LCC weekly update 11/3/14 (VISION!)
Greetings Life Community Church,
What a wonderful day we had yesterday! We were blessed to have a great gathering on Sunday morning with lots of energy and great fellowship. Sunday mornings are always such an encouragement to me personally, I love seeing everyone, I love the worship, and I love to preach the good news. But more than that, I love seeing God make a difference in the lives around us.
Last night we celebrated our 2 year birthday party. What a great night! We were so happy to baptize Chris Roberts, who rededicated his life recently, and to baptize Christ McCustion who recently gave his heart to Jesus! The service was an encouragement and the fellowship was wonderful. I would like to say thank you to all those who helped plan yesterday evening. It was a long and tiresome day, no doubt, and we are very grateful for those who pulled the trailer, set up sound equipment, helped decorate, and helped clean up. We have a wonderful church! God is so good to us!
What a great way to conclude our “I AM A CHURCH MEMBER” campaign. I appreciate greatly all of the Life Group leaders, Campaign directors, and all those that invited friends and family to be part of this campaign. I hope and pray that people will continue to be excited about church, that they will take what they learned and put it into practice.
On behalf of my wife and I, we would also like to say thank you for the great love that the church showed us during Pastor’s appreciation month. It was such a blessing and such a surprise. We feel so loved and appreciated at this wonderful church. I believe we have a great future ahead of us. I know God will continue to do great things.
Last night, I casted vision for the next year (2014-2015) year. I challenged our church to continue to implement the “connecting, caring, and changing” mission statement into our daily lives
Connecting to Christ and His Church
Caring for People in the church and in our life groups
Changing the world around us through serving and inviting others to Christ
But I also challenged the church to take “Connecting, Caring, and Changing” to a deeper level, while still keeping the personal level.
Connecting- My prayer is that we as a church will continue to grow by Connecting to Jesus. Meaning that we still become passionate about reaching our community to Christ. Praying that God will continue to grow our church. As I mentioned last night, this upcoming year for us will be one with serious decisions. We were fortunate to gain the ministry center for 2 years by paying upfront. We are still very blessed to have the ministry center, but we currently have one year left at it. Within this time frame we will have to decide what to do with the ministry center at the end of this year. Since we have already outgrown it, to a degree, renewing the lease for another year may not be the best direction to go. So as we pray, we pray that God will provide for us (mainly provide wisdom) on the next step. The trustees have been working very hard to look at options for our church to move into, but are still searching and praying about it. We know that God will guide us and will show us what our next move is; a larger ministry center? A building to get everything under one roof? We just don’t know yet, but we will be praying. My prayer is that we will continue to grow and mature as a church in this upcoming year. Supproting the church through prayer, attendance, serving, and sacrificial giving of tithes and offerings.
Caring- We are praying that our Life Groups will continue to grow and develop even stronger in 2014-2015. I am challenging groups to stay together, while continuing to invite new people into their groups. The hope is that as groups grow, and when they are ready, they will birth new groups to reach new people. Our group structure is going to change from what it has been (which is short term based groups) into more of a longer term based groups that will hopefully multiply. The groups will not miss a beat. After this week, the new groups will be beginning a new study by Andy Stanely entitled “LIFE RULES”. There is a place for everyone.
Changing- Many of you seemed surprised when I voiced my prayer for the changing element of our church. But I pray that during the 2014-2015 year we will learn how teams work, how a church council works, and how overall ministry works, with the hopes of planning and birthing another church in 2015-2016. When our church was gifted $100,000 to be a “high impact church”, one of our goals was to be a church planting church. We pray that God will help us live up to that goal. To clarify, we will not be starting a church in the 2014-2015 year, but to pray about where God would have us plant a mission church. Then beginning in 2015-2016 we begin the process to see how we would accomplish that by God’s help. Studies show that if a church is not involved in church multiplication early on, they are likely never to be. We will pray and see what God will do! Exciting times.
As I mentioned last night, William Carey (known in history as the father of modern missions, a great missionary to India from England) is quoted in saying…
“Attempt Great Things for God, Expect Great things from God”
A week from this Tuesday November 11th, The Kentucky Baptist Convention will be voting us into the Convention. I hope that all those that can will attend. The meeting will be held at Living Hope Baptist Church in Bowling Green Kentucky. I will have more details this Sunday.
I also would like to remind everyone about our upcoming annual “CHILI COOK OFF”. This event is always a lot of fun and is intended to be an outreach for your neighbors and love ones. Bring a pot of chili for the competition and bring your friends to get to know the LCC family. It will be held on November 20th.
Life Groups are still completing Operation Christmas Child Shoe boxes. Shoebox collection will be Monday the 17th. If you are making a shoe box bring them to church on the 16th to be delivered.
Mrs. Celena Keel asked me to announce an upcoming Women’s Ministry Conference, through the Righteous Women of Faith ministry to be held at Wendell Foster Center on November 8th at 6pm.
Our next CLASS 101 will be held on next week, November 9. If you are praying about being part of Life Community Church, interested in learning more, asking questions, or what it means to be a Christian we encourage you to attend. It will last about 2 hours and will be held at the Ministry Center @ 2:45 that Sunday afternoon.
CLASS 401 will be held on November 23rd. If you have completed classes 101-301 we encourage you to attend to take the next step of commitment to learn about missions and mission endeavors.
I am excited about all God is doing in our church. We will be beginning a new sermon series this Sunday, so it’s a great jumping on point for new people . Invite two or three from your network to come and learn about Jesus.
It is a pleasure to be your Pastor!
Kenny Rager
Pastor @ Life Community
