“Looking to 2025”

Well, turn with me in your Bibles to 1 Timothy. 1 Timothy chapter 3. We’re going to be in a lot of different places this morning, but that’s where we’re going to begin. And as we, Pastor said, as we approach this new year, and we voted a couple months ago on the reorganization of the pastoral leadership here at Fellowship. And there’s a lot of things that we look at, things that are going to be different, a lot of things that are not going to be that different. But as we come to the end of this year, looking into next year, I want to take this morning to really do a sermon that’s a bit of a vision casting sermon.

Now that’s a little more complicated than it really sounds, really just looking forward to what the next year holds for us. We need to be planning as we look for ways that we need to fulfill our duty, our commission as the church, what we need to be. And so we need to have a plan how to accomplish those things. And that’s what I want to look at this morning. And as we come to this time of change and time of reorganization, it’s really not a surprise to really any of us. This has been in the works for a long time. And really, even looking back to almost four years ago now when When I came here, really, it was about, in a couple weeks, it’ll be just about four years, or exactly four years, when Pastor Piatt gave me the call while I was at seminary, sitting in our apartment, and started talking to me about the potential of us coming down here. And at that point, we were approaching graduation. I was graduating with my master’s from seminary and was feeling at that point called that we needed to get out and get into ministry because earlier on in my education I had thoughts of staying and getting my doctorate right away and then going into teaching. But the closer I got to graduation the more Restless I became and wanting to get out and get into ministry.

So as we approached that, started going through the different channels of where do you look for a place to go. And one of the men up there at the seminary helped me a lot. And he got into some connections. I talked to really the national rep for the association of churches that we’re associated with and said, this is the guy that we have graduating. This is what he’s like. This is his beliefs. He’s real strong in the doctrines of grace and these different things. Do you have any churches that he would be a good fit? And he goes, well, I can think of one. And it was here. And so he called Pastor Piatt and got us in touch. And so going back to that point and kind of looking forward, we were approaching graduation and we were told, pray specifically for what you want. Pray specifically for what you want God to do in your life. And we did. We made a list of different things that we Wanted and some of it was a little selfish like it doesn’t have to be this way But God it would be really nice and like if we could go to warmer weather If we could be near the ocean because Chelsea’s always loved the ocean so if we could be near the ocean, that’d be great.

But one of the things we prayed for is God, I don’t think I’m ready to step into the senior pastor role yet. I would love to go to a church where I can learn from somebody for a few years and get my feet wet and really, I have the knowledge from seminary now, but now I need the experience and the practical things. And I wanna go find somebody to learn from. And that’s exactly what God provided. In fact, the five or six things that we’d listed out and prayed for every day, God met every single one of them. So it really was just a faith building Exercise like when you when you pray real specifically and God answers it real specifically. It’s like wow That’s pretty cool that that helps you grow in your faith But but even looking back at that point and even having those discussions with pastor Piatt and then coming down and candidating. Talking about the future and he said probably in the next five years or so he was looking to take a step back and And in the process of me coming in, it wasn’t just to be the associate forever, it was with the potential of, if everything works out and God, depending on how God works, the potential is to one day step into the senior role.

And so even going back four years now, this is all, again, God’s in control of it all, and none of this was predetermined by any one of us, but it was with the potential that this could be how God works it out. And as we’ve come along and been praying along those lines, God’s worked it out. And God’s worked it out so well. And even in the last four years, the different processes we’ve gone through and the different things that were unforeseen. In fact, the other day someone was asking or commenting that, hey, once January comes, you’re gonna be, you got all the preaching, it’s all on you now. I was like, well, it’s true. But if you remember last January, It was all on me then, too, because the pastor had his extended Christmas vacation. No, I’m just kidding. It started before Christmas. But no, when he had his heart surgery and all the things leading up to that and following, I mean, you can see God’s hand in that and giving us opportunity and the experience that I needed to be able to have that knowledge of what it is to have the whole load like that.

And then as we come into this new year, It’s not, and we should be thankful for this, not only me, but all of you as well, that this isn’t a stark change. Like it’s not a cold turkey, everything is totally different. Because that’s a hard thing for a church to go through. I’ve been in multiple churches, the church I grew up in as a child, the church I was in in seminary, where we had, the pastor announces, he’s leaving, he’s gone. And now we’ve got to find the guy. And that is really hard. not only to find a guy, but to hold things together for the time when he’s gone. In fact, the church I grew up in as a kid, we went five years with no pastor, no pastor. We had men that stepped in and preached, but we didn’t have a leader, and it really hurt the church.

