Pastor’s Corner

Date: September 30, 2009

                    I can’t believe it is October all ready. There are several things to keep us busy until the New Year.  Coming up soon will be our fall yard sale hosted by the South Carolina mission team. Bring your stuff and help us raise money for the trip; don’t forget any winter clothes you might be ready to pass on. We will also soon be enjoying our church hayride and hotdog roast with the Miller Brick bunch.  Trunk or treat is not far off the horizon. Bring your vehicle to the church parking lot, decorate it up for Halloween and pass out candy to the kids on October 31st. Our annual harvest dinner is coming up. Bell choir practice is underway and choir will soon be starting for our Christmas musical. Advent will soon be here and our usual Christmas activities as well as our Christmas party. We will soon be starting a sermon series on the Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations. This series will end on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. The next Sunday, November 29, we will be having a visitor Sunday.  We encourage you to invite your friends who either do not go to church at all or do not go anywhere on a regular basis to come and worship with us.  In preparation for that, the worship committee has been working hard putting together a visitor follow up ministry that we will have in place for that Sunday and continue there after.  We also can’t forget our Agape group on Tuesday mornings, monthly Bon Ami meetings and Bible studies on Thursdays. Whewwwwww. We have lots to do.  It is exciting to see all of the activities and ministries that are taking place. I love it when the church is busy.

 OH YEAH, don’t forget worship on Sunday morning.

   One of the other events that  happens this time of the year is charge conference. We have been having meetings and putting together the administrative pieces needed for the business of the church for 2010.  Getting ready for charge conference also gives me an opportunity to reflect on some of the events that has happened over the last year.  Since last summer we have done an outreach event for a kite flying day which we will do again next year, hopefully with more wind.  We did our first trunk or treat event which was really enjoyed. We had a successful VBS and we have reorganized our junior church and it is going great.  We have some new little ones in the church and are beginning a new nursery program, looking for volunteers to take a Sunday. We worshipped at the river for a change of scenery. We are also revamping our senior youth. I am looking forward to some new opportunities there. We spent the week out at the fair feeding the hungry masses and showing our smiling faces. As I write Farmer’s fair will start this week and we will have our booth there as well.  We had the opportunity to present our Christmas cantata at Heritage hall in a community performance. We have baptized eight persons who have made first time profession of faith in Christ. Four of those I had the opportunity to do in South Carolina in the ocean. We also celebrated nine privious baptisms in South Carolina as well.  We have had eight new members join the church and have five more individuals who have expressed interest in joining.  We had another successful mission trip to South Carolina where we once again brought home more than we took. We are already looking forward to next year. We have had over thirty-five first time visitors to the church and approximately twenty-five of those have become regular attendees. That is a great percentage of retention and speaks well of our church. Even though numbers are not everything, these reflect great accomplishment and outreach for a congregation of our size.

   I am really proud of all that we have accomplished this past year.  You have done a great job in reaching out to our community for the Gospel of Christ. I am looking forward to the coming year and some new plans, projects and ministries that are in our future.        Blessings!

Fall Frenzy and a look back