On The Annual Meeting

Matthew 21:28–32 (ESV) —  [Jesus said], “What do you think? A man had two sons. And he went to the first and said, ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today.’  And he answered, ‘I will not,’ but afterward he changed his mind and went.  And he went to the other son and said the same. And he answered, ‘I go, sir,’ but did not go.  Which of the two did the will of his father?” They said, “The first.” Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you.  For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him.”

The Post-Christmas Seasonal Transition

As I’m writing this it is blizzarding outside, there’s Christmas music purring in the background, and even though I am working it just doesn’t feel like a very work focused kind of day. The Christmas season feels like a time to do the bare minimum work-work so that we can make time for celebration-work. Wrapping gifts, baking sugary things and decorating stuff all rank high on our priority lists. 

So it can be a rough transition from the Christmas season back into “reality.” By New Year’s Eve the radio stations have returned to their regularly scheduled programming even though the Church is only 7 days into her 12 day celebration of Christmas. By mid-January mumbled utterances of “making Christmas last all year” have faded. The world seems to hit December 26th like a finish line they crawl across, and then, exhausted from the effort of carrying Christmas this far, they lay down their burden. By the time January gets its page on our calendars, many of us feel ready for less celebration-work and more work-work. Some of us may feel like we need a break from work entirely. We’re not in the mood to add any more work. Consequently, the spot on the calendar that reads “Church Annual Meeting” generally does not have candy-cane stickers around it. 

This is the sad and onerous difference between Christmas as a biblical celebration and Christmas as a secular holiday. Christmas in the secular mindset is about us making the world a magical or at least slightly better place by our own works and labors. Sadly, Christmas in the secular mindset is not only a consumerism driven effort at retail profitability (though that is the thing Christians tend to protest most about.) The real problem with secular Christmas is that it is a celebration of hypocrisy. And because the world tries to make it special instead of receiving what makes it special (the Christ child), it leaves them spent instead of refreshed. 

When Jesus is not the focus of our celebration, our joy is fleeting and the work, however noble, is both exhausting and insufficient. That’s how and why so many people hit December 26th with a dreadful feeling of “well I guess it’s back to reality now.” A false gospel that preaches “you know, we could make the world a better place if we all just tried harder” falls apart when you return to work and the things that were dysfunctional in November remain just as broken in January. Eventually it feels like Christmas accomplished nothing, because what Christmas is really about and what it really accomplished got lost in the striving under our own power. 

The beauty of Christmas is the Gospel Sabbath that it calls us to. God sent us a Savior who said “come unto me all you weary and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). There’s something deeply ironic that many people who don’t really know Him wear themselves out celebrating what’s supposed to be His birthday. 

For the transition out of Christmas and into the remainder of the year to go well, we need to rightly understand Christmas. Christmas absolutely is a celebration of the idea that the world could be a more peaceful, more loving, and really just better place. In fact, it’s a celebration of the fact that it absolutely will become a more peaceful and loving place. We have to understand, however, that those blessings are coming from Jesus Christ, the child given for our salvation and blessing. 

Christmas also comes with pretty much just as much work for Christians as for unbelievers. The difference is we understand that the better world is already promised. Our works cannot build that better world on our own but Christ promises to bring it. We don’t have to be disappointed when we don’t make it past Martin Luther King Jr. Day and the world feels old again. Instead, we can remember that we are working together with the Savior who promises to fix it all. 

The Call To Salvation, A Call To Work

Now having said all that, let's return to the text at the beginning of this article. Here, Jesus explains that saving faith is not merely a matter of good works, nor is it merely a matter of doctrinally correct thoughts, but it is both and more. 

The Pharisees claimed that they were doing the work of God the Father, but in reality they were not. God had shown up, in the person of Jesus, and told them to repent of what they were currently doing and work in God’s Vineyard instead. They, like the second son, nodded and said “yeah sure, we’ll work for God.” In reality, they were ignoring God, who was standing bodily right in front of them. 

Many others, however, had heard the call to salvation and repented. The prostitutes and tax collectors, who until meeting Jesus had led lives of sexual sin and theft, eventually repented and began to serve God both with their confessions of faith and with their repentant lives. At first it looked like they would never go and work in “God’s Vineyard.” Now, however, they had received and accepted the call to salvation. 

This call to salvation brings with it a call to work. Saving faith is faith that understands we have completely died to our old selves and now live for Christ (Galatians 2:19-20, Romans 6:1-11). We don’t work with the mindset that it all depends on us. That is exhausting and it is actually an unfaithful denial of Christ. It’s basically working in our own vineyard instead of Christ’s. We work the works that Jesus calls us to do because He promises us that He will give us this salvation and beautiful eternal life we desire. We faithfully work for Him because of what He has already promised to give us. 

That is actually how we “make Christmas last the whole year.” It’s not that we sing “Hark the Herald” every other Sunday. Instead, we spend the year living out the truth of Christmas: God has sent us a King so that we can live in His Kingdom. That Kingdom is the Vineyard that Jesus speaks of in this short little parable. In this Kingdom our work is not earning something from God. When that baby arrived in Mary’s arms, those who put their faith in Him received everything. We don’t work to earn, but rather, our work is the experience of fellowship with our King Jesus and His people. 

Working The Vineyard

There’s no denying that in this parable Jesus describes saving faith as an ongoing work. The error of the Pharisees was that they thought it was adequate to say you had a really ardent faith in God while you continued to do whatever you thought you should (instead of listening to the Word). In the case of the Pharisees, they thought God wanted them to invent an endless series of religious works and rules. 

John the Baptist had come teaching them (and everyone else) about the true way of righteousness. The Pharisees rejected it, mostly just because it wasn’t their idea. Instead of working in what truly was God’s Vineyard, they just did their own thing. 

