Dear Church Family,
What a tremendous blessing it was to dedicate our new building at our Grand Opening weekend! What a great addition this is in the life of our church, a place to welcome people, to greet newcomers, to share a cup of coffee, and to have restroom facilities that we need. All of this is going to be such an asset in the life of our church. Thank you for your faithfulness in giving and your determination in seeing this project through. A special thank you to brother Mike Weldon and our whole Building Committee for the great job that they did.
Let me encourage all of our members to continue to give to the building fund. It will not be long before we will need more construction. As our church grows reaching families and college students, we will need more facilities. We have always tried to be wise with our capital expenditures. Building buildings that are useful and meet many needs has been our pattern. By your faithful giving when we’re not building, it enables us to pay cash for our construction. This saves us thousands and thousands of dollars in interest, enabling us to use more funds for our outreach and our mission. I want to ask you to pray about continuing to give to the building fund. It will be a blessing and will be used to further God’s Kingdom through our North Central family.
Missions Night is Sunday night, September 8 at 6:00 PM. We will meet for at least an hour to an hour and 15 minutes to highlight mission opportunities that our church has been a part of. We will have some special contact with some of our missionaries around the world. It will be an extra special time. Our families and children will be particularly blessed at this meeting. Each of the children will have special activities and a passport that when they fill it out, they will get a special prize.
Our Women’s Ministry hosts their very first event of the new school year this coming Friday night, September 6 at 6:00 PM in our new entryway. Ladies, you don’t want to miss this great time of fellowship.
We will be baptizing on Sunday morning, September 15. We have recently had several young people give their life to Jesus and want to be baptized, and we also have others. If you want to follow the Lord in believer’s baptism please contact us at the church office.
We will have the Lord’s Supper on September 22. This is always a special service that we have together.
We had a huge crowd of men this past Saturday for our first Men’s Breakfast of the fall. Our next one is scheduled for September 28 at 8:00 AM in the main auditorium. Don’t miss it!
North Central Connect is our new members class. If you are a new member make sure and get signed up. You can do that by emailing us at info@gatorchurch.com and we’ll give you the details. This meeting begins at 9:15 and concludes right before the main service begins. If you are visiting with us and you’re interested in coming to North Central Connect to meet the staff and find out a little bit more about our church, please let us know. We would love for you to come as well.
As you know, we have an election coming up. I want to encourage you to evaluate every candidate in every office using the lens of a Biblical worldview. Issues about abortion, religious freedom, and law and order are key measures of a candidate’s convictions. I have always encouraged our people to use a Biblical worldview to be the judge of a candidate. It’s more than just party affiliation, although party platforms are very important as well and give insight as to the worldview of the parties’ candidates.
One thing in particular that I want to make our people aware of is the Florida Constitutional Amendment Number 4. Every Christian organization that I know of and many people that I respect have sent huge warning signs about this amendment. There are some that in their first reading of it sounds good, but the language is very vague and will open the door for late term abortions in the state of Florida. We don’t want this. I encourage you to vote against Amendment 4.
What a joy it is to see the Lord working in our precious fellowship. New families, new people, new college students, new faces. It is a joy to watch you receive, love, and encourage new folks in the life of our church. I want to encourage you to get plugged into a Life Group and let’s worship our Lord together that we might make a difference in our community and in the world.
Love in Jesus,
Pastor Calvin