So it’s something to be thankful for that God is so good and gracious to Fellowship Baptist Church in the way that he’s really brought things together the way he has. And so all that to kind of lead into what I want to do this morning as next week does mark the change or the reorganization officially. We’ve already voted on it, but January 1 is the day where it all takes effect. But I want to look at this new year and really cast a vision for what our year, hopefully, as the Lord wills, will look like. what I want to think about is really nothing that’s totally new or total change in anything that we’re doing but really putting some wheels on the ideas and continuing to do. How are we gonna continue the ministry here at Fellowship? Fellowship Baptist Church has a tremendous legacy of good and faithful ministry here. So it’s not that we have to change anything in order to get on the right track. It’s how do we continue that? How do we carry on what this church has been faithfully doing for years.

So what I want to do is look at some areas that are foundational to what the church is in the Bible. What the Bible says we must be. What the Bible says the church has to be. And then what I want to do is take those areas and look at what does that look like for us this year? What is that going to look like at fellowship for us to obey these essentials of the church from scripture? And as I’ve been looking around and studying out what it is that the church has to be, there’s a lot of areas that you could include, but I really kind of settled on 10 different aspects of ministry for the church. And some of these we’ll go through rather quickly, but we do have 10 points this morning, so just a forewarning. Some of them will be pretty quick, so I think we’ll be all right for time, but we’re going to have 10 different aspects or common functions of the church. Now, as we have a lot of different eras of church history and different even denominations of churches, there is a lot of freedom. in the way the church is to be structured or the way the church is to function. To an extent, there’s a lot of different things that churches do that are good and right. Maybe there’s differences in preferences or opinions and how things are to be done, but the Bible does give us freedom in certain areas. But there are essentials. There are things that must be true of a church. And these all stand out as biblical standards for what the church must be.

So again, there’s 10 biblical functions for the church, and what I wanna do is look at what our plan is for each one of these. And we’ll move, again, quickly through some of them, but this first one is the one we’ll probably take the most time explaining, because it is the most important function of the church. And if you are in 1 Timothy, that is where we’ll begin, but our first function of the church is preaching and teaching.

Preaching and teaching the word of God. And preaching and teaching are different, but they go hand in hand, they are coupled in scripture. And that again is the first and foremost priority for the church. In 1 Timothy, Paul speaks to his young pastor in training, or his pastor that he’s just installed in this church here, and he is giving him instructions on what you need to do now. Now that you’re a pastor, you’ve learned from Paul, what do you need to do? And we see in 1 Timothy 3, verse 16, almost a creed or a confession of the church, or it could even be a hymn that they sang, but it’s basically a list of things that you need to believe, that you need to hold fast to. And in chapter 3, verse 16 of 1 Timothy, it says, and by common confession, great is the mystery of godliness. And then he begins this creed or confession of sorts. He who was manifested in the flesh, was vindicated in the spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, and taken up in glory. He was to be proclaimed among the nations. Christ is to be proclaimed. That’s an essential duty of the church. We are to proclaim Christ.

And we can look throughout church history, and even today, and see that God blesses his church when they proclaim Christ. John Shelburne has been going through in his Sunday school class the Book of Acts. And it is, the Book of Acts is structured around the growth of the church. Everything that happens, the church responds in obedience, and then the church grows, and they add it to their number, and so on and so forth. Today we covered Acts chapter six when the apostles were being pulled away from their main duty of preaching the word. So they had to install the seven men to take care of these duties. And what happened after that? When they went back to preaching the word the way they should, the church grew in number. God blesses the church when the church’s priority is preaching the word. And that’s what Paul told Timothy. In the next chapter, in chapter 4, if you want to turn over, chapter 4, verse 6, he says, in pointing out these things to the brothers, you will be a good servant of Christ, being nourished on the words of the faith and of the sound doctrine which you have been following. This is his encouragement to Timothy. You will be a good servant of Christ. if you continue in the words of faith and the sound doctrine that you’ve been following.

A few verses later, Paul follows that up with his command to Timothy, verse 13, until I come, give intention to the public reading of scripture and to the exhortation and teaching. That’s three things, reading, preaching, and teaching the word of God. They are essential for Timothy to do. Read the scriptures, preach the scriptures, teach the scriptures. That’s what Paul has for him. That’s what his church was to be doing. And later on, In the next chapter, chapter 5, Paul continues. Chapter 5, verse 17, kind of his instructions for the rest of the elders with Timothy. Timothy was to be reading, preaching, and teaching. What are the other elders supposed to be doing? Verse 17, the elders who lead well are to be considered worthy of double honor, especially those who labor at preaching the word and teaching. They’re to be preaching and teaching too. The leaders of the church, the elders, the pastors, the ones who are to be directing what the church is doing, what they are to be doing is preaching and teaching the word. So the church’s primary function is to proclaim the word of God. And there’s many other places you could go in scripture to show that. But again, this is nothing new for our church.

