Sunday, November 14, 2004

Wow. There comes a point where this sounds redundant. And in this case, I am loving the redundancy.

We had 76!!! I am completely blown away by God continually bringing people to our doors, and this week, quite honestly, we only had a few visitors. These were almost all "home folk," which makes the number 76 even more overwhelming. In June, I sat down with my ministry team and we went through the the list of potential members, and we had approximately 80 that we knew we could target. Since then, we have focused on many of those people, but God has added even more, and in the past eight weeks we have averaged 64. Wow. Considering that in July we were barely averaging 35 and had little momentum, this is incredible. Switching to Sunday was a key in getting things moving forward, and God has just blessed us.

Since switching to Sundays on July 25th, we have:
1) Had 10 saved.
2) Had 11 baptized.
3) Had 10 families (or family units) become part of our church.

God is so good. This service was a great one, as we baptized 8 people (Cheri Cocco, Shay Bennett, Lydia Debenidictis, Chaz Trombley, Floyd & Julie Harris, and Ralph & Mary Johnson).
We also had a special time of prayer for James Smith, which was very emotional. We are so proud of our troops, and we continue to pray for them. James is returning to Afghanistan to serve our country, and our prayers are with him, as well as Candace (his wife) and his two kids (Quincy & Christopher).

On Sunday, I preached the last message in the Irresistible Evangelism series on "Sharing Our Faith." It went well, and I am glad to have finished it. Our next series is a Christmas series, "From Humbug to Hallelujah" that I will start on November 28th.

I thank God that I have the privilege of leading this group of fine people. No, they are not perfect, but they are who God has entrusted into my pastoral care. And again, to that I say, "Wow."