I held out as long as I could

I am trying my best to not do anything Christmassy until after Thanksgiving. I put my radio on FM 102.5 and heard two Christmas songs…I can’t do it! I love Christmas and I love Christmas music. Can’t wait to buy new Christmas CD’s…I know, most of you are downloading your music. I am still old school. Here is how close we are to Christmas. This Sunday, after our Thanksgiving meal, our team of volunteers will begin to decorate the worship center for Christmas! I will hold out and not put my tree up until Thanksgiving weekend, but after that it is on!

The first Sunday of Advent is November 27. We are encouraging everyone who can to get into the Christmas spirit by participating in gift giving for four of the ministries JIBC supports. Marty and the worship team will help keep us upward focused during Advent; Sean and the Connection Groups will help us strengthen our inward focus on fellowship; and Susan will help us keep our outward focus during the Advent season. Here is my Christmas wish…ready? I am hoping our church family will respond to giving gifts to the four ministries during Advent and will participate in going personally to distribute the gifts to one of the four ministries. Susan will be coordinating taking the presents to these ministries. Some of them will be taken after the Christmas season. Talk to your Connection Group and see if there is interest in visiting Lowcountry Orphan Relief, Florence Crittenton Home, James Island Outreach or Lowcountry Pregnancy Center. Whoohoo, it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! And I love it. By the way…if you have been really blessed financially, and you really want to put a big present under the Christmas tree, consider sponsoring an orphan in Burma. For $30 a month, or a gift of $360 for the year, you can provide food, clean water, uniforms and other basic needs for the children at Faith Children’s Home and Agape Children’s Home. If that is a little too big for your budget, how about a family or a Connection Group going together to sponsor a child? I so love our church family for be generous.

OK, I have talked myself into it…I am listening to Christmas music on the way home!

See you Sunday, good Lord willing. Plan to stay and enjoy the Thanksgiving Meal!

Pastor Tom

Tomorrow could change everything...

Tomorrow could change everything. By the time you read this we will have a new president of the United States. I think many of us agree with the cartoon that says “America has 350 million people and this is the best we could do?” I am not a betting man and I do not have a crystal ball. But tomorrow could change everything: health care, borders, size of government, debt, the direction of the Supreme Court, support of military, foreign policy, the future our children will inherit, etc.

Then again, tomorrow many things will remain the same. Almighty God is still on His throne; Jesus is still Lord; the Church still has a great commission to carry out; people still desperately need Jesus; the hungry still need bread; the lonely still need visits and the naked still need clothes. Jesus said it this way in John 9:4: “Work for the night is coming. As long as it is day I must do the work of Him who sent me. Night is coming when no man can work.” What I will do if Trump wins is exactly what I will do if Clinton wins…work. I will do the work of Him who sent me. As long as it is day, as long as He allows, let us, the Church of Jesus Christ, do the work of Him who sent us. There may come a time when we cannot…but today we can. Let’s continue to worship Him in spirit and in truth; let us continually reach out to those we know to lead them to the cross; let’s keep on our knees in prayer and in His Book for guidance; let’s serve His Bide, the Church with the gifts and abilities He has given us for that purpose; and let us serve our community, meeting needs, sharing His love until His Kingdom comes and His will is done on earth as it is in heaven.

Tomorrow could change everything…or not. Depends on how you look at it and what you are called to do.

Dear Father, all knowing and all wise God, You know today who will be president tomorrow. I acknowledge today and tomorrow and always, that You alone are the Supreme Commander; You alone are King of Kings and Lord of lords. You guide the nations to accomplish Your purpose. Make it so: Your Kingdom come and Your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Forgive us of our sin and our sins. Have mercy on our nation that we may continue to be a people who bless and steward the blessings of America. Thank you for Your abundant blessings to our land and to Your people. Bless those who serve you with strength and grace; with peace and joy; with courage and confidence. In the Name of our Lord Jesus we pray, Amen.

See you Sunday, Lord willing, as we continue our teaching series on Thanks-Not Just A Word.

Pastor Tom

Three Weeks of Thanksgiving!

All said and done, could you handle three weeks of Thanksgiving? I would love it. Family getting together, worship built around giving thanks, favorite teams playing football and turkey…don’t forget the turkey! My point is we can seldom have too much thanksgiving. So let me share some of the coming events that will help us give thanks.