This is not something that we need to start doing. Fellowship Baptist Church has been preaching and teaching the word of God for a long time. And we can be thankful for that, that this is the legacy of Fellowship Baptist Church. And it’s one that we need to aim to continue. The preaching of God’s word, verse by verse, will continue into 2025 and beyond. But what does that look like? So a few practical things of what this looks like for us here in the future. Well, a few specifics that I can get into a little bit.

First, as I have been doing for a couple of years now, I will continue preaching from the LSB, the Legacy Standard Bible version of the Bible. It’s just the version that I’ve really come to appreciate and to prefer in my study and preaching. And the reason, it’s a newer translation, I think it was 2016 or 2018 where they finished it, but as I came to find this version and the reason why I’ve come to use it so much is when I study to teach or preach, I start with the Greek or Hebrew text, depending on if I’m in the Old Testament or the New Testament. and I make my translation. And then I check it with other translations to see kind of how I did. The men who’ve put together the various translations of the Bible, they’re a lot smarter than me. And so I don’t want to go out on a limb and think that I’m the one that got it right and anyone else that is different is wrong. Well, as I do that, one of the versions that I appreciated and was really seeing things the same way from the text came to be the LSB. It’s one that I used a lot and went back to over and over. So it’s one that I’ve come to use regularly in my preaching.

So again, this is nothing new. I’ve been preaching from this. I’m going to continue in that. It’s a very good translation, as there are many very good translations. It’s just the one that I prefer. I think it remains faithful to the original text and it’s very readable for anybody. Again, it doesn’t mean that other translations are bad, but this is just the one that I do prefer. And so a couple things that go along with that, I’ve been working with Jeremy with the the slides and the presentation, and one of the things, because I know a lot of you, some of you do have LSBs already, but a lot of you don’t, so one of the things that we’re gonna do for a little while at least, is when I do the public scripture reading to start the services, is to have the LSB on the screen so you can see what I’m reading. You can still use your own versions. I know some of you have expressed that it can be difficult when the word’s a little different and then you get caught on that, so we’re just going to make that available so that you can read along with it.

Now, I don’t love the idea of doing that for long term because it doesn’t necessarily encourage you to bring your own Bible, and I want you to bring your own Bible. So, just for the time being, our plan is to have that so you can read it as I read along with it. But also, we are planning, we’ve been needing to for a while anyways, but replacing some of the Pew Bibles, because some of them are really old and falling apart, and the print is not great in some of them. But we’re looking to get some LSB Pew Bibles. So if you’d like to have in your hands the version that I’m preaching from, or reading from, that will be there in the Pews here shortly, eventually. But there’s also other ways that you can use the same version that I do. They have apps if you have a phone or a tablet or something that have this version that you can follow along. You can also, if you’d like to, purchase an LSB Bible. They have them readily available now. So all of those things are just to make you aware of, because I know many of you have asked, as I’ve been preaching from this version, what version are you using? And that’s the version, the LSB, or Legacy Standard Bible. So that’s kind of just the preliminary as we’re going into next year. The things that the Bible I’m going to be preaching from.

Secondly, as it comes to what we’ll be preaching, I am going to start a series beginning next week in January in the Gospel of John. Earlier this year, we finished up the letters of John. So starting January, we’re going to start a study in John’s gospel. And that will be a verse-by-verse study through the whole book. So it’s going to take several years, because John is a longer book, and it will take a while to preach through the gospel of John. But that’s where we’ll be headed in the morning services. Is is the book of John also this year? I’m finishing my my doctoral degree, so I’m doing my dissertation project and my dissertation project is gonna be coming from the Gospel of John.

So, how that’s gonna look is, around September, is where I’m looking to do the series. Really, my project has to be based on a sermon series. So, around September, we’re gonna pause the verse-by-verse through the Gospel of John, and we’re gonna do a mini-series on my topic in my dissertation. And that is the use of the name, the Son of God. in the Gospel of John. The Gospel of John uses the name Son of God to refer to Christ nine different times. There’s nine passages that we’ll look at. We’ll do nine sermons. It’s really a study on why does John use this title of him? What does it mean? What does each use of it teach us about who Jesus is? That’ll be the focus of that series. From that series will come the basis of my dissertation for my school. And so that will be kind of where we’re going here in the morning services is the Book of John and then that little series in the middle of the year near the fall.

