Archive for May, 2008
Yes, starting this Wednesday night, the 4th, we will resume our Family Fellowhip Nights. For those who may not have experienced these nights, here’s a brief explanation of how the nights go. The SFF Nights will go throughtout the summer, however, for the month of June, I have local pastors come and preach for us. I’ve got a great line-up all the way throughout. Staring this Wednesday the 4th, Bro. Chris Gardner, pastor/missionary in Arequipa, Peru will be with us. I understand he’s not a “local pastor”, but I was able to get him while he’s in town. It’ll be a great way to kick off this month. The other pastors that will be preaching are as follows: Bro. Greg Butler from Bible Baptist in Monroe, Bro. Kieth Everett from Landmark Baptist in Loganville and Bro. David Moody from The Baptist Tabernacle in Covington. It promises to be a great month of June.
Here’s the agenda for the evenings:
- Service 7-8PM
- Following the services till ???? -We have badminton courts, volleyball courts, horshshoes, basketball, redneck golf and bunch of tables set up for those who play Rook, UNO, Scrabble, etc.
- There will also be a concession stand for snacks after church and we’ll order pizza and Chic-fil-a on alternate nights.
This a great time to enjoy your family as well as other church families…plan on staying around!
May 31 2008 | General | No Comments »
I’ll be starting the Get Victory in Your Family Series on Sunday, June 1st. It promises to be a good series with a lot of “touch” subjects. Many of us like to think that we have everything just right in our families. The truth of the matter, there are probably many areas where we can improve on. The hard part about preaching a series like this is all the changes and adjustments in my own family that need to be make as directed by the Holy Spirit! God has blessed Michelle and I with a great family and marriage, but as long as there’s people involved, it will always need improvement. I hope that you make every effort to be there each and every service.
May 31 2008 | General | No Comments »
Well, this afternoon I was able to “cash in” on my Valentine’s Day gift from my wife and a birthday gift from Bro. David Savage…gift certificates for a new bow! I was finally able to get some time to go to David Savage’s new archery shop, “Everything Archery” located in Walnut Grove, Georgia and shoot a few of the many bows he has in stock. If you are looking for anything dealing with archery, make sure you pay Bro. David a visit. His knowledge concerning archery is unbelievable! I’ve never met anyone with more expertise and knowledge than him. The one on one time he gives you is worth everything. The feeling of leaving an archery shop knowing you’ve been taken care of, not taken advantage of, is huge.
God sure is good to this preacher that likes to hunt and fish…He’s put a man in our church who owns an archery shop (and likes to pamper his pastor) as well as another potential member who owns a gun shop in Loganville, Deaton’s Gun Shop. Let me encourage all readers to patronize these guys whenever possible…they know their stuff and most importantly, you can trust them. Thanks Bro. Dave!
May 28 2008 | General | No Comments »
I ran across this blog from Pastor Austin Gardner and it reminded me of the message I preached a couple of weeks ago on Wednesday night. It sums up the thoughts I was trying to give.
Are we praying for “lost people” to be saved?
I have preached a message more than once about the subject–Are the lost really lost? In other words do those that do not know Jesus Christ really go to Hell and the Biblical answer is a definite yes. They go to Hell if they are your family or not, they go to Hell if they have heard or not, they go to Hell if you like it or not! We must pray for the lost! We must be begging God to work in the lives of lost people. He has chosen to work through the prayers of His people. I try to mention your names nearly everyday in prayer. I try to pray for our missionaries and their works. I know that God wants to work and He wants us to ask Him to work. Let us be a people of prayer.
The seventeenth-century English Puritan Richard Baxter wrote,
Oh, if you have the hearts of Christians or of men in you, let them yearn towards your poor ignorant, ungodly neighbors. Alas, there is but a step betwixt them and death and hell; many hundred diseases are waiting ready to seize on them, and if they die unregenerate, they are lost forever. Have you hearts of rock, that cannot pity men in such a case as this? If you believe not the Word of God, and the danger of sinners, why are you Christians yourselves? If you do believe it, why do you not bestir yourself to the helping of others? (cited in I.D.E. Thomas, ed., A Puritan Golden Treasury [Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1977], 92)
What a comment by Baxter!
May 28 2008 | General | No Comments »
My wife and I want to thank the church for their thoughtfulness and kindness in the birthday gift you gave her. As a matter of fact, we took the money for the dishes my wife wanted and went straight to Bed, Bath and Beyond Sunday afternoon and bought them. She was very happy and we used them yesterday. Thank you for loving my family the way you do Victory Baptist Church!
