CHOOSING TO HUNGER
As followers of Jesus Christ, we are called to honor him in all things, love others in his name, and help others to find and follow him. For us as a church, this means our focus must always be on worship, service, and mission as we seek to follow him together. These things look different and will continue to look different for a while because of our current circumstances, but praise God he continues to work.
Worship and the ministry of the Word continue, both in person and virtually. We have been physically gathering as the church for over a month now while continuing to live stream both of our services on Sunday morning at 9:00AM and 11:15AM. Several of our Sunday Morning Bible Study classes have begun physically meeting as well, including both our children and our youth, while others are continuing to virtually gather week by week. We continue to post daily live prayer times (9:30AM) and our Wednesday night Adult Bible Study (6:00PM) each week, while our youth, college, children, and some adult Bible studies continue to gather virtually during the week as well. God continues to draw people to himself through our ministries, blessing us with two baptisms in June and several more coming in the following weeks.
IN SERVICE TO THE COMMUNITY
Service and mission opportunities in our community continue as well. It’s once again time for Backpack-a-palooza — an important effort to equip at-risk students residing at The HOPE Community with school supplies for the upcoming school year. Please consider sponsoring a child by visiting fbctlh.org/events/backpack-a-palooza before August 2. There continue to be opportunities to serve those in need of temporary shelter during the pandemic at the Salvation Army (to sign up call Julie Smith at (850) 408-4982 at the Salvation Army). Beyond Tallahassee, our youth this week were able to go to Ft. Walton Beach for a few nights, doing service projects in that area.
When it comes to ministering within the church, we are continuing to encourage people to sign up to serve others in the church who might not be able to get out of their house for things like groceries, medications, or other basic supplies. Another opportunity to minister to our self-quarantined members is to simply reach out to them with a video or phone call. If you would like to minister in either of these ways, please contact Joy Stein (x131). She will take your information and we will work to pair you up with members in need as those needs arise or get you a list of people to whom you can reach out. And if you are one of our members who need some simple errands run (or anything else we can help you with), please also contact Joy.
PLANNING IN UNCERTAIN TIMES
As we look toward the next several weeks, we know there is a lot of uncertainty, especially surrounding school and what that will look like. We want to continue to pray for our educational leaders and for our parents they continue to think through the best way to go forward. For us as a church, we typically try to coordinate the start of our fall Wednesday night activities with school, and right now our intended start date for beginning to physically gather on Wednesday nights again is August 19. This includes Adult Bible Study, Children’s ministry, and youth ministry.
We want to continue to highlight the importance of the practices we have put in place when we gather, which include wearing masks, social distancing, and making hand sanitizer available at every entrance and exit. We are loving our neighbor as we continue to do what we can to protect one another from Covid-19.
EMBRACING THE SEASON
In a lot of ways, our current circumstances are like a fast. Jesus tells us that we should have both times of fasting and feasting in our lives and that fasts help us hunger for God in ways we wouldn’t be able to experience when we’re full and satisfied. While none of us chose these circumstances, we can choose how we will respond to them.
I hope we choose to hunger for God, to long for his presence and power amidst our uncertainty and loss, knowing that he will fill us with His righteousness when we turn to him (Matt 5:6). Let’s keep worshipping, serving, and reaching out to our neighbors with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
God bless,
Pastor Gary