LET’S CELEBRATE ADVENT!

The word advent means arrival or coming. In our case, the case of Christianity, it refers to the coming, the arrival of Jesus Christ. We celebrate two advents: the first celebrates the birth of Christ and the second celebrates His return. 

The Advent season includes the four Sundays before Christmas. You know I love all things Christmas. The only thing I do not really love is the temptation to go into debt to pay for more celebrating than can be afforded. I love Christmas decorations…and by the time you read this my family decorations and the church decorations should be up! I love the Christmas lights at the county park and in the neighborhoods. I love the Biblical stories about the advent/coming of Christ. I love Christmas music, the old hymns, FM102.5 that plays Christmas music and all my old school Christmas CD’s.

All that being said, one of my favorite parts of Christmas at JIBC is how we have connected missions and worship. Each Sunday of Advent has a different mission emphasis. We partner with others to accomplish the work of Christ. The first Sunday of Advent is November 29. We will highlight the mission of The Lowcountry Pregnancy Center. We are helping them to collect diapers of any size. If you would like to buy some diapers, you can bring them any Sunday during December. The second Sunday of Advent, December 6, highlights The Lottie Moon International Missions. We have some really cool opportunities here. Janie and I always make the Lottie Moon Offering our first Christmas gift of the year. The third Sunday of Advent helps children in our community who are at risk of not having a meal over the weekend. This past Thursday, as we were leaving James Island Outreach, a team from JIBC was arriving to help pack food bags for Backpack Buddies. I love it! Then the last Sunday of Advent, December 20 is our mission partner, James Island Outreach. Our church family is the jelly church. We have been asked to provide jelly for the outreach. So when you are shopping, look for the BOGO deals on jelly! By the way, JIBC is on track to give 10,000 pounds of food for 2020. In a year of greatest need you gave the greatest offering in our history!

We top it all off with our annual Christmas Eve Carols, Communion and Candlelight services at 4:00 and 6:00 PM. Covid-19 has made this a little bit challenging but we are up to the challenge. We will be giving out free tickets that will help us monitor the size of our attendance. You may reserve your tickets at www.jamesislandbaptist.com. And we will have an overflow room in the Fellowship Hall that will have a wonderful experience should we run out of seats!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Enjoy and celebrate the Gospel story revealed in the Christmas event. See you Sunday, good Lord willing!

Pastor Tom

THANKSCHRISTMAS!

My granddaughter asked me “Granddad, what is your favorite holiday?” I told her “ThanksChristmas!” I love the season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. What is not to love? This Sunday is the Sunday before Thanksgiving. I will miss the church-wide Thanksgiving Meal and the Community Wide Thanksgiving Service. By God’s grace and goodness, we will still have a Thanksgiving Meal and we can still see the Community Thanksgiving Service live-streamed! We will be having the Lord’s Supper this Sunday at both services. We have a lot for which to be thankful!

I hope you don’t get tired of me saying things like this: You did an outstanding job giving to James Island Outreach. In 2018 James Island Baptist gave 1,885 pounds of food plus our financial donations. In 2019 the food donations increased to 5, 408 pounds of food plus the financial donations. By the end of 2020: JIBC will donate pretty close to 10,000 pounds of groceries to help bless the under-served in our community! That is 5 TONS of food! To God be the glory and to you we give thanks! What is not to love about this kind of Thanksgiving?

I love that we will put up our Christmas decorations for the Church this Sunday and the decorations for our home! I love Christmas decorations. I have already started listening to Christmas songs and we are well on our way to planning our Advent season. By the way, we are having the Christmas Eve services. We will have one at 4:00 PM and the other at 6:00 PM. *Please note that there will be limited seating. The Christmas Eve services will be a free, but ticketed event. There will be a small number of seats reserved for those who do not have the opportunity to get tickets and there will be a very special, and I mean very special, overflow service in the fellowship hall.

I love ThanksChristmas! Just about the only thing I do not like about this time of the year is that some may feel pressured to go into debt to buy gifts. Please do not! Live within your budget and be creative. I put on our tree every year some of the handmade Christmas ornaments we were given as gifts. Made with love and filled with memories! Let’s say it loud and often…CHRISTMAS IS NOT CANCELLED! We are celebrating ThanksChristmas!

See you Sunday, good Lord willing!

Pastor Tom

LEVERAGE YOUR INFLUENCE

I could not be more pleased with the JIBC response to donate food to James Island Outreach. As you can imagine, during this Covid-19 Pandemic, the needs of the underserved have greatly increased. James Island Outreach is one of our ministry partners. We donate to them financially, with food donations, with volunteers and with leadership. We love what God is doing through them.