In the evenings, we’re going to do some different things. We’ll probably continue in the Psalms for a little bit, as I’ve been doing here the last several weeks. But we can do some different studies throughout the year as things go. On Wednesday evenings, we’re going to have a little bit of a different Schedule going forward pastor has been doing every week But as we come to the new year, I would like to continue with the youth until through the end of the school year So I’m gonna continue doing that on Wednesdays except for the first Wednesday of every month I’ll come over and do the message over here for prayer meeting but the other weeks Ben Mulaparthi is going to take the weeks that he’s available and do the teaching here on Wednesday nights. And for the weeks that he’s not available, I’ll find some of the other great teachers that we have here at the church to kind of fill in for those things, at least through the beginning part of the year. And so that’s the kind of the vision for the preaching and teaching ministry of the church, where the pulpit of FBC is going to be going here in this next year.

Our other teaching ministries, our Sunday schools, and Awana, and Youth Group, and all the different things, VBS will be this summer. All of those things contribute to our ministry here, and those things will all be continuing the way they have been. But that is our vision for our first function of the church, and that is the preaching and teaching ministry of the church.

Secondly, another function we see that the church is to be doing is evangelism and missions. Evangelism and missions. And really this is an outworking of our preaching ministry, our ministry of the word. But we know that we are to be bringing the gospel to the world. Matthew 28 contains the great commission. If you want to turn there, Matthew 28, the end of Matthew 28, verses 18 through 20, and I’m sure many of you know it well. Matthew 28, 18 through 20. And Jesus came up and spoke to them. So this is before he ascends back to heaven. These are his parting words. What does Jesus have to say to the disciples, those who were beginning the church there? He said, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to keep all that I commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Now there’s a lot that can come from that and some of our other areas of the mission of the church will come from this passage because there’s so much contained in there. But this is the commission from the head of the church, Jesus Christ. And this is what we are to be doing, bringing the gospel to the world. And we do this in several different ways. This has to do with worldwide missions. as well as our day-to-day interaction with people, how we are to be living. If you go back to the beginning of Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, Jesus gives instruction on how his followers were to be living. And he said in chapter 5, verse 13, you are the salt of the earth, but if the salt has become tasteless, how will it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. We are the salt of the earth. It has to do with how we are interacting with the world. We don’t want to be Christians who are good for nothing, thrown out and trampled under feet. We are to be salty. When you taste something salty, you notice it. You notice that it’s there.

Salt preserves and salt seasons. And that’s exactly what we are to be doing with the truth to the world around us. We are called to live pure lives so that we will look different, that we will be different from the world. We are holy, we are set apart, we are called out. We live godly and pure lives so that we can glorify God and show God to others. And a few verses later in Matthew 5, 16, he says, Jesus says, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. People around you should see your light shining, the light of Christ. They ought to know you’re a believer. And we should show them and we should tell them. But that should be the mark of who we are as Christ followers. So what does that look like for us? What does that look like for the members of Fellowship Baptist Church? How do we fulfill this?

Well, really our first priority with evangelism is the world that God has placed you in. The community that God has put you in. We ought not to feel good about our missions program if we’re not sharing the gospel in our own community. Because evangelism isn’t just about sending other people and sending our money to help them do it, even though we should. Evangelism is about bringing the gospel to the people you know. One of the ways that we do that here at Fellowship is we have a monthly First Friday, it’s a block party they do downtown, and we pay for a spot down there. We bring a tent and we bring a table and have tracks, and sometimes we have other things to hand out, but we make connections with people in our city, people that know where we are, that when they ask where our church is, oh, it’s not far, it’s right down the road. So that when we share the gospel, it has an effect in our community. And as we do that, we often get opportunities to speak with people, and those conversations turn into Christian conversations, evangelism conversations.

We get opportunities to share the gospel. And we have a great team of people that regularly go downtown monthly and help us do this. Heath Booth got this started several years ago, and he helps lead that ministry downtown. But we also have other regulars like the Jensen’s, John and Sarah Jensen, the Marilyn Pitzer, Assad, Carl Fedler, and others that help out regularly. But we need more help. We need more help with that ministry. We can’t all make it every month, so the more people we have involved, the more the burden can be shared. You don’t have to commit to be there every single month, but be willing to step out and to take the gospel to our city. I know it can be intimidating to share your faith, especially at first, but that’s why this is a great opportunity for you. You can come down with us.

