Thoughts on Last Sunday and the Next...

This past Sunday was a great Sunday of worship...

• We had a great crowd... both on the main floor and in the balcony! (In fact we had some families that had a difficult time finding seats together. I want to remind our regular worship attenders to sit as close to the front as you can get and to scoot to the center of the row you are sitting on. That will help us make things easier and more comfortable for our guests each week.)

• We began the service with baptisms which has become an almost weekly occurrence. I pray this will always be true, and I pray that we never get 'used to it'. We should always marvel at the grace of God that changes lives.

• We had a very good response during our invitation... a number of people and families praying at the altar. We had one young adult lady make a profession of faith and three youth make public that they had made professions of faith over the weekend.

• Sunday night was a blast. We had a real wedding in our evening worship service... Sound strange? It was great! We had a young couple come into our church a few weeks ago. They made a profession of faith and began to allow the grace of God to change their lives. One of the things they wanted to do was to get married and re-start their family the right way. They didn't have the resources to have a wedding so we decided we would just make it a part of our worship service and celebrate the grace of God... How God's grace was changing them and how God's grace is changing all of us. So we had a wedding, a sermon, and a couple of baptisms... Then we had a giant reception. I was so proud of how our church came out to celebrate with the young couple and how they blessed them with money and gifts at the reception... Wow! What a great example of the love of Christ.

This next Sunday is going to be fun as well...

• Our new semester of Connect Groups begins Sunday. We are hoping for a record attendance and involvement in our Connect Ministry beginning this week. If you haven't signed up for a group, there is still a few days left. Go to our website, fill out the form, and choose your group. Some of the groups are closed now, but we will do our best to get you in the group you choose.

• This week we will be continuing our series of messages on 'Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe.' This weeks myth is... God Helps Those Who Help Themselves. We will be in Genesis 16.

• Pastor Wally just let me know we have two more baptisms schedule for this Sunday morning!
  

A quick note on our daily Quiet Time encouragements. If you sometimes struggle with having a daily devotional time, take a look at our daily QT Encouragement blog... MyMornings.blogspot.com.

Pastor Noel

New Song for Worship...

Pastor Wally, Pastor Shawn, and Church Administrator Scott are working on doing this little number in an upcoming service...



Pastor Noel

Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe

There are two things on my mind this morning as I do a little studying and praying about what is on the horizon at First Baptist Church of Heath…

First, I am looking forward to our new message series that begins this Sunday. After spending six weeks focusing on just two chapters in the Book of Revelation, now we are going to skip around the Bible for the next six weeks. I am borrowing this series title from a Larry Osborne book I read a while back. As soon as I saw the book title, I thought this would make a great message series if the Lord gave me liberty to preach it. So the title of our upcoming series is “Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe”. Larry, in his book, identifies ten of these dumb things. In my message series, I plan to address six. Three of mine are similar to his; three are different. Here is my list…


Dumb Things Smart Christians Believe
• Myth #1: Your Conscience Should Be Your Guide (9/13)

• Myth #2: Dead People Go To A Better Place (9/20)

• Myth #3: God Helps Those Who Help Themselves (9/27)

• Myth #4: God Forgets All Our Sins (10/4)

• Myth #5: God Has A Blueprint For My Life (10/11)

• Myth #6: All Things Work Together For Your Good (10/18)

Invite your friends, family, and co-workers. Let’s see how God’s Word can encourage us as we learn the truth about these myths.

Second, I have received much positive feedback from our on-line quiet time encouragement videos. Tomorrow (9/8) I will begin to focus on the Gospel of John. If you would like to join me for these quiet times for a few weeks, this would be a good place to start.

The best way to begin is to watch the video I made on how to have a quiet time. Then just jump in with the rest of us tomorrow morning!

For the introduction video, click here.

For the daily quiet time videos, click here.

Invite your friends, family, and co-workers to join in. The website is MyMornings.Blogspot.com.

Pastor Noel

My Mornings...

Check out my new post at my other blog... MyMornings.blogspot.com

Pastor Noel

My Mornings...

