempted to feel very insecure and uncertain about all this. I am inclined to look at my own inadequacy and doubt that this can work. But instead of giving in to those temptations and inclinations, my plan is to press on more than I ever have before to the heart of God my Father and to His love for me. I want this for myself and for everyone involved in Waterloo UBF. So I want us as a ministry to prioritize the things that put us in the place from which we receive God's love. I believe that is the place of prayer. It is also the place of hearing the Word of God. The passage that helps me keep these things in focus is Acts 6:3b, 4 in which the apostles declare the things that are most central and important to the ministry of God's gospel in which they were engaged. They said, “We will turn this responsibility over to them and will give our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word.” One thing we are doing right at the beginning of this year is to revamp the leadership structure of our ministry, making it clear who is in leadership, who is in “core” leadership, and what the privileges and expectations associated with those roles are. I am not alone in my life or in my ministry, and it is in no way a one-man show. I want to practice turning over responsibilities to Spirit-filled people who can handle them, and pouring my own heart and mind into prayer and hearing the Word of God. But I also want others to be nurtured in that place of prayer and hearing the Word of God. So I plan to set up a team of core leaders in Waterloo who will devote themselves to these things with me, earnestly seeking the face and the hand of our God who is the only Head of the Church and who guides His Church through His Holy Spirit. We want to be in tune with Him as much as we possibly can. We want to raise up all the leaders and members of our church in Waterloo in a culture of prayer and encountering God, and of hearing His Word, and experiencing His love. I personally desire to be willing to change, drop, or add anything that will contribute to our community experiencing the Father's love more, and to take this seriously as our top priority. I believe that in this desire I am following what God has revealed to us in the Scriptures. I don't know at this point what this will mean practically and in detail. But I believe the details will work themselves out when we prioritize the things that are God's priorities.

Prayer Requests for 2013:

1. That we would do whatever it takes, as far as it depends on us, to receive as much of the Father's love as we can on a regular, on-going basis.
2. Devote ourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful (Col. 4:2).
3. Love one another deeply from our hearts. Build up a culture of genuine love among us, in which we seek to know, honor and help each other in practical ways.
4. Be open to how the Spirit leads us to open our community to newcomers both among students of UW and WLU and from the broader community including other UBF chapters and Christians and Christian leaders in other churches and ministries in our region.
5. Blessings on Pastor Joshua's sabbatical – that He would go deeper and be strengthened and greatly enriched through the work of the Holy Spirit and the Father's love during this time.
6. Grace for Andy and Jennifer to fill in as the pastor family for Waterloo UBF in 2013.

By Andy Stump