At first, you can just stand there and watch us. hand out tracts and start conversations and learn how to have Christ conversations with strangers. You can get the practice of sharing your faith while others are there with you, or you can just come hand things out. Last month, for Christmas, we had ornaments that the craft ladies had made for us, and they had different Christmas carols on it with the words to those songs, but then on the back it had our website. And people loved them, they wanted to buy them from us. But we just handed them out. And the purpose of those things is, as they have them on their Christmas tree, and they pull them out next year, where did I get this? And it’s got our website on the back. And they can look us up. And maybe in the future, God will work through that seed to bring them to himself. But there’s other ways that we can bring the gospel to our own neighborhood. If you’d like to be involved with that ministry, you can talk to me or you can talk to Heath.

One of the things I’d like to do here at some point is to have a sign-up sheet for different ministries that need help, that we need more volunteers in. And if you even just want to learn more about what that looks like, you can sign up and we’ll work on that in the future. But I’d like to get that going. We do have here in the foyer now, as you see on the table out there, the tracks that we do use downtown and we hand out. And those are great things for you to bring home with you. the different tracks we have there, so that as you meet people and as you have conversations, all of those tracks out there have our website on them as well. So as you are working on this in your own life, those are tools you can use to bring people to a knowledge of Christ, and you can take home as many as you need there, and that’s what they’re there for. So those are some of the ways that we can evangelize our community. Those are the things that we need to be doing as a church.

But then we also have missions. We also have missions, and that’s a very important part of the life of the church as well. We are very blessed as a church to have a healthy missions program and a healthy missions budget. We have many missionaries that we support in different ways, and we will look to continue growth in this area in the future. as we continue to grow as a church. And one of the specific ways that we are helping some of our missionaries is this summer we’re taking a missions trip to Portugal to visit the Gibsons. And many of you know the Gibsons. The Gibsons are one of our commissioned missionaries that we sent to the field from here. Many of you have come to our church recently and haven’t met them. They were here a year or so ago on furlough and their girls came to our youth group and they made good friends here. So we want to bring our youth group down there and to visit them on the field and see what they’re doing and support them. But there are many ways that we as a church are involved in evangelism and missions. There are many of those in the church that even go on missions trips themselves and are involved in this ministry. Those are all the ways that we can continue to look to grow in this area.

A third function of the church is worship, the worship of the church. Really all of our lives are to be lives of worship. But the church is called to worship corporately, or together, and that’s really what I’m talking about here in this point. I read the larger section of Hebrews chapter 10 earlier, as the author of Hebrews, really Hebrews is a long sermon, and he’s preaching and calling the church to be what they’ve confessed to be. In Hebrews chapter 10 verses 24 and 25, the end of that section I read earlier, it says, let us consider how to stimulate one another to love and to good deeds, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the day drawing near. That’s the first step of our worship is to gather and worship. We are commanded to be here. To get together as the church. Don’t forsake the church as is the habit of some. You know, we all look at different New Year’s resolutions or different things that we can do in the new year.

And many times, and it’s a great thing to do, to make a Bible reading plan. How am I going to read through the Bible this year? Well, it’s just as important to make a church attendance plan. Make sure you’re here at church. What’s your plan to make sure that you’re gathering and worshiping as we should be, as the church? Other places that speak of the worship of the church, in Ephesians chapter five, Paul’s speaking to them and encouraging them, the things they’re supposed to be doing, and he says, in verse 19, to be speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with your heart to the Lord.

And another similar passage in Colossians 3, 16 says, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly with all wisdom and teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with gratefulness in your hearts to God. That is our worship. That is what we are to be doing. And that is one thing that we will continue to be doing more of the same. Here at Fellowship, we have great worship together and last year we began to sing psalms together we started incorporating a psalm into our singing and that’s just to get more of God’s word before us so we’ll continue to do that and incorporate a psalm into our weekly worship here this year And if you’re newer here, if you want to be, if you’ve joined and you want to be part of our worship ministry, there’s opportunities for that as well. If you are talented in singing and you want to be part of our singing ministries, whether it’s with groups, the men of song and the lyrical ladies that do specials, or you want to sing a special, you can be involved in that. Or we have an orchestra. If you play an instrument, you want to be involved in that ministry as well. Those are different ways that you can get involved in the worship of our church.

