Posts from 2025

Weekly Update – June 26th, 2025  Last Saturday morning, 11 youth and 3 adult volunteers loaded up our 15 passenger van to head off to Ascend Camp.  After months of planning and fundraising, we were finally ready to travel over to Lake Williamson in Carlinville, IL. Ascend Camp has been hosted by Mission Road Bible Church since 2012 and now has over 1000 students who attend every year.  Let me share with you some of the highlights from it.  First, the teaching.  One…

Weekly Update – June 19th, 2025  This week, we have had the opportunity to host our annual Vacation Bible School. The theme for this year is, Magnified: Declaring the Bigness of God in the Smallest of Things. Everyday children from our church and all over our community come to learn about truth is found in God and of how they can follow his plan shown to us through Jesus Christ. Our memory verse for the week is from Psalm 34:3 which says,…

Weekly Update – June 12th, 2025  It is not unusual to have multiple people stop by the church during the week looking for help. First Baptist Church is situated in the center of town and has been in the center of town before the center of town was even located where it currently is.  We have a reputation for helping others, whether it be through our clothes closet, our food pantry or through providing for the temporary needs of others. …

Weekly Update – June 5th, 2025  Every year, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) meets in June for its annual meeting.  The convention contains just over 47,000 churches with an average of 10,000 messengers attending this annual meeting on behalf of member churches.  The SBC was formed in 1845 with the singular purpose of, “eliciting, combining, and directing the energies of the Baptist denomination of Christians, for the propagation of the Gospel.”  First Baptist Church is an active member of the…

Weekly Update – May 29th, 2025  As you all know, Vacation Bible School is just around the corner.  Every summer our church has a week where we specifically focus on teaching the children of our church and the community the gospel of Jesus Christ.  This week always requires a lot of effort, resources and time.  Therefore, for the sake of simply doing something because we have always done it, I want to remind you, just as I do every year,…

Weekly Update – May 22nd, 2025  In Luke 9:51, we see an interesting phrase that will set out for us the rest of Jesus’ ministry on earth.  Luke says, “he (Jesus) set his face to go to Jerusalem.”  Now, on the surface of it, this may seem like Luke is only giving us the physical direction as to where Jesus is going.  He is now headed to Jerusalem.  In actuality though, I believe that Luke says this phrase with a…

Weekly Update – May 15th, 2025  As Christians, we are all called to a type of ministry.  There is no such thing as isolating ourselves from other believers, just as there is no such thing as inactivity when it comes to serving the Lord.  We are to be actively investing ourselves into the lives of others, younger and older, mature and immature, similar to us or different.  Ministry isn’t only a call to those who are paid or to those…

Weekly Update – May 8th, 2025  The Biblical command issued by Jesus throughout the gospels to those who would be his disciples is, “Follow Me.”  We saw this clearly last Sunday in Luke 9:23.  Here Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Now, every passage in the New Testament in some way or another gives us this command.  As we have seen so far in the…

Weekly Update – May 1st, 2025  Summer is often a great time for ministry, as people are outside, kids are on break and church programs take a different pace.  Though many of us will take vacations, trips or take time to simply relax, the mission of the church continues to press forward.  Therefore, as we are now in the month of May, I want to update you on a couple of key opportunities that will be happening in the life…

Weekly Update – April 24th, 2025  On a regular basis I will have conversations with people who claim to be Christians, but don’t know the gospel message.  One conversation may be a man telling me that he needs to do more in life to please God, like the discussion I had a few weeks ago.  Another might be a man who walks me through an entire system of works that the Catholic Church requires, like the conversation I had a…

Weekly Update – April 17th, 2025  One of the hardest parts about sharing the gospel is actually getting into a “gospel conversation” with an unbeliever.  Now sure, understanding the points of the gospel are key, but unless you are street preaching or going door to door, you will probably never have to worry about your outline or your evangelistic method.  This week, I want to share four helpful tips for generating these “gospel conversations” that might open up for us…

Weekly Update – April 10th, 2025  On Sunday at our mini conference titled, Taking Every Thought Captive, Marshall Adkins gave us a sort of grid to interpret how it is that we can evaluate the popular therapies of our day.  In our culture, it is becoming increasingly common to undergo some sort of therapy.  Many psychologists and psychiatrists will have their own thoughts and methods that they will bring to the table, with the mindset that they can give their…