Looks like I was able to salvage all of the content from the site before the security breech! Now I’ll slowly but surely work on the shell of the site to try and get it back to a new ‘normal’.
Very thankful for the help I received from Jason Denniston to get the site back into my hands and out of the hands of the hackers! Jason was the first to call me and reassure me that we could get this sorted out. I appreciate friends like him that help me regain hope!
I can’t believe it’s already August and today was our third Sunday here!
Last week’s message concluded with the reminder that we are Christ’s ambassadors and that led to this week’s message, “Fruit Markets” revolving around the fruits of the Spirit from Galatians 5. The main idea today is that the fruit of our lives ‘markets’ (verb) the vine we’re connected to! The challenge is for us to remember that it’s all about Jesus, it’s only because of Jesus, and it’s about ALL of Jesus.
Jess sang “His Eye is on the Sparrow” for the offertory this morning which was a special treat and brought many positive comments.
I’m looking forward to our guest speakers, Drs. Tom & Karen Asher, next week. They are Global Partner missionaries to Sierra Leone and they’ll be sharing in our worship service.
I stumbled upon a great video on YouTube this evening entitled, “Walk Across America” – it seems to depict a guy walking from the East Coast to the West Coast. I knew there HAD to be more to the story.
This kind of stuff fascinates me!
The original video:
The “behind the scenes, rest-of-the-story video”:
The message I preached this morning was entitled, “New Life” and came from 2 Corinthians 5:11-21. It was my first sermon as the lead pastor of First Wesleyan Church, Shippensburg. I could tell all morning that friends and family across the country were lifting me up in prayer to the Lord. I know the Lord blessed the entire day.
I closed the sermon with an opportunity to respond by acknowledging a need for re-newed life in Christ and was pleased that a couple handfuls of our people responded. Praise the Lord!
After church we had a great fellowship dinner downstairs in honor of our arrival as the new pastoral family. My vice chairman, Dayton, closed out our time together by having the people gather around me, lay hands on me and pray for me. It was a powerful moment. We very much enjoyed visiting with folks and beginning to get to know a few people that we hadn’t yet met.
Attendance this morning was 50! That’s more than an 8.5% growth rate since last week (46)! :)
Keep praying for us and our new church as we continue to push through this transition and honor God with everything we do!
One of my favorite online tools for reading the Bible – YouVersion has just released a great promotional video:
