I believe it is time for us to celebrate extravagantly and extend real heart-felt hospitality. Oh, we do a mean pot-luck, but lets ask ourselves, how are we on the great banquet? Do outsiders really feel welcomed and wanted when they come here? Do our worship and our work, as well as our meals and our receptions, say this particular gathering is a time of great significance and delight because of the surpassing worth of the Lord we serve? Or do they say, you know, this is not really very important. Church is no big deal. We're not feeling very good about ourselves. And therefore we are not going to pay much attention to how we worship or how we welcome.

Some of you were present at my service of installation eight years ago. Today actually marks eight years to the very day since I preached my first sermon in this great pulpit. The installation service you all put on was one fantastic extravagant celebration. We worshiped exuberantly. The music was magnificent, the messages inspiring. I'll bet it is not often that visiting ministers are treated to the huge boiled shrimp you put out for them that night. Then, after the service we went downstairs and were treated to the alluring music of Ernie Small's Blues Band. True, conversations were difficult. But what a moment of celebration for this Church! We were showing the Bowling Green community and the Presbytery of Western Kentucky that church can be fun and enthusiastic and celebration. The perfect church celebrates extravagantly.

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II. The Perfect Church Is Full of Imperfect People Who Serve Extravagantly

But let's not stop with partying. At the marriage celebration Jesus is being called into action to begin his serving. His mother is utterly confident of his abilities. And serve he does, the finest wine. We all have a need to serve. To reach out and make a difference in someone's life. Our Presbyterian Book of Order says poignantly — we undertake this mission even at the risk of losing our lives.

This Church of which we are a part is a serving Church. With all the pressures on our lives, hectic schedules. job and school deadlines, we yet long to be part of something significant, something that will outlast us. So we seek ways to serve. As an organization we have selected some 26 missions that we support with our pledge dollars. Dollars which you actually over-subscribed last year giving 8 1/2% more than you pledged — 712,424 given, with 656,533 pledged. So every bill and outreach mission was paid what we pledged and then some. In addition we are building a school in the mountains of Haiti. We have sent a mission team to Mexico. We built another Habitat for Humanity House. Our youth are preparing to return to the Dominican Republic. Why do we do these things? Because we have a need to serve in the manner of our Master who came not to be served but to serve.

Tomorrow we remember the life of a great American, a black preacher in whom the struggle for civil rights by blacks in this country crystalized. Martin Luther King, Jr. is remembered as a man who made a difference. Shortly before his tragic death in Memphis, he was reflecting with a friend about his funeral. He had an ominous sense that he would not live much longer. And he said,