Everywhere Martha looked at church, she saw signs of her involvement, from the walls she’d painted to the banners she’d sown, the classrooms where she taught youth and adults, and the sanctuary she helped to decorate. Martha had even served as a volunteer in the office, gone on adult and youth mission trips, and helped to fund the new classroom wing. Martha was no place more at home, no place more welcomed, and no place better known than in her church. Martha knew her earthly service would soon end and looked forward to continuing her service in heaven. The only thing she wondered was whether she had left anything undone.

Church

Building a legacy within a faith community is both like being involved in your neighborhood, workplace, school, or other community locations and unlike involvement in those other places. One difference has to do with the voluntariness of church involvement. You choose whether and where to connect and attend. Another difference has to do with the focus of church. That focus isn’t so much on you, who you are, what you need, and what you’re doing but instead on God, who he is, what he desires, what he supplies, and what he’s doing. A church’s activities, especially its prime activity of worship, centers not on you but on God. Indeed, a church isn’t a location. It is instead a body, with Christ at its head and its members the body’s living, breathing parts. Your legacy has a lot to do with how you join and serve in the body but even more to do with how you relate to the body’s head, to the Lord Jesus Christ. When thinking of your church legacy, keep your relationship with Christ and the honor you give him forefront in mind. That’s the primary way to build a church legacy.

Devotion

Your devotion, and the faith your devotion leaves behind in your family members, friends, and acquaintances, is indeed your greatest church legacy. The greatest legacy you can leave, not just around church but in anything else you do on earth, is to express your devotion to the highest. To pursue a legacy is to aim far, long, and high, beyond the horizon of your own life to the eternal realm beyond. That highest possible aim is what gives life its full dimension. Aim only for this life, and your aim will fall well short of its possibilities. Aim for the realm and eternal day beyond this life, and you’ll live the full life that leaves a rich legacy. Full devotion to the one loving God suffuses your life with his infinitely greater life. Make that commitment to trust and follow him. Then share that commitment with those around you, and you’ll have left the best legacy that you possibly can. 

Membership

A key way to leave a legacy of faith is to be a member of a local body. Church membership identifies you as a reliable and trustworthy participant in the body’s life. People attend churches without becoming members. They also move from church to church, enjoying the rhythms and resonance of different local bodies in different seasons of life. Membership, though, marks a commitment not just to one’s affinities and preferences but to the body and to others who also constitute it. Membership, after commitment to the Lord, is another step outside of the self and into the body. When you become a member of a local church, that church favors you with the privilege of baptism, communion, marriage, going-home celebrations, and your own memorial service. It also favors you with the kindness, interest, and care of the body’s other members. And it opens your legacy to reciprocal care, to celebrate the baptisms of others, share communion with others, and share the going-home celebrations of others. Your membership sets that glorious pattern of eternal participation for your family, friends, and acquaintances.

Attendance

After commitment to the Lord and church membership, another faith legacy you can leave is your regular church attendance. To attend church regularly is to reorganize and realign your spirit through liturgy and ritual with the eternal realm that structures the world. Regular church attendance is like brushing your teeth or straightening your clothes and hair, except that the care is not material and external but spiritual and internal. Your regular church attendance both fits you for legacy and leaves its own legacy, showing your family members, friends, and acquaintances that you are faithful to the Lord and to his realm beyond that suffuses and vitalizes the world. Make regular church attendance part of your faith legacy. 

Worship

Your devoted worship is another core aspect of your faith legacy. Your worship is for you and God. Yet participating in your church’s worship service with your presence, posture, and voice contributes to the body, heartening and strengthening those around you. Your family members, friends, and acquaintances all draw from your devoted worship. Children and grandchildren remember how you worshipped, following your pattern and drawing on the legacy you leave. When you give yourself to the highest, you point those around you to the highest, too. Your devotion to God in worship may be the legacy that keeps your children or grandchildren, or your neighbor or friend, out of jail or free from addiction. Your worship may be the legacy that helps another child or grandchild persevere in a job or marriage, or recover from a disabling illness or injury. Don’t underestimate the legacy you leave by worship.

Prayer

Your prayer is also another core aspect of your faith legacy. Like worship, your prayer is for you and God. But like worship, your prayer also heartens, guides, and informs those who see you pray, hear you pray, and know you pray. Indeed, your prayer invokes the mercy and grace of God on behalf of those for whom you pray. What greater legacy could you leave than to call upon God to minister to those for whom you pray, now and hereafter? Christ himself prayed at the Last Supper that his Father would bless and protect his disciples and followers, leaving the richest legacy of prayer. Pray continually, alone and with others. Embroider your faith legacy with prayer.

