Pastors Blog

This past Wednesday night I gave a somewhat comprehensive update to the architectural process that we are presently going through. I have been working with the deacons, along with a few other men with various forms of experience, to help consider several plans for moving forward with our facilities. It doesn’t seem feasible at this time to begin construction on the 51 East property. The costs would far exceed anything we believe we are ready to borrow right now. We are considering ways to improve our present facility, instead. The plan emerging presently is one of several phases. Completing every phase would leave us with a church plant that would last us a long time. Each phase would add value to the property, as well as increase our functionality. Each phase would also be determined based on the costs we are willing to bear at that time. Our intent would be to complete a phase, pay it off, then reconsider before starting the next phase whether we should continue with that phase or make plans to get to the new property.

The first phase will most likely involve a cosmetic change to the outside, along with some parking improvements. It is possible that we could get some new Sunday School class space out of this phase, as well. The architects are presently trying to determine costs for each piece so we can know what we can handle financially. Once we know the costs we can better decide where to draw some lines for Phase I. At that time, we will consider a fresh commitment to VisionFund so that we can ensure the church is ready to handle the debt we would incur.

Please feel free to ask any questions you might have. You may direct them to myself or any of the men involved with the architectural planning.

Pastor

Wednesday night is our 2nd LIC meeting and I am looking forward to meeting with our leaders again. The meal begins at 5:30 and the meeting will start at 6:00. Please note that the meeting portion is 15 minutes earlier than the January inaugural meeting. I want to thank our leaders for 100% attendance and encourage you to repeat that accomplishment once again. The Leading segment of the meeting will deal with how to have Initiative in ministry – “Be An Initiator“. We will break Initiative down into five particular areas that effect ministry. In the Improving section of our meeting I will introduce the 1up2Q form. These will be handed out and explained so that you can begin compiling your improvement list and identifying what one improvement you will have up front and which two will be in the queue. The Communicating time in the meeting will involve reviewing the March calendar and preparing each ministry for upcoming events. I believe the menu involves a baked potato bar with all the fixens’! Who wants to miss a meeting like that?!

This past Friday I had the privilege of hosting the Practical Ministries Class from Heartland Baptist Bible College. This is a class of seniors who visit a different church every Friday. Although they make this trip every February, it is a little unusual in that the distance is more than they are used to. They leave the school at 6:30am so that we can start by 7:45-8:00. We feed them some doughnuts and lots of coffee to start off with. They really lucked out this year because my wife got up and made them all pigs-in-a-blanket for a special treat. The food table looked like the Tasmanian Devil once they finished the rush.

I show them a couple humorous videos from the BBC archives (Facility Enhancement and Convincing Worship from the 5 Tools), then begin on my assigned topics, Library and Study. After that session is over they enjoy watching an old army training video I found a few years ago that provides a sobering view of the need for paying attention to details while training for ministry. It is one of the highlights each year. During the break most of them find their way into my office and study to ask questions or try to hide books in their jackets. The remaining time is spent answering questions about general church operations. These same questions are dealt with at each church they visit in order to help them see a variety of ways that churches operate.

They leave by 11:00 in order to get back for lunch or work. There are usually about 35-40 young men and they are always a delight to have. If you are ever available during this particular day each February, I know you would enjoy coming and spending some time with them.

Many of you likely remember Pastor R. B. Oullette who has preached at the Men’s Advance on three different occasions. He pastors the First Baptist Church of Bridgeport in Saginaw, Michigan. He recently made the news for joining with two other pastors and a conservative law firm to challenge the legality of newly expanded hate crimes legislation. They have filed a joint lawsuit naming U. S. Attorney General Eric Holder as the defendant, charging that including sexual orientation and gender identity in the latest bill makes it a crime for them to preach against homosexuality, which would infringe upon their free speech rights and free exercise of religion.

Whether it gets dismissed immediately or makes it to the Supreme Court, I commend Bro. Oullette for taking such a courageous step and making such a bold statement. He deserves the prayers of every Bible-believing Christian as they move through such a significant process.

You can find the article here.

I want to remind you to be ready for Discover Outreach coming on February 28th. We will be laying out our plans for trying to reach Stillwater better than ever. There will be some new efforts, as well as revamped ones. There should be something for everyone to get involved in whether you are just starting or are a seasoned Christian.