James Island Outreach was trying to make sure their clients, everyone who wanted, could have enough groceries for a traditional Thanksgiving Meal. That is a great goal, right? Now, put that together with Pastor Scott’s BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal): he purchased 1000 re-usable grocery bags for us to fill! Wow. I love it. On the first go round, we filled 275 bags. If each bag holds 20 pounds of groceries, my calculations say that is around 5,500 pounds of groceries. That is only 500 pounds short of 3 TONS of groceries! I predict that this Sunday we will see enough groceries to go over the 3 TON mark! Are you kidding me? In the middle of a pandemic, little James Island Baptist Church family gave 3 TONS of groceries? Please hear our Lord saying to you: “I was hungry and you fed me”. James says that pure religion is caring for the widow and the orphan. Well done good and faithful servants, well done. I absolutely love that about our church family.

Now, could I be so bold as to go to the well one more time? I am asking that each of us consider how we might “leverage our influence” to involve others in joining this mission. What do I mean by leveraging your influence? God has placed each of us in different and unique settings where we work, play, live, recreate, etc. Would you ask God if there is a way for you to encourage those in your circle of influence to help collect groceries for the underserved? It is a win-win. Food is collected and more people are aware of the mission of James Island Outreach.

Here are a few examples of using your influence. One family took advantage of a neighborhood chili cook-off to put the JIO Grocery bags out for families to take. Another used their Neighborhood Community System to invite neighbors to stop by and pick up grocery bags. We reached out to a sister church to invite them to join the effort and they gladly accepted. A school teacher found a creative way to challenge students to join in the effort: bring a jar of jelly for extra credit! Maybe your office, your employees, your team would take on the challenge of filling 1 bag, 10 bags or…100 bags!

For sure, if we did not collect one more grocery item, we would still have a major success story! To God be the glory. Well done my friends, well done!

Pastor Tom

“Once in a Blue Moon”

Many of us were able to enjoy the beauty of the full moon on October 31. What a rare event: a full moon on Halloween and a “blue moon” on top of that! A blue moon, that is two full moons in the same month, happens once every 2.7 years or so. So, something happens once in a blue moon carries the meaning that it does not happen very often. I want to officially make that request about Covid 19. I have had my run in with Covid 19 and I hope it was a once in a blue moon kind of event!

Janie and I both thought we had a normal Charleston allergy reaction. When I put the Vicks Vapor Rub under my nose and could not smell it, I knew I had a problem. We tested the very next day. Janie and I tested positive for Covid 19/Corona Virus on Wednesday, October 21st. Symptoms may have started a 4 or 5 days earlier. We may have an idea of where we caught this virus, but we cannot know for sure. Our prayer was that we did not bless anyone else with it! We are thankful to have had relatively mild symptoms. We were interviewed by DHEC and sent a letter telling us how long we were to isolate and when we could rejoin the general population! Our quarantine was up on the 29th and we were able to attend our grandson’s football game on the 30th. We still wore our masks, practiced social distancing, sat in designated seats and talked to no one except our daughter and grandson.

Janie and I opted not to attend worship this past Sunday only because of the comfort level of others. Even though we were beyond the days required for quarantine, I felt others might be comforted if we waited another week. Good Lord willing I am planning to teach this Sunday at both worship services! We will finish up going through the Book of Malachi.

I will be in the office keeping limited hours this week just to make sure I am resting and recovering. I am hoping to be back at full throttle next week. I am so thankful for your prayers and love. Much appreciated. If you know of someone in the church family who has Covid 19, please let me know. I would like to reach out to them.

By the way: outstanding job on providing 250 bags of groceries to help the underserved. Janie and I came by Saturday night to drop off 20 bags that one of our friends provided! That is just one of the many, many things I love about our church family!

See you Sunday, good Lord willing,

Pastor Tom

GO BIG OR GO HOME!

That is the bravado of some sports teams and athletes. They are going all in, going for the prize, holding nothing back, looking for the win. GO BIG OR GO HOME! The Atlanta Braves had an outstanding year and certainly could live up to that slogan. They played an outstanding covid season and gave their fans a great season. They played big all year and ended their season in a spectacular 7 game series. 

What would you think of a church family adopting that same slogan “GO BIG OR GO HOME”? I feel like that is the exciting challenge we have with collecting food for the James Island Outreach. We are going after the largest food donation in our history to meet the largest need in the Outreach’s ministry. Pastor Scott went BIG, really BIG. He ordered 1000 bags for us to fill. That is right, 1000! If each bag holds 20 pounds of groceries that comes out to 20,000 pounds of food to help the underserved. TEN TONS of love! That fits the goal of GO BIG OR GO HOME and then some.

In the past we have done an outstanding job when we would collect over 1 ton of jelly from our JIBC family. Really, think about that. We have on several occasions, for several years, collected over 1 ton of jelly and other food items. That is fantastic. In addition JIBC always gives an offering to James Island Outreach and has volunteers that serve. Now this challenge and opportunity may be the biggest I have ever seen. How will we do it?