First, for the next three Sundays my teaching series will be on the spiritual discipline of giving thanks and being thankful. The attitude of gratitude is often the difference between victory and defeat, between I can do all things through Christ or I can’t. Let’s make the next three weeks of worship about giving thanks to the Lord, our God and King…His love endures forever!

Second, Sunday, November 20 is a day full and running over with thanksgiving. We will celebrate Communion/Lord’s Supper together and will have our annual church wide Thanksgiving meal! That evening, we will join with churches of all denominations for the Community Thanksgiving service. This year the service will be held at Emmanuel Baptist Church on Folly Road. This is the church on the left hand side of Folly as you are heading toward Folly Beach. Yours truly will be this year’s speaker. Extra prayers appreciated! This service is always a highlight of the year. An offering will be received to help support James Island Outreach and of course, we are encouraged, as the Jelly Church, to bring jars of jelly.

Last, but not least. On Wednesday, November 30 at 6:00 we will have a 30 minute Quarterly Ministry Conference for the purpose of presenting the 2017 Missions and Ministry Budget. We will have our regularly scheduled Wednesday night meal and programs. The meeting will be in the Fellowship Hall so you can enjoy the meal and fellowship as a part of the conference.

Give thanks to the Lord, our God and King: His love endures forever!

See you Sunday, good Lord willing.

Pastor Tom

NOT SO MUCH

NOT SO MUCH

There are two well known phrases that come to my mind for what I am saying today. The first is from our old poet friend, Robert Burns: “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” The other a more home spun wit and wisdom: “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”

I wrote two weeks ago of the excitement of going to Washington, DC to visit the Museum of the Bible. I was so excited right up to the point that I got sick with some anti-biblical virus! Once my buddies sent me pictures of them kneeling in the rotunda of the Capitol for prayer…I think I got even sicker! Lol. They went and had a great time…and were thoughtful enough to send back pictures to keep me updated on their tour. The offer is still open so I hope to report to you at a later date about a most successful and enjoyable adventure to visit the Museum of the Bible.

READY OR NOT

We are closing in fast on this year’s community outreach, the Fall Festival. On Monday, October 31 we will host a family oriented festival for our community. We have one little boy in our Weekday Preschool program that tells me of his excitement every time he sees me. He is only 4 years old but it is a dominant memory in his wonderful little mind. Please be in prayer for this event. Our desire is to show the community the love of Christ, the joy of Christianity in a family friendly safe environment. Pray for the team members that will be registering families and for those who will be presenting the Gospel. Let us love them like Jesus would love them and pray for the day when they will love Him! Amen?

Looking forward, good Lord willing to seeing you Sunday!

Pastor Tom

WHAT A GREAT RESPONSE

This past Sunday we saw a great response to three needs: First we saw a lot of jelly for James Island Outreach and the effort to help provide food for the under-served and those in need. For those who are a little more ambitious, you can order jelly on line from Dollar Tree for $1 a jar…they are smaller jars, but that is still a pretty good deal! Second, we saw lots and lots of candy come in for the Fall Festival. Wow…that is a lot of sweets. We still need around a ton and a half more, lol; so keep it coming. Third, we are seeing a good response to the sign up for the Fall Festival Booths. We expect to have over 500 guests on Monday, October 31. It will take a JIBC army to have all the bases covered. Our Connection Groups and volunteers can make it happen.

We have some new folks in our church family, so let me share again, the vision of Fall Festival. We try to put on a family friendly, safe event that goes head to head with Halloween. This is not a Halloween Festival, it is a Fall Festival. We are taking back what the enemy has stolen. So, we ask that everyone from JIBC that participates, not wear scary, spooky, ghoulish, bloody, sexy, provocative, disturbing costumes. Sorry if I ruined your favorite holiday. There are plenty of other events for you to go to. This one is designed to be a family friendly fun event. Your children can still have an outstanding time, get lots of goodies and enjoy your time together as a family. Now here is the deal. When the public is invited, we do not stop them from coming dressed in traditional costumes. Kind of the same way we don’t stop people from coming to worship with us who live traditional secular lives. Every Sunday we have people, some of us included, who wear masks. We just wear the nice mask on the outside to cover the real scary stuff underneath. You get that right? Not everyone who comes on Sunday is Christ focused. Some don’t yet know Him and some who say they know Him act like they don’t really like Him. Every week we have a gathering of the nones (they don’t identify with any belief or religion); the nominals (those who are believers but are not really serious about it) and the Bible believing, Christ-centered followers (those who seriously try to live out their faith). That is exactly who we expect to come to the Fall Festival. It is our prayer, that we can help build a bridge for them to know and worship our Lord Jesus Christ. We try to move them from the community, to the crowd to the church, to the committed to the core to the sent!

