Where have you been?

Well, I finally made it back. When I began this blog earlier this year I knew that it might be tough to blog daily, and there might even be short periods of intermission between posts. Little did I realize in June that I would be nearly six months in returning to this little task of sharing a few thoughts with whomever might take time to read them!

Life seemed to jump into hyperdrive last summer and it is only beginning to slow somewhat. There has never been any problem in finding plenty to do, especially around my church, but that aspect of my life became even more involved than usual, and all that I was trying to do around the house during my "spare time" pretty well consumed the rest of my waking hours.

Enough of that. I want to share briefly what has been one of the real highlights of the past six months for me. Our new Pastor and I consulted for a while after he arrived in April. We wanted to do something that would make our church's outreach ministry much more effective. It had become pretty lifeless and few of our people participated.

We determined that we wanted to use the G.R.O.W. Outreach strategy developed by Jerry Tidwell, who is now at Union University, but previously served as Pastor of the West Jackson Baptist Church in Jackson, Tennessee. We brought Dr. Tidwell to our church one Sunday evening in September to help us kick-off the preparation for G.R.O.W. and we followed that with three more weeks of training and enrollment.

Very honestly, I was praying that we would get as many as 100 of our church folks to participate, and I thought that to be pretty ambitious. To my total surprise and great delight, over 170 of our adults and youth signed up and are actively involved. This is in a church that only runs a little more than 250 in Sunday School!

Our people are divided into four teams and come for about 1 1/2 hours each month to visit, or write letters and cards, make telephone calls, pray in the chapel, keep the children of parents involved, or prepare and serve a snack when everyone returns from their visits. The first six weeks of G.R.O.W. has seen approximately 500 letters and cards sent out, several phone calls made, and dozens of visits to prospects and members who haven't been to church in a while.

G.R.O.W. stands for "God Rewards Our Work" and that is a promise that I am claiming. I truly believe that the seeds we plant today will produce fruit in God's time. We are doing what Christ commanded us to do, and obedience always results in blessing. Pray for us as we seek to reach our community with the Good News of the Gospel. And may God be glorified for His good work!