It is also my hope that the evening messages on Luke 14 have been used of the Lord to prepare your heart for reaching those around you. All the organized programs in the world could never make up for complacency in the heart of a born-again child of God. Please ask the Lord to revive your heart in seeing people brought to Christ and discipled through Bible Baptist Church.

Remember, “a certain man made a great supper…” and he invited everyone around you.

A few days ago I was with one of my kids ordering a bagel at Panera. When they gave me the total they asked if I wanted to give $1 towards Haitian Relief. While I desired to do something about the incredible devastation there, I also know my suspicions of giving money, especially earthquake relief, to a bread company to manage. We have all heard of the fiascos that seem all to common with those businesses that take money for the poor or struggling, only to find out later that it was misused and wasted. While many choose to give to these groups, you can only do so knowing that there is likely little accountability. Certainly, you will probably never know exactly where your money went.

You just can’t outdo God’s plan of the local church.

Later that day I received an email from Bro. Rodney Johnson, formerly a missionary that our church supported to Haiti. He had to leave the field due to MS, but his health has improved enough in the last year that he wants to go back and do whatever he can to help Haitians through the current crisis. I distributed an email to the church list letting you know that we would be helping them get to Haiti to provide help through the churches they were involved in there. The primary one is the Calvary Baptist Church in Port-au-Prince. This money will go towards their travel expenses, then anything left over will go to helping the Haitian people directly. Since this comes out of our current Missions budget, if you already give to Faith Promise Missions, you are already a part of helping the people of Haiti. Some of you may desire to do more, so we are going to accept designated funds for the next few services to send with the Johnsons to Haiti so they can provide relief, not only physically, but in a manner that points Haitians back to the God who alone can give them adequate comfort through all they are facing. Once Bro. Johnson is done, he will report back all that he was able to do with the funds to be a blessing to the people.

Please pray for the Johnsons and others that will be traveling with them as they minister at such a crucial time in the history of this small country.

This past Thursday Bro. Jeremy and I had a good meeting with the architects of Studio Architecture out of Oklahoma City. We are about 1/3 of the way through the process of finalizing a master plan for the next 5-10 years. This meeting dealt with the final stages of ensuring they know our goals and priorities as a ministry. They presented their findings from the questionnaires that several ministry leaders completed. I was very pleased with both their interpretation of what was written by our leaders, as well as the wonderful insight and thinking by our leadership that helped Studio understand who we are and what we need.

One of the key issues in this phase was reviewing what it would take to bring our building up to code. Since most of our present facilities were built before the current code, we are “grandfathered” in. Any significant changes we make to our building, though, would require us to come up to code. Studio Architecture has met with the City of Stillwater code officials to determine where we are and what any future requirements might be. It seems that as long as we have a long-term plan to bring our buildings into current compliance, we can do this in pieces rather than bringing the whole building up to code at one time. The expense of this would likely be prohibitive and push back the kind of improvements we want to make to the building in the coming year. It is actually comforting to finally know definitively what all the issues are and how to begin approaching them.

Studio is now beginning some of the design portion of the project. We hope to have some actual preliminary ideas by the end of February. Keep checking back on this blog for updates to the architectural plan.

This past week marked the beginning of a new communication effort at Bible Baptist Church. We conducted our first Leadership Meeting this past Wednesday evening before church, creatively called LIC Meetings. We enjoyed a wonderful meal at 5:30 to make it easier for families to come early. The meeting portion started at 6:15, although future meetings will likely begin at 6:00. I appreciated full 100% attendance from all the involved leaders. The ministry leadership involved 16 different ministries including nurseries, buses, CDs, sound, graphics, food service, cleaning, photography, and several others. The meetings are held monthly and all dates are on the church calendar.

An Eye for Excellence with a Spirit to Serve

LIC represents the three areas that provide the structure for each meeting. The “L” stands for Leadership and will include lessons on learning how to lead a ministry effectively. We began with a motto on which to model our leadership philosophy “An Eye for Excellence with a Spirit to Serve.” The “I” refers to Improving and will follow the 1up2Q plan. Each ministry will have one improvement up front that they are working on at all times, as well as two in the queue that will help us plan adequate resources for each improvement. Our desire is to improve each ministry 10% each year. The “C” involves Communicating and enables me to ensure that each ministry is aware of coming events on the calendar and how it might impact their ministry. It will also be a time to communicate coming changes with discussion about the best ways to make these changes smooth and effective.

We have the most wonderful people serving over many ministries and it is my desire to use these meetings to help make their ministry not only more effective, but more enjoyable, as well.