Way to go JIBC, way to go!

Pastor Tom

WELL, WASN’T THAT SPECIAL?

WELL, WASN’T THAT SPECIAL?

Ok, all together…deep breath in, blow it out slowly. Repeat. I am hoping you and your loved ones came through Matthew in good shape. We have the office calling as many as we can to check in on our members. We get a lot of phones not in service and a lot of voice mails. Please know that we are here and doing our best to contact everyone. A big thanks to the Connection Group leaders for staying in touch with their small groups and letting us know their groups are all safe and sound. Please let us know if there is some way we can help. Do you have a tree on the house or car, water standing, still no electricity…please let us know. The church has power, a shower and hot coffee. Come on by if you need to. We will try to coordinate volunteers with needs.

Our thanks to Marty who anchored…no pun intended…the church building during the storm. He was the first one here and the last one to leave. The church building was open as a shelter. We had a total of 17 people who stayed here including Janie and myself. We had three homeless people and one man who lived on his sail boat. He anchored his sail boat in the Stono River and rode his dingy in. Next time, we will ask him to bring the dingy to the church just in case.

MISSED A SUNDAY OF WORSHIP AND CELEBRATE RECOVERY

We were prepared for worship on the Sunday right after the storm. We had two orders of worship printed…one in case we had power and one in case we did not. As it turned out, everyone was asked to stay off the roads because of debris and live electrical wires. We were back open Monday and business as usual. Two things we would like to ask of our church family. First, the Fall Festival is less than two weeks away. We missed a Sunday to sign up and promote the event. Please go on line and sign up on our web page or sign up this Sunday. We are asking our Connection Groups to join together and help host two or three of our booths. Remember you need two people for 2 hours each. So, we would like to have at least 4 people per booth to keep anyone from working the booth all night. And keep bringing the candy.

Second, I want to thank you for remembering your tithes and offerings. JIBC is unusually blessed by having such generous givers. We are able to do so many of our outreach efforts because God so richly supplies all of our needs. Gratefully, we are able to stay in the black and not have to cut back on things like building insurance, ministries and missions. Thank you for your faithfulness. It really does make a difference.

See you Sunday, good Lord willing and the storm surge doesn’t rise!

Pastor Tom

Blessed Beyond Belief

Blessed Beyond Belief. That is how I feel about an amazing opportunity that has come my way. Next Wednesday, October 12, I am scheduled to fly to Washington, D.C. with my two pastor buddies, Marshall Blalock and Curt Bradford. There are only three of us left in our group that has been meeting for over 22 years. Our other buddies have either moved away or are currently in witness relocation plans. LOL . We have had some incredible opportunities and next week will add to the list. We have been invited to a preview of the new Museum of the Bible in our nation’s capital. If you are interested you can go check this out at www.museumofthebible.org. The Museum of the Bible will be 430,000 square feet and is only 3 blocks from the Capitol building. Plans are for it to open in the Fall of 2017. Hmm, perhaps a church trip to D.C.? Anyway, this museum is promoted as a world class museum with cutting edge technology. There will be art, artifact, kids areas, theatres, literature, world class libraries and biblical exhibits, etc. I am pretty excited about being offered a free trip…oh yeah…a free trip and to be given a private preview tour.

I have been blessed beyond belief by and with my pastor’s small group. We were originally put together as a peer learning group that would agree to meet once a month. We immediately began meeting every Friday morning for breakfast and our group time. We have gone on study trips together, travelled to hear our mentors teach, gone on a mission trip to Peru, toured the Holy Land and remained great friends during it all! The value of close personal friends has been felt during family crisis, personal health issues and church issues. It is like have your own private consultant group. We have even gone to the place of not calling staff members unless they have met with our Friday group for an informal interview.

I am excited about this trip and will look forward to telling you more about it. I am just as excited about going off with my pastor buddies. Our small group has been invited to Ridgecrest this December to speak to state leaders about our small group. It seems so normal to us, but apparently it is not. I think our assigned topic is “How a pastor can stay clothed and in his right mind”. Really, it is on Church Health and Healthy Leaders. I am honored to be considered such and twice honored to be with my good friends, Marshall and Curt.

See you Sunday, good Lord willing and Matthew does not rise!

Pastor Tom