Now, that February is upon us and our Stewardship month is over, let's not lose focus of our yearly theme. "Back to the Basics" is our emphasis this year, relating everything to an old time school setting. We want to go back and revisit some of the basics of Christianity 101 throughout the year.

Our plan of action in order to do this is to teach on the books of the Bible in Sunday school each week. We are giving the basics about each book from the author to the theme and many of the pertinent lessons that are taught in each book. We want all of our people to gain at least a little knowledge from every book of the Bible. God wrote them for us, but they do us little good if we know nothing about them.

We are also spending time on Wednesday nights teaching on our doctrinal statement. We have started with the local church and I will continue to teach on it for several more weeks. It is so important to the basics of our faith for us to know what we believe and why we believe it. We also post our doctrinal statement on our website, so all can see. We aren't trying to hide what we believe.

We have good old fashioned preaching on Sunday nights. I believe a steady diet of old time preaching is important to any believer for their spiritual growth to go forward. For example, I am preaching this Sunday night a message that will be called "They Saw." I will be emphasizing the dangers involved with what we see in our eye gates and how it effects us personally and effects our families.

Lastly, we are always emphasizing our real purpose for being here as Christians. That is personal soul winning. We are always emphasizing getting the Gospel of Jesus Christ to this lost and dying world of ours. Some churches talk about missions and support missionaries. We do too, but we don't stop there. We live missions by going every Thursday night out in our streets telling folks about Jesus Christ. We live in one of the most diverse cities in America, why wouldn't missions start at home first. It is a part of Christianity 101. Of course, we support missionaries, but why would I send a missionary across the world to give the Gospel and not go down the street and give out the Gospel. Would that make any sense? We must get .... BACK TO THE BASICS.  

Last night we held a pizza baking contest at our church. It was tremendous fun as we had 14 entries. We brought all 14 before our three judge panel. They had to taste a piece from all 14. They were full by the time they were done. First place went to Elizabeth Vasquez and second place to Phyllis Fauth. We thank all who participated. After the judging the rest of us ate dinner. Then we played ping pong afterwards. God bless and we will see you Sunday.

Dear Church members,

Don't forget that we are finishing up our debt retirement for the year 2014. You will want to be sure to turn in your stewardship cards, with your commitment amounts on them for the year, this Sunday. Don't forget that God blesses those who practice good stewardship! See ya this Sunday.

Preacher

Travis got his first taste of song leading today at the nursing home. He did good! Overall today we had a pretty good day at church. Considering the poor weather combined with the holidays the crowd was fairly decent. We also had one saved and baptized. Have a Merry Christmas.

One Wednesday night a month we started having some of the younger kids start playing an offertory. This was the first one and Rebekah was up first. She actually did pretty good. We went soul winning Thursday night and had 22 saved in very cold weather. Praise God for 26 faithful folks who went out!

This is Missionary Ben Smith who preached on our last Sunday of "Give Me a Vision" missions month. He did a great job preaching Sunday morning. It was really neat that we had a Sudanese man trust Christ as Saviour since Brother Smith is a missionary to South Sudan. Our Faith Promise commitments were the highest they have ever been. Please pray for Brother Smith as he raises support to get churches started in South Sudan. Gotta love missionaries!

We just finished the new tile floor in our auditorium platform. It looks great. Just needs a little trim board put on the front and it will be ready for Wednesday night service. Special thanks to my family for sacrificing our entire holiday today to help me get this done. Also, special thanks to Brother Looper for working all day today and Friday night and Saturday afternoon. Then I don't want to forget Brother Lorenzo Williams who worked all afternoon carrying buckets of water. Thanks to all these people we will have a great floor. Amen.