May 27 2008 | General | No Comments »
Realizing that others apart from our members read this blog, let me share with you one of the things our people seem to really like. Throughout the summer, we’ll have 4-6 Sundays where we have a 2 PM afternoon service in lieu of our 6 PM service. The following days are usually afternoon services:
- Memorial Day-people just usually bring a picnic or go grab a quick lunch at Wendy’s, Burger King, etc
- Father’s Day-the church usually cooks hamburgers/hotdogs on this day for people to enjoy
- July 4th Sunday-sometimes we have a 5PM service followed with a church-wide picnic at a local park pavilion we rent
- Pastor’s Anniversary Sunday-this is where we typically have “dinner on the grounds”
- Old Fashion Sunday (Will Atkinson’s personal favorite)-here is where we have the hayride, tug o war, sack races and other games
There have been other times as well. Our people have really liked the summer change up and I think it is good sometimes to “shake it up” a bit. Some have asked about going to all afternoon services during the summer but I’m not sure that would be the best thing to do. Although I am not entirely opposed to it, here are some of the hesitations that I have for going to all afternoon services in the summer:
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We have a GREAT Sunday evening attendance…our people are faithful and I wouldn’t want to take away from the preaching/teaching opportunity it is.
- For some, the Sunday evening service is the only service they are able to attend because of serving in other ministries or b/c of secular jobs/work.
- It’s a long day for those with children.
- The afternoon service seems to be a little more rushed than others.
- People have a harder time focusing at that time of day (especially if they’re used to Sunday afternoon naps)
- We would have some folks who just wouldn’t like not having the evening service and we wouldn’t retain them for 2:00
- Choir rehearsal time would be greatly hampered and affected.
- In our case, I think we would miss quite a few Sunday evening visitors.
- Don’t know if we would retain everybody when we went back to the evening services in the fall.
- What would the SOL think? (Just kidding)
- Could take away from some of the faithfulness of our members (in what ways, I’m not entirely sure…maybe just because they wouldn’t look at the 2PM service with the same priority as the 6 PM)
I am very curious of the thoughts/comments from our church members, as well as those from folks who might already have/had afternoon services.
May 27 2008 | General | 1 Comment »
Wow, what a great day we had at Victory Baptist Church today! Evangelist John Bishop was with us in both morning services as well as our afternoon service and was an incredible blessing to us. If you have never heard Bro. Bishop’s testimony, I encourage you to go to his website and listen to it. He’s a wonderful man with a passion to tell people how good God is. Our people absolutely love him…some proof of this is in the amount the love offering given him. I challenged our people yesterday to be generous and thoughtful to him and his ministry. Well, they responded in a big way as we gave him over $3,000 on a holiday weekend! Praise the Lord for the kind response of our people. I don’t post this amount to brag, just to say “thank you” to our people and to praise the Lord. I know this, every bit will be used to honor God throughout the God is So Good Ministries. Special thanks to Cory Lawrence and Austin Gordon for their assistance with hosting Bro. Bishop on the properties.
May 27 2008 | General | 2 Comments »
Last night was another proud moment in my life as my oldest daughter graduated from Kindergarten. She looked very pretty and her mom and dad were very proud of her and love her dearly. Congratulations, Malia. Below are a few pictures taken of her getting her ears pierced for the big night as I watched nervously from behind the camera.
May 23 2008 | General | 2 Comments »
In a earlier post, I gave some information that has really put some questions in the minds of people. You may want to view it before continuing to read as to know where I’m coming from by clicking the link or looking at the recent posts on my page. Let me see if I can’t clarify the issue for you.
One can only understand the term “burden of the ministry” if you’ve been in the ministry for some time. The “burden of the ministry” comes in many forms and times. It’s not only at service times where the burden is being added to. Many times, the burden I’m talking about happens at people’s homes during the week, at the mexican restaurant in town or even at Dairy Queen after Sunday night’s service. You get there with a bunch of people and all of a sudden it gets crazy as “burdens” are passed from one end of the table to the other and people just dipping in every chance they get.
Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a lot of fun. It’s very satisfying to the flesh, but you just have to know when to say “no, I’m not going to indulge in that.” That’s the hard part…that’s where many pastors and staffs fail miserably and after a while you can even begin to see it “grow” on them. After a while, they don’t even look like the same person anymore and even their health begins to deteriorate.
That’s what I’m trying to avoid as leader of the staff God’s entrusted me with, and subsequently the need to lighten the load a little. This week’s been pretty good as the staff here at Victory are responding in ways I’ve not really seen to this point. It seems as if this whole idea has challenged each one of us to see clearer and say “I’m getting Victory over my lack of Vision.” Seriously, what good is Vision if you don’t get Victory in it? It even seems as if the guys have lost 20 plus pounds already, to put it into terms you dieters might understand.