Fourthly, and we’re gonna continue to move a little quicker here, the fourth function of the church is prayer. We are to be a praying church. One of the things that we are supposed to do, in 1 Thessalonians 5.17, Paul says, pray without ceasing. This means make a lifestyle of prayer. We are to be a praying church. We’re given examples throughout scripture of how to pray, the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6. We have the Book of the Acts is filled with instances of the church praying together for different requests or different needs. And one of the ways we do that here is through our Wednesday evening prayer meeting, where we take requests and we pray for them, which is followed by a Bible study.

And I know it’s hard for everyone to be able to make a midweek service work with our busy schedules, but you can still be involved in the prayer ministry of the church. We have our prayer requests that go out by email. And you can be aware of those things and be praying for one another in the church. And as we have needs or know of needs, I want to encourage you to let the church know about that. Let us know when there’s a need that needs to be prayed for. You can call or email the church office or one of the pastors with a request that you may have and we can continually be praying for those things. And if you’d like, we can share that request with the church on the email list or on the Wednesday evening list that are handed out. Or if you have a request that’s more personal, the elders meet together Regularly and we pray over the church body pray over the needs of the church. So if it’s something that you would rather keep more private, but you want the pastors and the elders of the church to be praying for it that’s a great thing. You can do is just just let us know of those things.

The book of James teaches us to do this in James chapter 5 if you want to turn over to James 5 James 5 speaks specifically of a model of prayer for the church and In James 5, starting in verse 13, it says, is there anyone among you suffering? He must pray. Is there anyone cheerful? He’s to sing praises. Is anyone among you sick? He must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him. This is what we’re to be doing. He continues, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer offered in faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed any sins, they will be forgiven him. Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. This is instruction and command to the church. We are to be praying for one another, and in order to do that, we need to know what to pray for. So share your requests with the church. Let us know what’s going on. And we can be praying for one another, doing what the Lord has commanded us to do.

Number five, the fourth thing there is prayer. Number five is shepherding. Shepherding is a duty of the church, a function of the church. First Peter chapter five. Verse two says, shepherd the flock of God among you, overseeing, not out of compulsion, but willingly, according to God, and not for dishonest gain, but with eagerness. So this is directed to the pastors of the church, but it is a function of the church. This is one of the areas that will look a little different this year, kind of, because we are reorganizing the shepherds. So we have a different look to what our shepherding ministry will be.

So starting this year, really next week, Pastor Piatt moves to become the pastor of congregational care, or the shepherding pastor, you could call it. And this basically means that his main responsibilities are the shepherding aspects of ministry, the things that fall under the care of people. He will continue to do his visiting and care of the people of fellowship, and it’s really not any different in that area for him. What he will be stepping back from is the preaching and teaching weekly and the administration responsibilities that he’s had around here. There will be times where he’s going to do some of those things as needed, but his main focus will be the shepherding aspects of pastoral ministry. I will also be sharing the shepherding responsibilities as part of my job too. So he’s not going to be doing everything that’s called shepherding, but he’s going to be helping alleviate some of the responsibilities in that area. My main focus will be the preaching and teaching of the word. I am the preaching pastor, the senior or lead pastor, and so that will be my main focus, will be the preaching ministry. And so the other responsibilities come alongside those, but it is a blessing to have someone like Pastor Piatt who can do all the shepherding ministry aspects of the church here. And then moving forward, we’re going to be looking to add another pastor to our staff.

We have in a few weeks here, on January 19th, Stephen Kretzer will be coming down to Canada, much like I did four years ago. And Lord willing, the plan would be for him to come in and do some of the things that I’ve been doing over the last four years, including oversight of the youth and some of the other ministries of the church, as well as some preaching and teaching and getting him some experience that way. And I’m really looking to, again, Lord willing, all of this works out, but my intention is to look to have him come in and get his feet under him in ministry, get him some experience. He’s a younger guy, and he’s got the knowledge and education now, but now, like myself, coming out of seminary, he needs the experience. And he will learn from me and Pastor Pyatt, and we’ll see what God does with that in the future. We look to obey faithfully and see what God does in blessing that obedience. So number five is the shepherding ministry of the church.

Six is discipleship. Again, this comes from the Great Commission. We’re gonna be making disciples. So what I really wanna focus on here is what does it look like for us to be creating more disciples of Christ? Making disciples is really just doing what Christ did while he was here. Teaching them what Christ taught and helping them become more like Christ. And we can see this in different passages of scripture like 2 Timothy 2:2. And the things which you’ve heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust these to faithful men who will be able to teach others.” Or 1 Corinthians 11:1, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. So making disciples, reproducing Christ followers. And so some of the things that, we do a lot of things to aim at this goal.

