Week 3 of Sunday Night 101

We had lots of visitors both Sunday morning and Sunday night. Total there were four saved this weekend that made public professions of faith. Praise God for His glorious gift of salvation! On Sunday morning I preached "How is This Thing Supposed to Work?" I preached on the ministry of reconciliation and my two main points were the ministry of salvaging and the ministry of provoking. It went really well and I believe it was a help to our people.

On Sunday night we started a new children's choir that practices before the evening service. Mrs. Faith Painter (pictured above) is the leader of this choir and she did an excellent job of working with the kids. These kids will sing once a month on Wednesday nights so the parents can all enjoy them. I believe that starting these kids singing early is very important. This will help their development and will also feed them into our teen singing groups when they get older. Praise God for those that make a joyful noise.

Also, on Sunday night we continued with our contest. My daughter Rachel won the apple pie tonight by bringing three visitors. I also, preached a sermon called "One of the Most Confusing Doctrines of the Bible." I had a great time preaching it as we had a lot of laughs with it. However, we did business with the Lord at the invitation time as many came forward to pray. Please pray for next week as we push toward our big day!

Saturday Soul Winning

Every Saturday we go out following up on converts and absentees. Pictured here is my wife and two youngest daughters making a soul winning visit today. We had a total of eleven saved today while out visiting and following up. We have 5 visitors lined up for pick up in my mini-van tomorrow. Please pray that they will come.

Typically we get a lot of our follow up visits from our Thursday night soul winning. We make a big push for the Thursday night soul winning. For example last Thursday night we had 26 soul winners out and had 21 people saved. We try to create a lot of excitement around our soul winning time and our soul winning bus. Then on Saturday we usually have about 15 people out making visits and following up in the mornings. These are bus workers and Sunday school teachers. We go soul winning along the way while we are out visiting. Then there are a few teachers who work and go out on their own later in the day visiting their classes. They too will witness as they go. We try to incorporate soul winning into every ministry we have here at Lincoln Baptist Church.

Now don't forget about the third week of our Sunday night 101 contest. We are making a push to get more folks out for Sunday night church so that we can grow spiritually. If we grow spiritually, then we can truly grow numerically. I am looking forward to the Lord's day tomorrow morning and our contest and service tomorrow night. I hope you have a great one too! God bless!

Week Two of Sunday Night 101

 We had a good day overall at church this week. This morning was Easter Sunday. Attendance was fair, but there was a certain celebration for the Sudanese people in Iowa and so a lot of our regular bus riders were missing because they are Sudanese. That made the morning attendance a little lower than expected. However, we had a few visitors and good services overall. I also had 21 in my "Home and Family" Sunday school class which was good.

This morning was also the start of a new Sunday school class. Mrs. Faith Painter was the teacher of the new teen girl Sunday school class called "Daughters of the King." I am sure that she did a fantastic job her first week. I know that the class had six students in it and I am excited to see it continue to grow as it goes forward. Welcome aboard Miss Faith (as the girls call her).

Then we had week 2 of our Sunday night campaign called "Sunday Night 101." We had 71 in attendance with 4 professions of public faith made and one following the Lord in believer's baptism. Praise God for his many blessings. We also had a "Pounding" for our new married couple; Bro. Jonathan and Miss Faith. It truly was a great Easter Sunday!

Better Than Expected Night Out Soul Winning

In building for week number two of Sunday Night 101, we went soul winning like we always do on Thursday night. This week we had 27 soul winners out on the soul winning bus and we ended up having 25 saved out in a Havelock neighborhood, which is pretty good. When we ended and dismissed the bus in prayer we thought we had 17, which we celebrated. However, after going over the convert slips and counting everybody's numbers, I discovered that I miss counted. Forgot to add a group in. So Praise God we did even better than we thought we did. Thank God for faithful soul winners willing to carry the blessed Gospel of Jesus Christ to a lost and dying city!

This next Sunday is Easter and I will be preaching on "What I Like About Easter" in the morning. I do hope that you will be in attendance. However, I want to encourage everyone to be back on Sunday night for our campaign. I will be preaching on "Why I Am Against Calvinism." I pray it will be enlightening for some who have had questions about the five pointed T-U-L-I-P of Calvinism. Also, be sure to be praying for our goal of having 100 people here for Sunday night church on May 4th. We average around 45, so that will be a big jump for us, but God can do anything!