Two families used their Neighborhood Association to announce the project and invited neighbors to come get the bags and then return them with food. One person took them to her work and explained the project. Co-workers bought in and took 10 bags. Pastor Scott’s neighborhood was having a chili cook off so he set up a tent to pass out bags. With this kind of creativity, I believe there is a real shot at a record breaking grocery offering to meet a record breaking need!

It reminds me of the miracle when Jesus multiplied the fish and the loaves. I am praying that the result will be the same, that this Thanksgiving everyone will have enough to eat and there will be groceries left over to bless others.

I love a challenge, so Janie and I, because we are so blessed, will take ten bags and commit to filling them. The goal of 1000 bags of groceries sounds like an impossible goal…for us. It is not impossible for the Worker of Miracles. W still have several weeks to get the bags out and the groceries in!

See you Sunday with the bags around the stage!

Pastor Tom

WIN.WIN.WIN.

You may be familiar with the idea of a “Win-Win” situation. The basic idea is to find a way forward in a negotiation where you win and the person you are dialing with wins. It is not to be seen as a way to compromise and both sides lose a little. It is a way to work on a solution resulting in both sides winning.

With that in mind let’s add another win. I like to aim for a Win-Win-Win result. That means you win now, I win now and we both win later. It is a beautiful thing if that can happen. Pastor Scott introduced our church family to a mission opportunity that is a Kingdom Win-Win-Win. James Island Baptist Church is partnering to help James Island Outreach meet the largest demand they have ever had in feeding the under-served in our community. So here is the first win: we have a partnership with James Island Outreach that helps provide food and other services for the most vulnerable part of our community. They are currently providing more groceries than ever before in their mission. That is a WIN in my book. The second win is the incredible generous hearts of our church family. We have been known as the jelly church. James Island Outreach assigned us with the task of supplying them with jelly. I think in 2020 we gave 4,000 pounds of jelly and other groceries. That is literally two tons of food! WIN! Now, here is the third win. We are providing 1,000 bags to be filled with groceries by November 1. The goal and idea is that you and I will take these bags to our neighbors and invite them to join in the effort to make the largest offering ever to meet the largest need ever. If we are successful in involving our neighbors, not just our own church members, than that will make it a WIN-WIN-WIN for the Kingdom of God. Instead of just our 100 church families we could possible involve over 1,000 families from our community. Many will have heard of James Island Outreach for the very first time. Some may become regular contributors to James Island Outreach or may even be moved to volunteer.

So, if we, by God’s grace and blessings, could fill all 1,000 bags, and each bag holds 25 pounds of groceries, that would be 25,000 pounds of groceries! Is it possible that James Island Baptist, in the middle of a pandemic, with about half of our regular attendance, could, by God’s grace, collect 10 ½ tons of groceries? ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE WITH GOD. It would indeed be a WIN-WIN-WIN for those in need, for the Kingdom of God and for James Island Outreach. You could be part of a record breaking effort to answer Jesus’ call: I was hungry and you fed me. Janie and I took 10 bags for our neighborhood. Amen and Hallelujah!

Pastor Tom

 

THANK YOU

Thank you! Janie and I thank you all for the love and support. We are still enjoying the cards and letters from our church family and friends celebrating my 65th birthday and our 35th year of ministry. Janie bought me an awesome shirt that said “VINTAGE 1955: MOSTLY ORIGINAL PARTS.” She did not know how accurate that would be! We thank you for your prayers for my recent surgery to remove my gall bladder. The warranty had expired and so it had to go. Your prayers and love were greatly appreciated. I had the easy part of being the patient. She had the harder part of being patient! We both deeply appreciated your prayers and love.

I also want to thank our Lord for your amazing generosity. Even during the Covid 19 Pandemic, you continue to give generously. I am just back to work this week, so I have not seen the latest update. But the “Gift Match” was met with love and grace. It might not bring us up to even with our budget needs, but it certainly gave us opportunity to do more missions. We were able to send a $2000 gift to Charles and Judy Dillon to help feed the people in Sulphur, Louisiana. Because they are not a big name town, they were not on the radar to get help. That is exactly who Charles and Judy are drawn to. We will get pictures and updates soon. By the way, anyone interested in a hands on mission trip? Perhaps your Connection Group, Family, group of friends would be interested in a short term trip? Charles can set you up with a place to stay and they could use all kinds of help.

Your generous giving also made it possible to help James Island Outreach in their greatest time of need. We were blessed to have the Executive Director, Scott Graule join us for worship this past Sunday. He played the drums for us and gave us an update on the Outreach Mission.

Talk about a gift that keeps on giving: this gift also made it possible for us to replace an aging computer used every week in our worship services. I could really keep going on and on. It is my desire to give God glory, thank Him for His grace and mercy and to thank our church family and friends for their generous giving. You reflect His glory.

I look forward to seeing you this Sunday as we continue the verse by verse study of Malachi, the last book of the Old Testament. It is a great message on how to re-connect with God! Invite a friend and join us.

Pastor Tom