For many years there was a little potted plant on our kitchen window sill, though I’ve long since forgotten the variety. Year after year that plant would put out a shoot and from the shoot would emerge a single flower. And I observed that no matter how I turned the pot, the flower would respond. If I turned the pot so the flower was facing the room, within a day or two it would have turned to face the light. And if I rotated it again, the flower would respond in the same way, turning itself toward the light streaming in from the window. I could not fool it. I could not discourage it or persuade it to give up.
You cannot read about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ without noticing his love for the natural world. Many of his most vivid illustrations are drawn from nature—the birds, the plants, the trees, the winds. You often observe him making use of the natural elements that were right before him to help his listeners understand his teaching—the fig tree that failed to bear fruit, the fields that were white for harvest, the birds that were unconcerned about their next meal.
And in that vein, I learned a lesson from that little flower—the lesson of the potted plant. No matter how I turned the plant, it dutifully responded by realigning itself to face the light. No matter how many times I turned it and no matter how completely I turned it, it responded in the same way.
From the plant, I learned that life’s circumstances often turn us into times of darkness, times when we are overcome by pain, sorrow, or other trials. For a time the world around us may look dark and foreboding, like the Valley of the Shadow of Death is closing in around us and threatening to swallow us up. Yet our duty in such times is to look for the light and to turn toward it.
God never leaves us without some truth to believe in, some promise to cling to, some hope to long for, some light to turn toward.Share
And there always will be a source of light, for our God never deserts or abandons us. He never leaves us without some truth to believe in, some promise to cling to, some hope to long for, some light to turn toward. For God does not just have light or display light—he is light.
I’m certain that if I had taken my little potted plant to a dimly lit room in a hospital, it would still have turned toward whatever light came from the window, no matter how dim the source. I’m certain that if I took it to a prison cell with nothing but a single little window high above, it would lift its face toward that one shaft of light. It could not be stopped. It could not be discouraged. It could not be dissuaded.
And neither should we ever be dissuaded from turning toward the Lord in every circumstance. Our eyes may be weary and full of tears, the light may seem distant and dim, but the Lord is present, close to the broken-hearted and eager to save those who are crushed in spirit. It falls to us to simply turn and to look toward the light that streams from his presence and illumines us with his grace.

This week the blog is sponsored by Church Social and is written by Jonathan Reinink.
I am currently serving as an elder in my church. In my church, elders and deacons serve three-year terms. Between meetings, pastoral visits, and being in tune with what’s happening both locally and in our denomination, there’s lots of work to do. Life is busy.
Sometimes it can even be a little overwhelming. And yet, God instructs elders in 1 Peter 5:2 to “willingly” and “eagerly” shepherd the flock. I find this a helpful reminder to be diligent and faithful in my work.
Professionally, I run a software platform for reformed churches called Church Social, and a key goal of the software is to help elders, deacons, and pastors in their roles. Church Social simplifies the administrative side of the office so that church leaders can better focus on the spiritual side of their work.
Let me walk you through some of the features in Church Social that specifically help church leaders.
Member Directory
Probably one of the most useful tools in Church Social for church leaders is the member directory. This lists all the families within your church, with photos, contact information, special dates like birthdays and anniversaries, and more.

I’m constantly going to this part of the app to grab a member’s phone number, or to get directions to their home when going on a visit, or even just to put a name to a face when a new member joins our congregation.
If you’d like to learn more about the member directory, see my previous article here on Challies.com which covers this feature in detail.
Shepherding Groups
My church organises the families in our congregation into shepherding groups, which we call wards (sometimes also called districts). Each elder and deacon is then assigned a shepherding group that they are responsible for. This is a practical way to ensure that each member in our flock is properly cared for.

Church Social has first-class support for shepherding groups, allowing you to easily see which group each family is assigned to, and which elders and deacons are responsible for that group. You can even send messages specifically to certain groups, and generate reports for these groups.
Member Insights
When you’re assigned the elder, deacon, or pastor role within Church Social, you’re given access to sensitive data within the software that isn’t visible to everyone.
For example, there is a report that lists dates pertaining to deceased family members. It highlights sensitive dates for members who have lost loved-ones, such as a previous spouse’s birthday, or the anniversary of their passing. There are also reports for identifying joyful occasions, like milestone birthdays and anniversaries.
Church Social also generates statistics and reports based on your data, including membership trends, demographics like your average member age, and a plotted map showing where your members live relative to your church, useful for strategic planning.
Visit Tracking
A brand new feature that I’m really excited about is our upcoming visit tracking feature for elders, deacons, and pastors. If all goes well we hope to launch the visit tracking feature this week.
This feature lets church leaders track past and future member visits within the software, helping ensure that all members are visited regularly. It also helps elders, deacons and pastors better coordinate their visits, avoiding situations where a family doesn’t receive a visit for a year and then receives multiple in the same week.

