Some Of The Reasons I'm Excited About Today

Here are some of the reasons I am excited about today...

***Worship this morning. We get to exalt our Lord.

***We will hear a testimony this morning of a family in our church who chose the path of faithfulness and discovered the blessings of the Lord.

***New message series starts today: How Smart Are You?

***Tonight for the first time, the junior high youth group will be leading the service. The junior high youth band has been practicing for this for weeks. It will be a great night.

***Tonight, following the service is the official meet and greet for the Pletcher's and their three new adopted children from the Ukraine.

***I have a leadership meeting today for final approval of the drawings and budget for the construction of our new preschool facility. Groundbreaking will be next week.

***I have a deacon's meeting today where we will be discussing a new Sunday night series that will begin on March 13 and culminate on March 27 with a very special evening for our church.

***I have a worship pastor search team meeting today where we will be praying about a very serious candidate for church.

That is just a start. I haven't spoken with Pastor Wally, but we probably have baptisms this morning... We will be promoting our New Member class today which already had a ton of people signed up... The preschoolers are working on something special that the church will see next week...

Don't miss this morning!

Pastor Noel

On My Heart...

Quick note to our church family (and other kind readers) of what is on my heart this morning...

... Recently read an old book titled "How To Pray" by a R.A. Torrey. It has been a life changing book! I read a lot of books and I rarely say that, but this small book is worth reading. Currently all of our deacons and council are reading the book and they are saying the same thing about it. Ask Bill Marriott or Henry Zigan or Martin Bauer what they think about the book. I imagine any deacon will give you a strong recommendation to read it.

... I'm excited about our new Church Council. We had our first leadership meeting this past Sunday night. I look forward to how we can work together to serve the Lord and the church. Pray for these eight men: Billy Andrews, Jeff Salyer, Ray Wagner, Andrew Roth, Henry Zigan, Bo Bogardus, Sean Hall, Michael George.

I've got to take a break. More to come...

Pastor Noel

New Ministry Staff

Dear FBC Heath Family,

As I shared with you back in January, we are making a concerted effort to increase our outreach to young families by improving and expanding our preschool, children, and youth ministries.

The first step in that was to begin the process of renovating our preschool facilities. The cost of that project will be around $190,000, and it is our commitment to pay cash for this expense. So this past March we began to collect the needed funds. As of today, four months later, through your generosity and sacrifice, you have given $140,722.45! Construction will begin as soon as we have the needed funds in that account.

This Sunday we will take another step in this effort to reach more young families. We will ask the church to create two new ministry staff positions. Both of them will be under the umbrella title of “Family Ministry Directors”. We have asked Phil and Christine Lintz to serve in these positions once they are approved.

Phil will be working along side Pastor Troy in the youth ministry. We will eventually see that ministry split into a junior high and a senior high ministry. It is our desire to see our youth ministry grow to reach more and more young people. One of the steps we believe is needed for this is to free up Troy’s time to focus on the Senior High youth and then to have Phil focus on reaching and discipling the younger ones.

It is often difficult to preach a message to teens when you have 12-year-olds and 18-year-olds in the same group. Many of the issues an eighteen year old in our culture will face are different from those the twelve year old encounters.

Troy and I have spent much time talking and praying about this, and we believe this will be a valuable step toward increasing the effectiveness of our youth ministry.

Christine will work with Pastor Wally in the preschool and children’s ministry. With the new preschool facility, our new security procedures, and our expanding children’s ministries, we simply need more hands on deck. Christine has become a great assistant to Pastor Wally and an effective leader alongside many others in our children’s ministry in the last year. Pastor Wally and I are looking forward to seeing how an expanded role for Christine will help us reach more families.

In order to facilitate these new positions and also to increase Pastor Troy’s salary to better reflect his responsibilities, we will need to make some financial adjustments. I believe at this time, with the financial climate of our nation and state, we do not need to increase our budget requirements. So I have asked Scott, our administrator, to identify sufficient funds that we can move from one area of the budget to another to take care of this need. He has put together a recommendation that will accommodate the change without negatively impacting any of our ministries. After the church approves this ministry step, we will ask the finance team to officially make those changes.

If you have any questions, please call or email me or Pastor Wally at the church. Or you can contact any of our church council members. We will try to answer all your questions during the week. Sunday we will vote without discussion in our morning worship service.

I am thankful for how the Lord has provided our church with such excellent leaders… both those I get to work with on staff and those godly, faithful laypeople in our church.

In Christ,

Pastor Noel

Why We Aren't A Liberal Church

I made a last minute decision yesterday to change the focus of our upcoming Sunday night series. I still want to do what we had planned, but at a later time. Now we are going to spend the next three weeks focusing on who we are as a church and why we are that way.

The three message titles will be...

-- Why We Aren't A Liberal Church
-- Why We Aren't An Emerging Church
-- Why We Aren't A Liturgical Church

The point of this study is not to bash other churches but to help our church understand who we are and why. Churches across the country and in our area are changing. Some of those changes are good and have a biblical basis. Some of those changes are very bad and have no biblical basis. All kinds of activities, lifestyles, and beliefs are endorsed by churches and are said to be sanctioned by the Lord when Scripture clearly contradicts those claims.

The church is defined by God's Word.

I want us to look into Scripture and learn what the church should look like. I want us to know some of the errors of direction churches make and how they make them.

This first week we will answer the question: Why aren't we a liberal church? We will learn what is meant by the phrase 'liberal church'. We will look at some examples of practices and beliefs. We will learn how churches get to that place. And of course we will study the biblical model that speaks to this error.

I think this will be a profitable study. I hope you will join us.

Pastor Noel