I have been asking for our church family to memorize one verse and one passage of Scripture. The first one is Mark 10:45. If Jesus had a “life verse” I think this would be it. Find a 3x5 card, copy the verse and carry it with you for a week. The second is a passage, Philippians 2:5-11. It is perhaps my favorite passage about Jesus. One of the most neglected spiritual disciplines is memorizing Bible verses. There are lots of great reasons to give it a try. I hope you will. Remember the three keys to memorizing Bible verses is to review, review and review!
Thank you for serving the underserved. We partner with James Island Outreach, led by Scott Graule and a wonderful host of volunteers. We have been designated as the Jelly Church. You do a great job of keeping the Outreach supplied. As I type this article, we have exactly 150 jars of jelly waiting to fly from our stage to the shelves of JIO and into the homes of our fellow James Island Residents. We will now resume our collecting jelly each week and putting the jars in the collection bins outside the church office. Thank you for serving in your generosity.
One more celebration: Joanne Brown has been leading a group of JIBC volunteers to help with Back Pack Buddies. Again, we partner with JI Outreach and local schools to help provide meals for underserved kids in our community. About every other week, our volunteers go to pack the snacks and food. If I am remembering correctly, Joanne said our volunteers pack 174 bags each week. When you add up all the backpacks, I think she said the number was 6,000 total backpacks packed! How many backpacks could backpackers pack if backpackers would pack backpacks? Apparently the number is somewhere around 6,000. Unto the least of them says Matthew s25. Well done, well done.
The Charleston County Department of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services (The Charleston Center) has started allowing their patients to come to Celebrate Recovery. We had 9 from the Center this past Sunday Night. Our CR family, including our Kitchen Krew, was so excited to see them. These patients are struggling between life and death, bondage or freedom, hope or despair. Thank you JIBC for being willing to take on the giants. By the way, Celebrate Recovery is not just for substance abuse. We deal with food issues, codependency, gambling, sexual addictions, anger, mental health issues, etc. In a few weeks, I will advertise a course I will be teaching on codependency. Everyone and anyone is welcome to sit in. it will most likely be a 4 week study offered on Sunday Nights. The schedule: Free meal at 5:30; Celebration Worship at 6:30; Small Groups/Codependency from 7 to 8.
I love our church! See you Sunday, good Lord willing!
Pastor Tom
BTW, we will observe the Lord’s Supper on this Memorial Day Weekend. Hope you can be there to join us in remembering the sacrifice of our Lord Jesus and the men and women who paid the ultimate price.