Previously there was no easy way, at least in my church, for us as church leaders to know when a particular family was last visited. But now, with Church Social’s new visit tracking feature, you can easily see all the visits made to a particular family. There’s even a report that lists the families who have gone the longest without a visit — highlighting potentially higher priority visits that should be made.
There is also the option to include notes when creating visits, making it easy to reference these in the future if needed. In my church we always write short visit reports whenever we go on visits, so this is a natural place to store them.
Church Social will also send an email reminder the day before your scheduled visit — just in case you forgot (not that you would!).
File Storage
Between meeting minutes and agendas, incoming and outgoing mail, church policies and guidelines, churches end up with a lot of files. The files section in Church Social makes storing and sharing these documents safe and easy.
You can create folders that all members can access (great for things like policies), and also create private folders that are only accessible to the elders, deacons and pastors. This is great as it creates a centralised location for these church files, meaning you don’t need to email files around anymore.
Schedules
Every Sunday one of our elders takes a turn being the “serving elder”. This basically just means he’s responsible for caring for our pastor that day, shaking his hand at the start and end of the services, and he also leads our council in prayer at the start and end of that day. Naturally, we have a schedule in place to keep track of who’s up next, which we manage in Church Social.
Schedules in Church Social are really nice as they aren’t just static lists. When you’re assigned to a particular task on a particular day, that task appears in your personalised church calendar, and you also get an email notification reminding you about that task.
We create schedules in Church Social for a lot of things — weekly greeters, ushers, nursery lists, etc. — and the reminder emails are really helpful.
Term Management
As previously mentioned, elders and deacons in my church serve three-year terms. To help keep track of these terms, Church Social has a term management feature that lets you specify who has served as elders, deacons, and pastors in your church, including their term length.

Probably the most useful part of this feature is the “Office-bearer terms” report. This report will list all your active and past terms, grouped by the year that the term ends. This is really helpful information when nominating new elders and deacons, as you can quickly see who is currently serving and who has served more recently.
Give it a try
If you’re a church leader struggling to stay organised, or wishing you had more insight into the members in your care, I highly recommend taking a closer look at Church Social.
Church Social has been a huge help for the elders, deacons and pastor in my particular church, and we receive similar feedback from customers all the time. For example:
“Church Social allows our elders and deacons to spend less time on administrative tasks and more time shepherding the flock.”
— Dr. William den Hollander, Professor of New Testament at the Canadian Reformed Theological Seminary
“Thanks for all you do. I cannot tell you how much of a game changer Church Social has been for us. It’s been an AMAZING help.”
— Rev. Michael Dixon, Senior Pastor of the Christ Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Mill, South Carolina
“Church Social is a great resource for pastors. It makes tasks that were time consuming, extremely easy. Church Social helps pastors focus on caring for their congregation by providing easy access to current membership details.”
— Rev. John van Popta, Pastor emeritus of the Fellowship Church in Burlington, Ontario
To learn more about Church Social, or to sign up for a free trial, visit our website at churchsocial.com.
If you have any questions, please contact us at [email protected]. We’d love to hear from you!

I still remember, and may never forget, the first time I stopped to consider envy. I was reading a book by Os Guinness and was blindsided by a section on that particular sin. I immediately understood that it was prominent in my life and immediately began to take steps to address it. The process took some time and the sin still lingers, but its power has been broken and its grip diminished. I am still prone to occasional bouts of envy, but, by grace, I have learned to identify it and counter it.

Envy

Because I know I am prone to the sin of envy, I find value in pausing to consider it from time to time. Most recently this took the form of Mike Fabarez’s new book Envy: A Big Problem You Didn’t Know You Had. That one little word envy, he says, “represents an injurious threat to your sanctification. It has probably already racked up a multitude of hits in your life. And much of the pain it has caused has been lamented and grieved. But I find we all too often fail to connect the dots.” It is, after all, a sin that has a way of flying under the radar. We identify its consequences and lament them, but rarely identify the sin, admit its presence, and put it to death.
Every book on envy makes it clear that envy is a particularly insidious sin. They all make it clear that it has long been considered among the worst when it comes to the evil it works within our hearts and lives. They all make it clear that Christians of bygone eras were far more concerned about it than we are today and far more dedicated to dealing with it. It’s for good reason that it appears on the list of the “seven deadly sins” and that it is the father of many other transgressions.
Fabarez’s purpose is to provide some biblically guided exposure to this sin—to show where it may exist in our lives, how it may be manifesting itself, and where it may be reaping evil consequences. For it is only when we are familiar with the sin that we can identify it and put it to death.
What is envy? Envy is begrudging another person their joy or success. It is being resentful and frustrated at what another person has received, has earned, or has been blessed with. It is not merely wanting what another person has, but wanting that other person not to have it. It is feeling low, diminished, and hard done by when another person receives some good. And it always expresses itself in other forms of sin—hatred, gossip, ingratitude, and even murder.
Fabarez begins his book by showing where and how envy exists in the Bible, beginning in the opening pages of the Old Testament and continuing well into the New. He considers how it exacts a heavy internal cost to those who allow it to put down deep roots, then how it exacts a relational cost and even a societal cost. It turns out that much of the sin that mars the church and much of the sin that causes conflict in the world can be traced back to envy.
Having shown the ugly consequences of the sin, Fabarez provides instruction on countering it. He calls Christians to diligently examine themselves to see if and how this sin is present in their lives. Then he calls them to combat the sin with love and rejoicing—to love other people and to rejoice in their happiness, joys, and successes.
This is a short book, but one that packs a punch. It is a helpful examination of a particularly deceptive and odious sin and it offers a biblical solution to it. Those who read Envy may just find themselves grappling with a big problem they didn’t know they had. Even better, those who read it will be equipped to repent of that problem and to put to death that sin.