Sunday Stuff

On yesterday, I had the expressed privilege of being the guest preacher at the Lilydale Progressive Missionary Baptist Church, Chicago, IL, where my good friend and brother, Romell Williams serves as the Pastor, for their 95th Church Anniversary Celebration. Let me say right off the bat that I was so impressed with the ministry and administrative acumen of Romell Williams. He recently led his congregation into a great renovation project for their building and while they are not totally complete with the project, the work that has been done thus far is outstanding. Not only is he a great administrator, where his staff is attentive and operate his vision and direction with a spirit of excellence, but his church loves him. His ministerial staff loves him. His deacons love him. His musicians love him. Often times when our peers see others doing well with their ministries, the green-eye of jealousy will rear its ugly head to the point that people start looking for things to complain about. But I left that church on yesterday armed with a greater sense of commitment and urgency to grow my ministry at FMZBC to become a machine such is there at Lilydale Progressive. God Be Praised for what he is doing and will do for Romell and Lilydale.

The worship was outstanding all day long. Lately, I have been having some problems with my voice, which for those of us who utilize our voices to the max, can be a distraction in worship. So because this was prevalent on my mind, it caused me to rush through my message on Romans 8:31 at 8 AM, which I tagged The Protection of God. I do not feel that I did my best, but his members came up after service to tell me how blessed they were by the Word of God, and one came to unite with Lilydale, which means that the Lord showed up and blessed. I relaxed more at 11 AM because I made a point to myself, that if my voice is not going to hold up like I want it, I will put all of my focus on my assignment. I preached a message from Philippians 3:13-14 which I tagged A Single Minded Church, and I didn't rush or focus on my voice, I just gave God everything that I had, and he honored that by sending 2 more to come to unite with the church including one for baptism. This let me know that all we as Preachers need to focus on is our faithfulness to our assignment and let God sort out the rest. The Anniversary Celebration concluded at 3:30 PM with Pator Herring from the Calvary Baptist Church who preached from Joshua 3 which he tagged Getting to the Next Level. It was a pleasure to both meet and hear Pastor Herring on yesterday and I look forward to fellowshipping with him again.

Last night we finished our day in worship, by attending the Dedication Celebration for the newly erected building of the New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church, where Dr. Stephen J. Thurston serves as Senior Pastor. The builidng is phenominal and the worship was outstanding, as Pastor Davis from Mississippi brought the message out of Psalms 91. We are praying that God will grant them favor to meet every financial need that has arisen with an undertaking such as this.

I will post the outlines for both messages from yesterday on tomorrow.