So there is a warning in this parable. Complacently “doing your own thing” instead of engaging in the work that Jesus has called you to is not a good idea. After this parable of the brothers and the Vineyard, if you skip down to verse 43 you hear Jesus say this: 

Matthew 21:43 (ESV) —  [Jesus said], Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits. 

This teaching has to be delicately and precisely taught and applied. This is not a hammer to be smashed into things, but rather it’s a scalpel that demands to be treated with surgical care. 

The call to salvation includes a call to work in Christ’s Vineyard, which is His Kingdom. It is not legalistic and it is not hypocritical to share that truth. Yes, we need to preach it with careful attention, but we cannot ignore it. 

The Pharisees substituted their own religious works for those that God desired of them. While sometimes that’s the problem people get into these days, another problem is way more common: Today people tend to let their personal pursuits and cares crowd all thought of working in God’s Vineyard out of their mind and lives. 

Most of the time when we acknowledge the fact that a lot of people fade out of church-life, the chief concern is for the church. “What will happen to the church if no one pitches in?” Well, the truth is, shocking as this might sound, the church will continue. The name of the congregation might change. The location of the building we meet in might change. This local congregation might die, but the true Vineyard, which is the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church will continue forever until Jesus comes back. 

Yet it may continue without you in it. That is the weight of the words of Matthew 21:43. 

Our concern to call people into the life and the work of the church is not chiefly to keep the organization going (although we freely admit that there are a great many benefits to keeping the local congregation going). The reason we want people to trust in Jesus and work as He calls us to work is because we want them to be like the first son. We want them to live faithfully in the call of salvation. 

How easily relatable does the second son seem to us? How many things in our lives do we say we will do and then not do? That’s why this parable resonates so powerfully with us when we let it. We all know that the risk of being the second son is great. In fact, without the Holy Spirit, it’s a guaranteed outcome. 

But before the anxiety of that truth overwhelms us we need to return to the starting message of this article: Jesus has come to draw us into His Kingdom. It is not our own strength that keeps us there but rather His (John 10:28-29). 

Being About The Work Of The Kingdom

Esther 4:14 (ESV) —  “For if you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” 

Esther could have refused to serve the Lord, but the Lord God would have delivered His people anyways. He will absolutely do whatever it is He intends to do. It’s our joy and honor to be part of His work, but it’s not His necessity. Jesus also affirms this point when He reminded His disciples that His work of building His Kingdom will absolutely not be turned aside-

Matthew 16:18 (ESV) —  [Jesus said] “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” 

So we can work confidently because we know Jesus will build His Kingdom. Just as God placed Esther in her time and place for a purpose, we also are here, now, to serve His Kingdom. Even so, the pressure is off of us to produce results. God gives the increase (1 Corinthians 3:6). He simply calls us to be faithful to the work. 

That does not, however, give us license to refuse the work. 

Philippians 2:12–13 (ESV) —  Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,  for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. 

Again, precision and care should be taken when applying this verse. We must apply the Holy Spirit’s genuine message here, not one stretched away from the grammar. The meaning here is not that we work to achieve our salvation, nor that we work as a means of paying it back, but rather we work because working for Christ’s Kingdom is the reasonable outcome of Him saving us. 

Simply put, in Philippians 2:12 the Holy Spirit tells us that faith works. Faith works on behalf of the Kingdom of God, and the texts I’ve shared about that are God calling us all into that faith. 

The Annual Meeting

Inevitably, the call to salvation will mean personal sacrifices in your life. Occasionally “salvation by grace” gets so twisted in our minds that it becomes “salvation without any impact.” This leads to the kind of attitude the second son in Jesus’ parable had. Contrary to that poor attitude, Paul gives us both an example of a willing heart and a call to have one ourselves in Philippians. 

Philippians 2:14–18 (ESV) —  Do all things without grumbling or disputing,  that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world,  holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.  Even if I am to be poured out as a drink offering upon the sacrificial offering of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all.  Likewise you also should be glad and rejoice with me. 

I praise the Lord that the days have not come where some of our brothers and sisters are called to die in service to Christ’s Kingdom like Paul did. His work proclaiming the Gospel made him a public enemy, and so the work of bringing others to salvation ultimately cost him his head. We have not had to pay such a price. Yet, we are still called to die to ourselves and live for Christ. 

Romans 12:1–2 (ESV) —  I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.  Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

Paul quite literally died because of his dedication to the work of building Christian congregations. We can thank the Lord that the days we live in are not that violent, but we should also see that that does not make us immune from our faith impacting our lives and calling us to personal sacrifices. We also have been called by Christ to die to ourselves, in our own individual ways, for the sake of His Kingdom, the congregation. 

We all have different gifts to contribute to the Kingdom of God, but none of us should shrink back from the work. The more we work together, the more it encourages our fellow brothers and sisters. Spending a Saturday morning in a business meeting at the church is a sacrifice of time. For some it would even be a sacrifice of money as it would require lost work revenue. All the same, it’s an important sacrifice. 

We all have different gifts, but we need to come together as a body and discuss how the Lord would have us organize the work that Jesus is doing in the Vineyard of Westaker. And so, as we pivot from the Christmas season and begin to plan for the Annual Meeting, my prayer for all of us is that we will make that work a priority in our lives. I would encourage you also to pray and ask the Lord “What is the will of the Father for me? How can I do it? What work in the Vineyard would you have me do?” 

As we close out 2025 and begin 2026 it’s my prayer that you all will pray and meditate on that. In particular, I pray the Lord will bless us with favorable weather for the annual meeting and that our congregation will come together and bless each other and the Lord’s Kingdom with our sacrifice of time and energy on behalf of His Vineyard.