What I want to highlight under this heading is our Bible studies. We have Bible studies here that they meet on Tuesday mornings. We’ve had others in the evenings, but it was hard for a lot of people to make that work with busy schedules. But here in January, our Tuesday morning Bible studies will be picking up once again. And in this new year, just to kind of give you an idea of what we’ll be studying, I will be teaching the men’s study on Tuesday mornings, and we’re going to be going through a book called The Law and the Gospel. And it really looks at, well, what’s the difference between what the law is and what the gospel is? And really the essential difference is the law is what we do and the gospel is what Christ has done. and one of them saves us, and the other one doesn’t. So we’ll look at those things, and I have a bunch of copies of those books, so even if you aren’t able to make it to those Tuesday mornings, which I know is hard for some of you men, if you’d still like a copy after I’ve handed them out, well, I know I have more than enough. I can get you a copy of that book as well.

Eileen will be teaching the ladies study on Tuesday mornings, and she’ll be doing a study through the book of Psalms. She’s using a book called Musing on God’s Music to really look at what is in the Psalms, and she’s going to teach through those things. Bible studies are one aspect of how we disciple, how we make more disciples here. That’s one way we’re going to be fulfilling that. Again, there’s more that I could get into, but for the sake of time, we’ll just focus on the Bible studies under that heading.

Seven is equipping. The church is to be equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. This comes from Ephesians 4. Ephesians 4, 11 and 12 says, he gave some as apostles and some as prophets, some as evangelists, some as pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints for the work of the service of the ministry, to the building up of the body of Christ. So the work of the church, all the things the church does, is not to be done only by the pastors. The pastors are to lead in that, and they are to be in the process equipping the saints for the work of the ministry. This is how Christ has appointed the church to function.

So as we think about, if the church is supposed to be equipping people to get involved in ministry, if you’re not involved in some aspect of ministry yet, You probably should be looking to get involved. You should be looking for somewhere where you can fit in and get into the weekly or monthly or whatever, however regularly, ministry of the church. And again, as I mentioned, I’m looking to get some sign-up sheets here to show you what is available for areas of need, but some ministries that I know we need help in are things like the safety team. We’re always looking to get more people on the safety team. And there’s a lot of things that the safety team does, including watching out for us while we’re having services and things like that. But we need to get more people involved in that. And even if you don’t want to carry a gun or do any of that part of it, there are things that you can do to help. with the safety aspects of the church. And when Danny Lee heads that up, and he’s communicated to me that we especially need some of the younger adults to be involved in that ministry.

So you can talk to me if you want to be involved in that way, but that’s a big need that we have. Other needs, I talked about the music ministry that you could be, if you’re interested, involved in that. Nursery workers, we always need nursery workers. Children’s church, teachers, Awana and Youth Group, and all of these different ministries that we do, Well, we need people to be able to do them. So if there are ministries that you really feel like you would like to try and see if you can fit in there, you can let us know and we’ll try to get you involved. Or maybe there’s a ministry you’re thinking, man, fellowship really ought to have this. we really ought to have this ministry. Well, maybe God’s showing you that that’s where you need to be serving. And that’s something that you can help get started. So whatever that may be, whatever that looks like, our duty is to equip people for the work of the ministry. So if you’re not involved in something, we need to be getting involved. So that’s number seven, equipping.

Number eight is training. Now again, this kind of goes hand in hand with discipling and equipping. But what I want to focus on with this one is our monthly theology class. We have a Foundations of Fellowship theology class that we meet on the last Tuesday of every month. And we’re working our way through different areas of theology, systematic theology. So far, we’ve done theological method, bibliology, and theology proper. We’re almost done that one. We’ll have a little bit more. But that was through our first year of that class last year. And we’re going to be continuing that here the last Tuesday of January. And really my purpose and what I’m looking to do in this class is to train people in theology, to provide theological education that typically is available in Bible colleges or seminaries.

So I’m working through my own Seminary theology notes and and really writing a curriculum or a systematic theology that we can use to help teach these things So I’m bringing trying to bring it down to a level that anyone can understand So that’s what we do on the last Tuesday of every month is a theology training class And so I know the people that have been faithfully attending that have really enjoyed it and so we’re looking to continue that and if you’d like to be involved in that and come see what it’s about and Again, it’s the last Tuesday of every month from 7 to 9 p.m. There’s two more areas that we’ll quickly go through.

