Sunday Night Service

Weekly Update – August 15th, 2024

I have said on several occasions that everything we strive to do at First Baptist Church is deliberate.  We are not looking to merely fill your time, nor are we looking for additional meetings to take up nights of your week.  Instead, we want to use the time that we have together as a church to its fullest as we seek to fulfill our mission to proclaim and display the truth of the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The one non-negotiable is our Sunday morning worship gathering.  That will never change.  That is the core of who we are as a church, an assembly of God’s people, and the one gathering that we are commanded to have as a church in the New Testament (Heb. 10:24-25).  Aside from this gathering, from time to time we need to evaluate our schedule and determine what works best for our church, what helps us to fulfill our mission and what most honors the Lord. 

When it comes to our schedule, several years ago, Sunday night was a busy place here at our church.  We had our Awana clubs, Pan de Vida met, and we had a formal Sunday night service.  Eventually our service began to slim down and the Sunday night service turned into more of a Bible study.  We then added home groups to Sunday nights.  Home groups fit in better with our mission as we sought to display the truth of the gospel to one another through having a time of fellowship filled with prayer and application of the Word of God.  That meant that Awana would move to Wednesday nights, home groups would meet on the 1^st and 3^rd Sunday nights and there would be no more formal activities at the church on Sunday evenings.  Again, we sought to evaluate our schedule for what worked best for us as a church, what helped us fulfill our mission and what most honored the Lord. 

Yet, recently we have had two needs at our church.  The first need is to have a corporate prayer time.  Now I am thankful for the many opportunities that we do have to pray.  We make sure that our home groups are places of prayer, our services are filled with prayer and every time we gather, there is some sort of prayer that is given.  But what we lack is a corporate time of extended prayer with one another.  If we are to be a people dependent upon the Lord to act through our efforts as individuals and as a church, then we ought to look for an opportunity to come together as one specifically for an extended time of prayer.

The second need that we have is for a time to allow other men to preach.  By God’s grace, we have been blessed with many men who can not only preach, but men who long to grow in the gift of preaching that the Lord has given to them.  Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:2 that we should entrust the word of God “to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.”  We should not take this command lightly.  Therefore, we want to take the opportunity to further aid in this entrusting by allowing men who aspire to pastoral ministry to preach, but also seek to build up elders within our own church by encouraging them to preach as well.  This time will also allow our church to hear and be encouraged by other voices as the word of God is proclaimed. 

I hope that you will join us for our newly installed Sunday night service.  It will take place on the 2^nd Sunday evening of the month at 6:00pm.  Our first service will take place on Sunday, September 8^th.  Come and pray with us, be encouraged by the word of God preached, and build up men as they seek to “fan into flame the gift of God” (2 Tim. 1:6).   

Serving Him with You,
Pastor Michael Nelson