My dear First Baptist family, It is with a tangled web of both joy and sadness that I announce to you my plans for retirement at the end of September. My last Sunday at First Baptist will be September 27. Serving you has positively been one of the greatest joys of my life – and […]
Read More »Last week I and three others (Terry Delaney, Martha DeWitt, and Wayne DeWitt) attended the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) in Nashville, Tenn., as messengers from our church. We joined more than 17,000 other messengers, along with almost 4,000 registered guests. This was an important week in the life and direction of the SBC, and I […]
Read More »For over a year, we have been praying together digitally through the pandemic. I have been encouraged by many of the comments as to how the Lord has used these prayers in the lives of our own church members as well as countless others. I even had a conversation with a lady at a gas […]
Read More »Two weeks ago we announced that we were targeting Sunday, May 30, as the day we would fully relax our social-distancing practices, which included removing the ropes from every other pew and only encouraging masks as optional for those who need or would like to continue wearing them. However, at the end of last week […]
Read More »As I look back over this last year, I’m so thankful for how you, our church, have come together and continued to worship, serve, and be on mission for Jesus in the midst of this pandemic. We’ve had to make adjustments, deal with a lot of uncertainty, get used to virtual options we might otherwise […]
Read More »Have you ever taken a look around our world and wondered what exactly God is doing? Why does God allow the things that happen to happen? After all, we believe that God is all-powerful, all-wise, and all-knowing, perfect and supremely good and righteous. This is how he has revealed himself to us, most of all […]
Read More »It’s hard sometimes to see what God is doing, whether we’re looking in our own lives, the lives of those around us, or just the world in general. Jesus gives us all these amazing promises about what he is doing in this world, not to mention the world to come. Yet it’s all too easy […]
Read More »God calls us as his church to be a community of believers who follow Jesus together in doctrine and in practice, knowing him and making him known, walking in grace together on behalf of others. Our God-given mission as God’s church is to follow Jesus together until that is the case for every single person […]
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Christmas Eve has always been a special time at First Baptist, and this year will be no exception. In an effort to spread out the crowd that usually attends the 6 PM candlelight service and create the safest environment possible, we are going to have two identical services this Christmas Eve; one at 4 PM […]
Read More »“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.” – Matthew 25:35 During our Open Air Christmas Concert, FBCTLH and the Florida Baptist Children’s Home partnering with FarmShare were blessed to give away 600 units of food to families […]
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