Check out my new post at my other blog... MyMornings.blogspot.com

Pastor Noel

My Mornings...

Check out my new post at my other blog... MyMornings.blogspot.com

Pastor Noel

My Mornings...

Check out my new post at my other blog... MyMornings.blogspot.com

Pastor Noel

My Mornings...

Check out my new post at my other blog... MyMornings.blogspot.com

Pastor Noel

My Mornings...

Check out my new post at my other blog... MyMornings.blogspot.com

Pastor Noel

My Mornings...

Check out my new post at my other blog... MyMornings.blogspot.com

Pastor Noel

Recent Tweets

My blog posts seem to be getting less and less frequent. I have begun using Twitter and Facebook to stay in touch with the online church community more than my blog. Some people don't use those tools and consequently don't see those posts. So I will occasionally just list those in this space in addition to the occasional blog post.

Pastor Noel

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Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is wasted. Unless the Lord protects a city, guarding it ... will do no good. Ps 127 ~ 5:55 AM Aug 5th

Same Scripture but different emphasis for Sunday message... New title: Final Warning: You Will Be Tested, I Will Help You... Rev 2:8-11 ~ 1:00 PM Aug 4th

Working on our prospect database.... noticed we have five people requesting to be baptized this Sunday.... Wow! ~ 12:50 AM Aug 4th

Good service and fellowship tonight with our team home from Kenya... ~ 8:30 PM Aug 2nd

Looking forward to being back in worship with my faith family... ~ 6:09 PM Aug 1st

Upcoming Message Series... http://bit.ly/bw5M9 ~ 9:15 AM Jul 31st

My 'son' in Kenya (Noel Junior) sent these keekoy's (sp?) to his 'sisters'... http://twitpic.com/c7iee ~ 10:35 PM Jul 30th

I'm home... Long day, but good day... ~ 10:29 PM Jul 30th

About to leave church to make a visit, then go to a meeting, then if time, another visit, then back to study... is vacation really worth it? ~ 4:48 PM Jul 30th

Good news... Revelation 1:3 promises that that Lord will bless the person who reads the book of Revelation... ~ 7:48 AM Jul 30th

An early start... Trying to pack a week's worth of work into two days... ~ 3:42 AM Jul 30th

Just finished the book, Eat This Book, by Eugene Peterson... Didn't agree w/ everything but I learned much... I will read this book again... ~ 1:02 PM Jul 29th

Looking forward to tomorrow, my 14th Wedding Anniversary. My wife is the 2nd biggest blessing in my life and a daily source of joy to me! ~ 11:30 PM Jul 28th

Just finished the book, 'The Purity Principle' by Randy Alcorn... Every married couple should read this book twice a year! ~ 6:31 PM Jul 27th

Preparing a four week series from the second and third chapters of the book of Revelation... I'm looking forward to preaching again... ~ 3:11 PM Jul 27th

Back in the saddle this morning... ~ 6:36 AM Jul 27th

Is praying for a great, God honoring worship service this morning... ~ 5:40 AM Jul 26th

Sitting by the pool working on an outline on my laptop... http://twitpic.com/bl7bv ~ 1:38 PM Jul 25th

Upcoming Sunday Morning Messages

Beginning this Sunday I will preach a series of messages through the seven letters Jesus gave to the churches in the book of the Revelation. This is Christ's final warning to the church and to believers living in our day. I am looking forward to diving into this and seeing the changes God will bring in our lives and our church...

8/02 --- Final Warning: Don't Neglect the Passion (Rev 2:1-7)
8/09 --- Final Warning: Persevere through Persecution (Rev 2:8-11)
8/16 --- Final Warning: Don't Believe the Lies (Rev 2:12-29)
8/23 --- Final Warning: Hypocrisy is Poison (Rev 3:1-6)
8/30 --- Final Warning: Seize the Day (Rev 3:7-13)
9/06 --- Final Warning: The Final Warning (Rev 3:14-22)

Pastor Noel

Columbine

I just finished the book, Columbine, by Dave Cullen. It tells the story of what really happened at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999, when two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Kiebold killed twelve students and one teacher and injured many more before committing suicide.

