What a fantastic gathering we had this morning! I was encouraged and hope you were too! Thank you to all of our volunteers from the music team to kitchen help to Sunday school teachers.
Today we got to pray for Francesca as she and team from Kingsway Foursquare Church is heading to Turkey on a Missions Trip for the next two weeks. Francesca is a youth leader in our Edge Youth Ministry and we are grateful for her service both here and in Turkey. Please remember to pray for her and their team. To find out more information on their team visit the team blog at
kingswaycrew.blogspot.com.
We also announced that Calvin & Elisa Williams will be stepping into a new role at our church as our Youth Pastors. Calvin & Elisa have been working with our youth ministry for the past four years and Calvin has been a YFC worker for that time as well. He will continue in his work with YFC and our youth ministry. Please continue to pray, help, and support them!
I had the privilege to share some words that God has placed on my heart for this season of our church. You will be able to hear the whole message at
http://www.missionfoursquare.com/index.php/downloads/sermons.html. I have also included below a letter I wrote to our church:
Letter to the Members of
MISSION FOURSQUARE CHURCH
November 1, 2009
Dear Church Family,
We are entering a new season at Mission Foursquare Church and I am thrilled to be a part this family! Just over ten years ago I walked through the doors of a little country church building and was warmly greeted by this fellowship. For me, it was love at first sight. I loved Mission from the first time I drove here and I loved our church family even more from the first Sunday I visited.
What’s even more amazing is that after ten years I haven’t ‘fallen’ out of love with Mission or our church. In fact, I love our town and church more than ever. People have come and gone and our buildings have changed, but the same seeds that were planted at our start by dedicated men and women are continuing to grow and bear fruit under the power and graciousness of our Lord.
Throughout our history we have also experienced many challenges only to see God prove Himself faithful again and again. He has blessed us with loving people, stable leadership, healings, salvations, spiritual gifts, land and buildings, a promising future, and more! So as we move into this next season we can anticipate that their will be more challenges, but God will be faithful and His blessings will follow us as we follow Him!
In this new season we have much to celebrate and much to work on. First, here is what we can celebrate:
- A New Day… “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Psalm 118:24 NIV. We can start each new day and new season confident that God has created the day and that is reason enough to celebrate!
- A New Servant… Without me knowing it God has been preparing me for this season and I am excited to follow Jesus. I firmly believe that the real pastor of our church is Jesus and I have simply been lead to a new role of reminding us of that fact.
- New Ideas… I have literally spent nights without sleep over the past month because my mind has been buzzing with ideas of how to help us better reach our neighbours and continue growing in our walk with Jesus. Of course, I’m not the only one with ideas, your ideas are even better so please call or email me and we can walk it out.
- Mortgage Payment… Did you know that the total bill for our new family and youth centre addition came to $940,000? While we still have 13 years (or less!) to go before it’s paid for, we can celebrate that in two years we have brought it down to $800,000!
- Salvations… Our youth ministry specifically has started to see youth come to faith in Christ! Most of these youth are students that don’t have any other connection to our church. We can look forward to Jesus transforming their life and friend’s lives!
- New Youth Pastor… Many of us already know Calvin Williams as he has been a vital part of our youth ministry for the past four years. In conjunction with his work through Youth For Christ in Mission, he will also lead our youth ministry. I have a deep love and appreciation Calvin and Elisa. They have soft hearts towards Jesus and those He died for! Please continue to encourage and support them in prayer, help, and financial contributions.
- Giving is Up… Thank you to everyone who responded to council’s challenge to tithe. Due in part to rental revenue increase, increased giving, and budget changes, we were only $700 short of our new budget in October 2009. While we still need to give generously to recover from our shortfall from the last ten months, it looks as though we are now headed in the right direction!
Now that you’ve been encouraged and inspired by those points of celebration, we can move on to our current challenges. As we all pitch in, we and our community will see and know God’s love and grace!
- Loving Service… There are always ministries that could use extra hands. Whether it’s bottle drives, teaching Sunday School, mentoring youth, running the words for worship, or working on the sound board, we need everyone to pitch in and volunteer to make the ministry of our church family grow!
- Giving… Due to a downturn in giving over the past year our council sat down last week and has revamped the budget by cutting expenses and changing salaries and benefits. The result is a monthly expense decrease of $3500 making our new monthly income goal $17,000. If you call our church, your church family, then please give towards our family expenses. Know that $17,000 is a bare bones budget. For our church to meet every one of its goals at this season of our life we would need to see $26,000 a month! Thank you for your generosity!
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter. I hope you will take all of this to heart by thanking God for His goodness and then asking Him how you can be a part of extending His love and life through our church family!
Love,
Clint.