As stated earlier, I don’t want to go into a whole lot more detail as of yet, but you don’t want to stay away too long because I will lay out everything in it’s entirety very soon. Please don’t mistake what I might be saying, we are willing and want to help you carry your burdens and even lighten them, we’re just tired of carrying our personal burdens around with us everywhere we go and are finding ways to get rid of them.
May 22 2008 | General | 1 Comment »
What does it all mean? What kind of impact can it have for the kingdom of God? Is it a waste of time or a tool? How can a pastor justify usage of such technology? Does it pull him away from other things? Is it too much personal information? Is it being too transparent?
These are questions that one might have so I thought I would try and answer them in my current limited knowledge, and in not-so-technical terms. Honestly, they may not be totally accurate definitions at all.
FIRST Question: What does it all mean? Blogging is basically an email or document that is posted to the internet with the things that I have on my mind that I want the world to know (or at least those that read my blog…a far cry from the world) These things vary from church updates, announcements and ideas to personal things like my kids playing baseball or having birthdays (like Malia and Hunter have today 5-22…they were born on the same day just two years apart). Sometimes (not enough) they contain pictures or links to video I want to share. Sometimes the blogs are current news updates or happenings at other churches or other ministries that I read about and link to.
I currently have around 23 or so different blogs in my Google Reader that I track almost daily. That’s not really very many at all, but it’s all the ones that have my interest right now. I learn from these like I hope they may learn from mine.
Blogging is a longer format than “twittering”, which I’ll mention in a minute. Blogging is much more informative and allows for more, I think, “personalization of the person”, in this case, “personlization of the pastor”. It’s amazing to me how often people will mention something or email me something in reference to a blog post. That tells me that people want to know more about people/things more than I realize. In most of my conversations with folks at church, they wouldn’t hear about some of the things that I blog about simply because of logistics. More on the specifics of blogging later.
What is Twittering? This is not necessarily a new concept (it’s been around for at least a year or so), however it is getting more notoriety here lately. Twittering is basically a blog on a diet…one of those “cabbage soup diets”…it is a much smaller version of a blog because it can only contain I think between 140-160 characters. For instance, this paragraph I’m writing now would be too long for me to “tweet”.
Twittering is basically answering the question, “What are you doing?” As a matter of fact, when I’m online, my computer will even say, “what are you doing?” Twittering is answering that question. It may be as simple as saying “I’m having a meeting”, or “I’m about to have a counseling session…please pray for me”
I am definitely not a twitter expert/proponent because I can’t quite see the validity/effectiveness of it for me personally yet. However, I thought the same thing about the whole blogging thing as well. The neat thing about twittering however, is that it is almost immediate communication that can be done/viewed through TEXT MESSAGING. I can do it in the car, in line at Walmart, during a severe thunderstorm or even in a “meeting that is going in every direction than where it is supposed to be going” (you’ll understand later) That feature makes it very appealing to those who don’t always have a computer in front of them or internet access. Like I said, I can post as a TEXT MESSAGE or recieve other “tweets” as a TEXT MESSAGE.
There are many other features that make it pretty neat, but still quite a bit ignorant in this area. One of the negatives is that it’s not really public information. A person will not see the “tweeting” going on unless they do what they call “follow me” by getting their own Twitter account. Of course it is free to get that account. You can go to twitter.com and sign up there.
That’s why on my blog page (in the bottom left hand corner) you see my twitteringand the only person I mention or talk to or follow is pbassham. (He’s a guy at Vision Baptist who is also “twittering” around a little.) Many of the tweets you’ll read are one sided because you’re not following his tweets. It’s like listening to a one-sided conversation. Of course, I didn’t realize my Twitter was live on my web page either so many of the tweets were tests and don’t make any sense whatsoever. Now that I know they’re live, I’ll try to make them more informative.
Like I stated, I’m not sure if this is something I will actually keep doing, but I do want to try it for a time. The TEXT MESSAGING thing is pretty rampant with young people and how cool would it be to to all of a sudden get a text message from the pastor saying, “I just saw a gorilla walking down the street eating popcorn and wearing parachute pants” (don’t ask…it just comes to me like that sometimes) So, if you would like to “follow me”, get you a twitter account and start tweeting.
That’s quite enough for this blog, I’ll answer some of the other questions later.
May 22 2008 | General | 1 Comment »
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