Dear Friends,
I am so glad that our congregation has a wide age range of people who are a regular part of our congregation, but we can do even better. All too often we see young people who have been raised in the church straying away from the church once they get out of high school (or sooner). Some never find their way back and others come back at crucial times in their life, especially when they have children of their own. Your church board believes that we can do better and are taking steps to evaluate how good of a job we are doing at being a church where this age group feels welcome and to look at how those in that age category feel about their church. To help us to accomplish this we will be using a tool developed by Fuller Youth Institute called the “Growing Young Assessment”. Growing Young Assessment In order to help us better understand the culture of our church, we will soon be inviting our regular attenders to complete a brief online assessment (it will take you only 5 to 10 minutes). This survey is based on the work of the Fuller Youth Institute, specifically the research presented in the book Growing Young: 6 essential strategies to help young people discover and love your church. Your responses will remain confidential as they are incorporated into a larger report. If you do not have access to a computer to go online we will have computers set up at the church on a couple of Sundays and we will help you to complete the assessment. Your thoughts matter! We do not want to lose even one more teenager or young adult to the church or to the Kingdom of God! Following you taking the evaluation we will receive our results recommendations to help us to improve in our ministry to and with this age group. They are so important to us! Watch the church website, Facebook page, announcements, and your email to find out how to go online to be a part of this important assessment. The life we are able to continue to reach and minister to may just be one who is very important to you! Holy Week is coming up soon. Look elsewhere in the newsletter and on the calendar for our schedule of services. Plan now for this to be a time for your own spiritual evaluation and growth. Christ made the ultimate sacrifice for our sin so that we could have a right relationship with God and be with Him for all of eternity! He rose again to prove that he has power over both sin and over death! Worship with us as we remember all that God did for us. At the end of April we will be finishing up our church statistical year. We will be taking in new members, electing our officers as well as our delegates to this summer’s conventions. I will be sharing my annual report with you on the Sunday of our Annual Meeting on April 28th. Please be in prayer for the elections and that we might be inspired as we finish one year and move into a bright future of serving God together. God has blessed us this statistical year in many ways and we have been able to be a blessing to His work locally and around the world! How is your spiritual growth? One of the best ways that we have found to grow spiritually is to be part of a discipleship small group. If you think that you might be interested or if you have questions, please contact our Associate Minister of Discipleship, Pastor Connie Young at (814) 572-4255. We have men’s groups and ladies’ groups and can form new groups as needed. I encourage you to get involved in a Passages group and grow as you learn more from the Word of God. Our NEW SOUND SYSTEM will be operational by Sunday, March 31st. We are thankful for a generous donation that has made it possible to upgrade our system so that you can more clearly hear the service both in the sanctuary and online. The KITCHEN RENOVATION is coming right along. The new storage area off of the kitchen is almost complete and the flooring will be the next part to go in. The kitchen will be much more user friendly to better support our times of fellowship (we do love to eat!). The materials for this work are thanks to another generous donation a couple of years ago that also enabled us to replace the roof on the church building. Now that spring is here we can get back to completing the installation of our NEW PLAYGROUND! Again, you gave and we are able to offer this fun area for our children! Thank you for your financial faithfulness, not only for these major projects, but especially your regular tithes and offerings that keep our staff paid and the lights on and our ministries functioning effectively! In Christ’s Love, Pastor Wayne
1 Comment
|
Praying for our next PastorArchives
December 2019
Categories |