Week One of Sunday Night 101

 Yesterday we started our Sunday night campaign. It actually went pretty well for week one. We had a total of eleven visitors come for our Sunday night service. Blaise already made the field trip list by bringing three visitors the first night.

I preached against the observance of Good Friday last night as well as the Lenten season and all the other religious days that go along with that. It is a shame that so few preach against these things anymore. This is why religion and liberalism is taking over our fundamental Baptist churches.

I really enjoyed the singing we had all day long yesterday. The Sons of Grace (pictured) is a fairly new quartet group that has been formed and I am excited every time they sing. They are really good!  I love the direction our church music is moving. Of course we love the old time type singing always, but I am talking about the quality of it is starting to get better and better all the time. It is exciting.

Over all yesterday, we battled the weather. In the morning severe thunderstorms came into play starting at about 8 a.m., there was even a bunch of hail stones falling in the south part of town while I was making some pickups in my van. Then by evening it had changed to snow and the temperatures had dropped greatly. Extremely strong winds as well. I know this was a hindrance for some making it out. We did have a new person join the church yesterday morning though and that was Mrs. Faith Painter, who was Miss Faith Smith not too long ago. She joined our church coming from Heritage Baptist Church in Lawrence, Kansas. My good friend, Dr. Scott Hanks is the pastor there. So all in all we had an exciting day. Looking forward to next weekend already!

    

Sunday Night 101

We went soul winning last night and had 30 saved while out on the streets. I was extremely excited about it. Especially, since we only had 21 soul winners out which is a down number for us. The street we were on started out rather rough and unfriendly. Blaise and my daughter Debbie were my partners and we were having to really plow through some unfriendly people. My wife and her partner though approached a porch of four adults and she was able to win all four of them to Christ after about 20 minutes. Then Blaise came across a group of five boys playing basketball and he won them to Christ while Debbie and I went to a door and won a dying mother Christ. Somebody say Amen!

It was a rough start for most of our groups, but very fruitful in the end. I wasn't sure how it would go when we started out by having a drunk man trying to board our bus once we pulled up to drop off our first group. I don't know if he thought we were some kind of public transportation or what, but once we got rid of him we started unloading the groups onto the streets for the next hour. All who came out had a great time!

This weekend starts our Sunday Night 101 campaign. For the next four weeks we are trying to have an emphasis placed on bringing folks to our Sunday night services. I am running it like a classroom with me as the teacher and the Bible as our text book. Each week whoever brings the most visitors will be rewarded by the teacher. Then whoever brings at least three visitors over the four weeks can make the field trip list, which will be a trip to the Lauritzen Gardens in Omaha. It will be a fun field trip. I will be preaching about "Good Friday or Good Wednesday" this first Sunday night. I hope to see you all come and participate.

The Wedding Day Finally Came

Sunday was a good day in attendance. We had five adult visitors come. We had three come on Sunday morning. Then Sunday night we had two more come. The two that came Sunday night came because we had knocked on their door about 5 or 6 weeks ago. One of them came forward at the invitation time and then came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Shen then made a public profession of faith.

This past Friday was Brother Jonathan Painter's wedding. He got married to Miss Faith Smith at the Heritage Baptist Church in Lawrence, Kansas. The wedding was officiated by Pastor Scott Hanks who did an absolutely fantastic job as well as all the people of his church who jumped in and helped out. It was a very beautiful wedding. It was a warm feeling inside to be able to watch my son kiss a girl for the first time at the altar, just the way God had intended for it to be. I thank God for the way that He guided Jonathan to the very girl that he had for him. I believe when he went through all those years of Bible college and not finding Mrs. Right for him, he kept his chin up and did not panic about it. He could have made the mistake that so many do in settling for someone who isn't the exact one that God has for them. I am happy that he did not do this and instead exercised patience. My wife and I have no doubt that Miss Faith Smith (who is now Mrs. Faith Painter) is the exact right girl for our son. She too has gone through life keeping herself clean and pure. She truly is a testament to her parents for the fine job of proper upbringing.

We are excited to have this new young couple as a part of our church and I look forward to having her get involved in helping with our ministries here at our church. It is exciting days ahead for our church. We are seeing souls saved and visitors coming. Converts are getting baptized and lives are being changed. We are seeing young people reap the benefits of doing that which is right. The sky is the limit from here on out! Praise God for his tender mercies!