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• 11-20-11
• 11-27-11

 

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Dear Church Family:

First off I want to thank the many of you that had taken the time to make my birthday a special day. Thank you for the cake and love gift. Thanks for making my birthday special! Every year I try to put less importance upon birthdays, however we are never promised another birthday, so I am learning to be grateful realizing it is a time of celebration for another year that God has given to me.

I want to thank each and everyone that came to the Sunday School Game Night & Chili Cook-Off. What a great night was had by everyone. I especially want to thank those who participated in the soup making contest. Thank you for sharing with us your special talents and soups. It was great to see the different varieties and to be able to sample many different flavors. The greatest thing about the night was the opportunity to laugh and fellowship together; to be able to share and have a good time getting to know each other better. It makes me think about how we are going to be spending eternity together and how this is a precursor of things to come.

Having activities as a church family is very important, probably more than we realize. Having that fellowship and bonding with each other is a way of ministering to each other's needs whether we know it or not. Recently I've been reading a book entitled The Orphan Generation written by Scott Wilcher. The thrust of this book is connecting the youth and young adults to your church. On Wednesday nights beginning in January I've shown the adults present at our Wednesday night Bible study part of a series recorded by Dr. Woodrow Kroll where he talks about," Keeping Our Teens from Walking Away." In Dr. Kroll's series he shares that today in most churches two thirds of our youth stop attending church once they've graduated from high school and college. These young people are walking away from their faith. Dr. Kroll shared that the generations before World War II 65% of those generations remain faithful to church. However generations to follow World War II fell off to 35% and today it is at 4% of those remaining faithful to church. According to Dr. Kroll and his research department at Back to the Bible in Lincoln, Nebraska says, teens are stating that they are too busy. He also stated that teens are not reading their Bible, they are not realizing the importance of what the Bible is, and how it can give them directions for their life. Dr. Kroll also shares the importance that adults and especially parents have on the youth of today. That if we as parents and adults are not setting the proper example and living out in our lives what we claim to believe that we are serving as hypocrites damaging our children and youth. Dr. Kroll stated that many of the children see hypocrisy going on in the lives of those adults around them.

You might be thinking to yourself. Wow, this is some pretty heavy stuff and it is. Space does not allow me to share with you in this newsletter the information that I've gleaned from the book by Scott Wilcher and the study by Dr. Kroll. However these are the things that were unfolding through the month of January and I will share more with you in the next newsletter. There is a work that each of us must be doing and in the months to come I'll be sharing that with you.

God bless you,

Pastor Steve

 

 

Sunday Morning Schedule
Contemporary Service 9:00 - 9:50 am
Sunday School 10:00 - 10:45 am
Traditional Service 11:00 am

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