Dear Church Family,
What a joy it is to see the Holy Spirit working in the life of our church! Jesus Christ is transforming lives before our very eyes! People are being saved, baptized, and following Jesus. Let’s ask God to give us the right spiritual temperature and God will send new believers here to grow!
Every adult Life Group is studying Lessons on Assurance in the month of March. There are five Sundays in March and we are studying these amazing assurances that are ours when we give our lives to Jesus Christ. These are: The assurance of 1) salvation 2) answered prayer 3) victory 4) forgiveness and 5) guidance. There’s hardly a better tool that can be used to help new believers grow than the Lessons on Assurance developed by the Navigators. It is our goal that each of you will learn how you could share this with a new believer and help them grow in their newfound faith.
Our Men’s and Women’s ministries have had some fantastic events recently. Men’s breakfasts are one of the highlights of our month and our women recently had a luncheon that was amazing! Be on the lookout for new events that are upcoming for our men and women.
Easter Sunday is April 5. On Easter Sunday, we’re going to welcome all guests with a special gift bag. There’ll be some wonderful materials in that bag, as well as a voucher for lunch for our Family Fest, which will take place the week after Easter. As you remember, we always have our One Week Later service the week after Easter, and we will do that as we normally do on April 12. After our One Week Later service, we will have a Family Fest which will include food trucks and activities for all the kids. The following week, April 19, we are having a Life Group breakfast in each class, and we want to encourage all of those that have been with us to join in this Life Group fellowship and breakfast. Then on April 26 we will have Orange Bucket Sunday where we are gathering nonperishable items for Food4Kids. This will help feed hungry children in Alachua County. On May 3 we will participate in our Love Loud event where people are organized to do ministry all throughout our community.
Jesus said, “My house shall be called a house of prayer.” Jesus taught his disciples to pray and us to pray. We want to bathe our Easter outreach and our whole church family in prayer. We are asking all of our people to sign up in 30 minute slots from March 20 at noon all the way to 11:30 AM 24 hours later on March 21. We will need some folks to go to bed and get up in the middle of the night and spend 30 minutes in prayer, but we would love to close the 24 hour circle with all of our people in prayer for our Easter outreach. Would you consider signing up? Sign-ups will be available soon for this special event. Thank you for being passionate about prayer. The Scripture says, “Call upon me and I will answer and show thee great and mighty things that thou knowest not.”
On Sunday afternoon, March 29, we will be going out door to door, inviting people to come to our church on Easter Sunday. We’ll meet at the church at 3:30. If you’re not sure exactly what to say or how to do it, just come on Sunday afternoon at 3:30. We will train you and send you out with others to invite our community to worship with us on Easter.
I want to encourage all of our people to invite your friends and family to be with us on Easter Sunday. And when they come, make sure those guests receive that gift bag. Others of us will notice the families with the bag and will give them a special welcome. What a great Sunday of outreach that’s going to be for our church family.
The Lord’s Supper will be March 8 and baptism will be on March 15. If you need to be baptized, please let us know in the church office so we can make arrangements for your baptism.
What a joy it is to be your pastor. I have really enjoyed us studying The Baptist Faith and Message 2000 as our statement of faith for our North Central Baptist family. We are continuing our series in the month of March.
May the Lord bless this precious fellowship of believers. I look forward to seeing you this Sunday with your copy of God’s Word as we study it together.
Love in Jesus,
Pastor Calvin