Number nine is giving. We are to be a giving people. And the biblical instruction on giving has very little to do with how much a person has, how much a person has in relation to their giving. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:6, now this I say, he who sows sparingly will reap sparingly, and he who sows with a blessing will also reap with a blessing. And Jesus says in Luke 6:38, give and it will be given to you. It will pour into your lap a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure, it will be given, or it will be measured to you in return. And these verses are not about a certain number that you should be giving. It’s about being generous.

You need to be generous with what you have. God wants you to trust him with your money. We give back to God a portion of what he’s given us. And when you realize that everything comes from God, it’s his to begin with, it makes it a lot more logical for us to give back. Why wouldn’t I give back? He gave it to me in the first place. And fellowship is a very generous church. We’ve been blessed with very generous people. And I want to see that continue. Not because we want your money. I don’t have any idea what anybody here gives. But God wants your heart. God wants your heart. And one of the ways that is often revealed is through our money, what we do with our money. And again, God has blessed us with growth the last few years, and we want to be able to meet the needs we have.

What you’re giving is not just for the needs of Fellowship Baptist Church, in the sense of paying bills or things like that. We also have a benevolent offering that we take when we do communion. Or you can give to that anytime and just mark what it’s for. But we give that to support the needs of those from within our church and maybe those in the community that really need help. We also give to support the needs of missionaries as they arise. We have a reserve fund so that if a missionary has a desperate need, we have funds available to be able to help them. So there’s a lot of ways that we as a church aim to fulfill our duty to be generous and giving.

There’s a lot of ways that you can be involved in giving. If you don’t know the way we do it as a church, we take the offering weekly on Sunday mornings, or many people now give online. Go to our website and you can give through online giving. You can also set it up with your bank to do a regular, some people do that, the regular deposits that way. There’s a lot of different aspects of how you can get involved in giving in that way.

And lastly, the last area I wanna focus on this morning is fellowship. fellowship. We are to be having fellowship. We see this in 1 John 1:3 that John is testifying to what he’s seen and heard and he says, so that you may have fellowship with us and our fellowship was with the father and with his son, Jesus Christ. And Acts 2 tells us in verse 42, they were continually devoting themselves to the apostles teaching and to the fellowship. We are to be having fellowship with one another. This means doing things together and growing in unity. We try to have one function at least a month where we can do that, where we can get together, whether it’s over a meal or over a function, where we can share time together, get to know each other, and share needs and concerns with each other. And we will continue to do that in this upcoming year.

One thing that we had planned in the fall but the hurricane interrupted everything, but we’re gonna look to do this again in this coming year, is that the Shelburne’s have graciously offered to host us at their ranch and to have a day up to their ranch. So, Lord willing, we’ll look to do that here in this coming year. And we’ll gather together and spend time together and eat and do some fun things. And that’s what we’re to do as a church, we’re a family. We’re called together by God to be his people and we need to spend time together. There’s many other things that we have planned for fellowship times with the church. The fishing trip is one that a lot of people always enjoy, so we’re planning to do that again. And several other things that are coming up.

So those are all things that, areas that we are, things we are to do as the church, and that’s how we’re looking to fulfill them in the future. The preaching and teaching, evangelizing, worshiping, prayer, shepherding, discipleship, equipping, training, giving, and fellowship. Those are all what we are to be doing as the church.

And lastly, to close, all of this falls under one umbrella. If you turn to 1 Corinthians, in closing here, 1 Corinthians chapter one. 1 Corinthians chapter one, starting in verse 23. This is what directs all of what we do. 1 Corinthians 1.23. We preach Christ crucified. To the Jews, a stumbling block, and to the Gentiles, foolishness. But to those who are the called, both the Jews and the Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. All that we aim to do is by the power of the gospel. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord. That is our power, that is our hope, and that is our life. If we are to be what He intends us to be, that needs to be our driving force. We preach Christ crucified. I’m really excited for what the Lord has in store for Fellowship Baptist Church in this new year. And I’m thankful for all of you and all that the Lord is doing through you and through us together.

So let’s stand and close our time together this morning in a word of prayer. Our Father in heaven, we thank you for another Lord’s Day where we can hear from you, hear from your word. And as we look at all of these things that you’ve called us to be as a church, we pray for your grace, we pray for your hand of mercy upon this church. I pray that we would be able to fulfill what you have for us, that you would empower us through your word to do all the things that we need to do, to edify each other, to encourage one another, and most importantly, to worship you, to make your name known in our area, in our community. We thank you for who you are. We thank you for all of the instruction you’ve given us in your word for what we are to be. We pray for, again, your continued mercy and grace upon us in this coming year. We thank you for who you are, and we pray all of this in Christ’s name. Amen.