Service

Volunteer service to your church is another way to extend your faith legacy. Churches are voluntary organizations. They depend on volunteers. Church volunteers do everything, from greeting and seating guests, distributing service bulletins, and straightening up the sanctuary after the service, to teaching Sunday school, providing infant and child care, leading seminars, and preparing and delivering meals for the sick. Volunteers prepare and administer communion, take up and count the collection, seasonally decorate the sanctuary, and run the sight and sound for the services. Volunteers lead youth groups and take youths and adults on mission trips, among many other volunteer activities. Your dedicated volunteering, not just sporadically but across the long term, wherever your skills, talents, and interests lead you, can leave a rich legacy of faith. 

Giving

Another way to leave a legacy of faith is to tithe and offer to your church. Giving financially to your church supports your church’s several ministries. Legacy is about giving more than receiving. To make cash contributions to your church is a selfless act of giving. Giving also affects you and those around you. Your giving is a testament to your faith, belief in God, and trust in God. Your giving frees you and those around you of the grip that money can have over a person, both in insecurity and in greed. When you give, you loosen that grip not only over you but also over your family members and others who are aware of your giving. The selfless giving of one also lifts others. When you give a regular tithe out of your income, you show that you prioritize God and faith. When you make a special offering, you show your commitment to specific ministries and causes within the body. Make giving a part of your faith legacy.

Bequests

You may also include your local church in your will and estate plan, to bless your church after you pass. Churches can use unexpected bequests to build reserve funds for a rainy day, send missionaries, establish new ministries, make needed building repairs, or retire building mortgages. Churches can also use bequests as seed funding for facility expansion, among other good things. Your bequest may designate a ministry within your church or leave it to the governing elders to decide. Your bequest can confirm and deepen the legacy that your membership, attendance, worship, volunteer service, and other giving has already established with your church. 

Growth

Your spiritual growth is another faith legacy that you can leave your family members, friends, acquaintances, and church. Faith is a journey more so than a destination. We continue to grow after embracing faith. Faith is a rebirth, and new birth invites maturation. Your scripture study, investigation of church history, and increasing insight into the contrast between sacred and secular worldviews spur and demonstrate your spiritual development. Your growth in faith spurs others to grow in faith, too. Foster a restless faith, letting the Spirit guide you into a deeper and closer relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. And let others see and share your spiritual growth as a faith legacy.

Leadership

Church leadership can also enhance your faith legacy. Churches following different traditions organize themselves in different ways, some more dependent on volunteer leadership while others less so. If your church has a governing body of elders, a supportive body of deacons, or committees for finance, building and grounds, and other ministries, consider volunteering for those leadership positions. If you have the skills of a vocalist or musician, consider volunteering for those worship leader positions. You can also lead in mission trips, youth programs, children’s education, and cooking, shut-in, grief-share, hospital-visit, and other care ministries. Make church leadership a part of your rich faith legacy. 

Participation

The guidestar for a faith legacy is simply participation in the life of faith. The above paragraphs outline the main ways in which you may participate fruitfully in the life of your church. But how you participate depends on your calling, gifts, talents, and resources, the needs and nature of your local church, and the Lord’s desires and role for you. Don’t be surprised if your participation looks nothing like you expected. The Lord may lead you in church in a way that you would not expect. Relinquish your will to him. Listen to him, and when you hear his call, participate in the way that you discern he desires. Doing so will leave you the richest faith legacy, both here and hereafter.

Reflection

Do you have a vision of the eternal realm that helps you see and pursue your faith legacy? Do you express to your family members and friends your devotion to God as your faith legacy? Do you belong to a church whose members know and embrace you? Does your church attendance show others that you regularly align yourself to God’s desires? Do you worship in a way that heartens others around you? Are your prayers contributing to your legacy of faith? In what ministry do you serve your church, and how is that service building your faith legacy? Is your giving to your church fostering your faith legacy? Should your will include your church in its bequests? Are you continuing to grow in your faith in visible ways enhancing your faith legacy? Are you a church leader? If not, where might you be qualified to lead? Pray for God’s call to serve your church and to deepen and broaden your faith legacy.

Key Points

• Your church legacy differs from other legacies in that it is eternal.

• Your open devotion to and trust in God is your greatest possible legacy.

• Church membership is a key part of your faith legacy.

• Church attendance realigning your spirit is another faith legacy.

• Your devoted worship is itself a profound legacy of faith.

• Your continual prayer is another profound faith legacy.

• Your dedicated volunteer service is another rich legacy of faith.

• Giving to your church in tithes and offerings is another legacy of faith.

• You may also include your church in your will for a bequest legacy.

• Your continual spiritual growth further enhances your faith legacy.

• Your church leadership wherever your skills fit adds to your legacy.

• Participation in the life of faith is the guidestar for your faith legacy.

Read Chapter 10.