Report from ELI Training - Elder Roberta Ramont

Beginning today and continuing for the next two weeks, we will have a chance to hear reports from the three elders who joined me in attending the Elder Leadership Institute training last weekend in Estes Park, CO. This week, Roberta Ramont, Elder for Mission Affinity Groups, reflects upon the priesthood of all believers:

"Is God Only Interested in the Sacred?"

Last weekend I had the privilege of exploring this and many other topics with Presbyterian Elders and Pastors from across the country. As Christians in church leadership roles we have the tendency to separate the sacred from the secular, with the sacred being good and the secular not so.

In Romans 12.1-2 (The Message) we read:

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best you can do for him.

Every week we spend 10 or more hours in these ordinary activities that we do on Church [building and gathering activities], but we spend approximately 110 hour on our Frontline, which is anyplace where we encounter the world.

At my parents’ 60th Wedding Anniversary Party I overheard a lady saying to my Mother, “Aren’t you so proud that two of your children are in fulltime Christian Work?” (Speaking of my brother the pastor and my sister who ministers along side her Army Chaplain husband) My mother didn’t miss a beat. “Yes I am proud of all three of my children, for they all are in full time Christian service, because Roberta serves the Lord full time as a Nurse.” My mom GOT IT!

The church can no longer have the attitude “If we build it they will come.” We need to take Jesus and the gospel to our Frontline, as we work, go to school, shop, exercise, have coffee, homeschool our children, greet our neighbors or any other seemingly mundane activities we do everyday.

The Gospel changes everything.

In everything we do and say let us ask the questions “ Is this becoming of heaven?” We need to become distinctive by being the best at [insert where you encounter the world]. We cannot be content to be a Christian lawyer, doctor, shopkeeper, teacher, nurse, mom, etc. We need to be Christ followers who make disciples as we encounter the world on our Frontline during our 110 hours.

Roberta Ramont
Elder for Mission Affinity Groups