It was a very interesting book… more than you would think, though it is difficult to read because of the very offensive language.

There are many lessons to be learned from this tragic event. People involved in law enforcement, school administration, media, and those responsible for emergency response or security for a large facility should definitely read this book.

I’m not involved in any of those fields, so I read the book as a father of two pre-pre-teens and as a pastor. Here are some of the lessons I learned and a few truths that I was reminded of…

• Media reports of anything beyond the basic facts of a news event are mostly wrong! Most of what you know about the Columbine event is wrong: the background of the killers, the kind of people who were targeted, the motives, the events of the stand-off… With the Columbine tragedy certain wrong information was given by the media in the beginning and even when it was clearly shown to be wrong, the media stuck with it because it was more ‘interesting’ than the truth. It seems every time I am involved in a news event or have some knowledge of what really happened, I am amazed and surprised at how the newspaper reports differ from what really happened.

• Having a two parent home with a stay-at-home mother doesn’t guarantee your kids will turn out great. Parents need to be committed to being involved in their kid’s lives beyond just providing a stable home. Parenting must always be active; never passive.

• Parents should take seriously the warning signs of aberrant behavior. While much of the time there may not be reason for alarm, we should not operate from that assumption. I know from the few suicide cases I’ve been involved with that this truth is too often ignored.

• Having a relationship with Christ really does make a difference in the way we are able to handle tragedy. There really is a peace that passes understanding! The author, while definitely not writing from a Christian perspective, remarked at how very different the reactions were between the Christian parents and the non-Christian parents when the bad news started pouring in.

• In a tragedy, churches should focus on caring for and loving people not on aggressive outreach. The Holy Spirit will draw people to Christ. In the midst of a tragedy, our first response should be love in deed and in word. I believe in evangelism, but the message from the church to the world should be that we love you and Christ loves you, not that we want to take advantage of a difficult situation to ‘sign you up’. If a church doesn’t have a stronger witness and testimony in the community a year after the tragedy, then the church didn’t respond in the right way.

• It is never right to exaggerate or embellish a story to accomplish a good and noble purpose. Some of the great stories of Christian faith that could have come from this event have been lost because well meaning Christians encouraged or embraced known exaggerations, and when the embellishments were proved inaccurate, the whole story lost credibility. God will never bless an untruth, no matter our good intentions.

Pastor Noel

Update...

We had a great day of worship yesterday!

First, what a great morning of singing... the choir really showed out... the worship music was wonderful... In the last three weeks, Pastor Shawn has taken our worship time to a new level. I appreciate his hard work. I believe the Lord was truly honored yesterday morning in our service.

Our Patriotic Celebration last night was a big success. Good food... Great crowd... Super service! It was encouraging to see so many people come from our community join us for the celebration. Our choir did an exceptional job. I heard many good comments from a ton of visitors following the service.

Pastor Noel

Chafisi Orphan Ministry in Kenya

Well, we had another early morning Kenya meeting today... nobody should have to have a meeting at 5:00 a.m. The next time we partner with an international mission effort, we will partner with one west of us so that the meetings can be later in the day ;)...

So everyone wants to know... how are things going?

Good news! We have 42 orphans who all have uniforms, shoes, food, transportation, and paid tuition to school! We received a good report this morning concerning this ministry. I am thankful for all of you who make this ministry possible by your sacrificial giving, and I am thankful for the work of our four church members who have been in Kenya the past six months helping to facilitate this ministry. (By the way, if you would like to help us maintain this ministry or even help us minister to more orphans, contact the church and ask to speak with Carla. It costs us about $40 per month per orphan to provide this ministry. When you contact us, we can give you further details.)

The second piece of news is... our team in Kenya will be returning to Heath on July 22. They are coming back for a breather and to make preparations for a probable return in December. Pray for them as they travel and as they seek to get re-adjusted to living here.

Stay tuned for more updates in the days to come...

Pastor Noel