Sunday Stuff

Today was an interesting day at FMZBC. We concluded our series on Developing A Giving Church, with our look at 2 Corinthians 9:6-10, which I will post the outline on Monday, I labeled the message "You Reap What You Sow". The Apostle Paul writes this portion of the letter to the Corinthian Church to encourage them to give as an act of worship to the Lord for all of the things that he had done for them. The Corinthians were not accustomed to giving, even though God had taken good care of them, so Paul needed to motivate them to participate in the worship of God with an expression of their gifts. In verses 6-10, Paul lets them and us know that the measure of what we reap is directly tied into the amount that we sow. I pray that we see the results of this series manifest itself in the life of our congregation that we will see the effects of which through our faithfulness in our stewardship.

We also had a church meeting after worship where I gave the new vision to the church as well as an update on our relocation project. Let me state out front, I detest church meetings. The majority of my experiences is that even when you tell the congreagation that this is a meeting to give the vision, there are still those who come with a spirit of disruption and being argumentative. I saw people today who have not been to church in months, but they wanted to show up for the meeting. There was questions that was discussed last year when we met to decide to relocate, yet they wanted to come and bring up those same questions today. I am grateful though, there were members who saw this happening and they stood up to tell them that this type of action was not appreciated. God Be Praised! I am encouraged by the outspoken actions of a few of our members who are willing to stand up for what's right.

After I presented the vision (I will post that this week as well), I gave each member a letter of commitment to sign, so that not only can I know, but also the other members would know, who is supportive of this new vision and to make them accountable to God and one another for their role in the growth and development of our church. I can honestly say, that I personally saw 98% of those in attendance sign that letter. I'm encouraged by this.

The month of October our church will be in what I call the Month of Unity, where we will read two scriptures per day on unity as well as praying each day that our church will re-discover our unity as believers of Christ. Every Wednesday, we will fast from 6 AM - 6 PM while reading those scriptures for that day. Whatever text falls on Sunday that I gave them, I will be attempting an exposition on that text. Our motto for this month is...Unity: An Open Door Towards a Brighter Tomorrow--Ephesians 4:1-4. Please pray for our church that these attempts to make us a people of excellence in everything we do for the Lord will be pleasing to him.