Blog

Michelle Alston wrote a testimony that wonderfully captures how God meets us in a variety of ways through the body of Christ. Sometimes that grace comes to us through a counselor, sometimes a patient friend, sometimes a friend who gives an afternoon to fix our car, and sometimes through singing hymns with our brothers and sisters in Christ. All of that is the body of Christ in action and the grace that comes from it!

Over the last months, and years, our youth leaders and pastors have been prayerfully considering changes to our youth ministries to make them more effective. This includes our Sunday children's ministry and our youth group(s). We believe we have found the will of the Lord for our church for the foreseeable future.

Clarifying a church vision is like carving a statue. You start with a huge block of stone and cut away all that doesn't belong to the final product. You trim away the excess, anything that prevents the statue from having all the lines and clarity you want. Finally, the statue is left, much smaller than the original block, but communicating much more at the same time.

Last Sunday Phil preached particularly to parents. During his first point, he listed off seven ways we can exasperate our children, which means to sinfully or unnecessarily provoke them to anger.

I hope you have enjoyed the recent installation of Jermaine Powell’s painting of the communion elements in our church lobby. His talent needs no exposition: it is obvious and the painting speaks of it loudly....But we don’t incorporate art into our church life thoughtlessly. And there are more questions at stake than simply “does it look nice?”

Our accountability suffers when we forget why we do it, or we aren't sure how to do it. Coming Clean, a new e-book by Covenant Eyes' Luke Gilkerson, helps us on both counts. It provides an insightful, biblical rationale for our need for it, and then it provides accessible steps and tools to get started.

Here are some excellent online Bible study resources that allow you to access the Greek and Hebrew beneath our English Bible even if you have little or no training in the original languages.

On August 25 Marty Machowski will be doing a seminar on a new curriculum we are using in our Children's Ministry. He will also be preaching that Sunday morning (26th). To introduce you to him a little bit here is an interview he did recently on Bob Kauflin's website.

Encouraging stuff about the first Council of Elders meeting and foreign missions: The Priority of International Missions for Our Future.

We're trying to build a church here that has an effective "every-member ministry." Thus, we are excited for men like John–as well as women and children!–to do the work of ministry at SGC.