Please pray for Laurie and I as we head into Mexico.
I’ll be speaking at a family camp this evening in Imuris. Our church has invested in this ministry over the years. We’re looking forward to seeing some dear friends.
Pray that we can encourage the missionaries and that God would bless His Word in the preaching and teaching opportunities.
I’ll be back at Grace this Sunday!
We are blessed to have Jason Goodman join the team as our Worship Pastor. Jason and Nicole have been married 13 years and now have 3 kids. Jason served on the pastoral staff at a church in Tennessee before going to Colorado Springs to attend the New Life School of Worship. We are looking forward to welcoming this family to Flagstaff and to Grace the first of August. Yep, that’s next week!
Tomorrow our church is taking a portion of our normal worship service to serve the school that we have been meeting in for almost 18 years. It’s amazing to me to think of how long God has allowed us to meet in this place.
As I was preparing for my message tomorrow, I was reminded that as we serve the school tomorrow we’re serving God and people. Sinagua is not a building. It’s people. Many of them may not be followers of Jesus, but they are people He created. People He loves. So, we’ll be serving Him and His purposes by taking some time to wipe down some shelves, move some desks and do some clean up work. I can’t wait.
If you’re a Gracer, here’s the plan for tomorrow:
Come to church and get a good seat. I suggest 9:50. It’ll be packed tomorrow. There is no children’s ministry or nursery. EVERYONE will be together for our worship and teaching and serving! We will shorten the service significantly so we can jump right in and get to work on some basic projects around the school. We will then gather and finish our time together with lunch.
Yesterday was our “Vision Update” Sunday. On Jan 1, I talked specifics about Grace Community Church and what I believed God was leading us to do during this year. Yesterday was exactly 6 months, so it was a good time for an update.
I am so excited for the plans God has for Grace Church. It’s hard to put into a few words on this page all that is happening and the why of it all. Let me jump to the end. I ended with a brief picture of Paul writing to Timothy at the end of his first letter. Paul had just worded a ‘charge’ if you will, kind of a call to arms, “O man of God…fight the good fight of faith.” Then he closes in verse 20 with “O Timothy, guard the deposit entrusted to you.”
I can’t go into all of it here, but you can listen if you’d like on our website, and you could even skip to the last part like maybe the 41 minute mark (how’s that, a pastor saying skip to the end!)
Not unlike Timothy, we too have had the gospel entrusted to us to carry on and carry out. I don’t know where we got the notion that this was an option. It’s a command, a commission, it’s a way of life. A way of life that says, “there’s nothing in the world more important than receiving what God has for me and then living a life in response to that gift of grace and passing it on to others.”
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