ONE LAST ADVENT HURRAH!

We have had a wonderful Advent Season. I loved the title we chose for this year: Best Day Ever! I think we have succeeded in providing a constant, loving reminder of the “reason for the season”. Our worship team and technical team have done an outstanding job of leading us in worshipping our Father and our Lord, Jesus Christ. Our church family and friends have responded with great generosity in making sure we can connect Advent worship with Advent missions. I do not have any easy way to count the jars of jelly, the boxes of diapers and wipes or the ever so cute outfits for the preschoolers. Thank you, Lord Jesus and thank you ,JIBC family and friends for your amazing love and generous giving. My best guess estimate: Over 200 jars of jelly and 100 bottles of syrup for James Island Outreach; 150 outfits for the preschoolers helped by Lowcountry Orphan Relief; maybe over 5000 diapers for Lowcountry Pregnancy Center. Now, let’s add, so far, $19,476 to the Lottie Moon International Missions offering! This may be the largest Lottie Moon Offering ever in the history of JIBC. By the way, we also sent $4000 to our mission partners in Campulung, Romania. They are starting a mission church to the Roma, sometimes referred to as Gypsies. I requested a list of mission projects they were trying to accomplish. Cheryl Parish did the contact work for us. They sent us a list of 4 projects they were attempting: House shoes for 326 orphans; wood for the winter for the mission; linoleum in the church hall of the mission; 20 more second hand chairs. JIBC has been so blessed, we asked if we could meet all these needs. We will show a brief 3 minute film from the Romanian Pastor and our own, Cheryl Parish.

We are still receiving diapers, jelly, syrup, 5T and 5 yr old clothes and offerings for International Missions. To God be the glory.

CHRISTMAS EVE SERVICES

Please note this change. For this Sunday, Christmas Eve, we will combine our 9:00 and 11:00 worship services and meet at 10:00. Janie and I are hosting a drop in at 9:00 AM in the fellowship hall. Come on by and say hello…or Merry Christmas. We changed the morning services to give a break to our leaders since we will all be back for our traditional Carols, Communion and Candlelight Services at 4:00 and 6:00.

Merry Christmas One and all! We love doing life with our JIBC family.

See you Sunday, good Lord willing.

Pastor Tom

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways!

I know Elizabeth Barrett Browning was not talking about Christmas. She is talking about the deep spiritual aspects of love. I want to borrow her words and talk about James Island Baptist and Christmas. Oh, how I love JIBC and the Christmas season.

I love that Christmas brings out lots and lots of generous giving. I get requests everyday in the mail. Some are ministries and organizations that Janie and I support. We make giving to them a part of our celebration of our Saviors birth. Since I can’t give Him gold, frankincense or myrrh, I can give financially to people in need and ministries that bless. I love the lights of Christmas that remind me Jesus is the Light of the world. I love Christmas music. From here until Christmas I will try to incorporate Christmas hymns into my daily Quiet Time. I enjoy easy listening Christmas jazz. I love sending a receiving Christmas cards. Many of them are beautiful pieces of art. Janie and I save any cards we might receive. Starting January 1 we start going through the cards and praying for whoever sent them. I pray for them one day and then place them where Janie has her Quiet Time. Then she prays for them. Then we save them for Mark Livengood and his ministry in Ukraine or Slovakia.

Have you seen the stage in the Worship Center? It exploded with love and generosity. More that we could have imagined or asked for. And we still have three more weeks to receive gifts of diapers, wipes, 5T and 5 clothes, jelly and syrup and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering.

Hey, by the way, when we were collecting these gifts, we had a group collecting items for prisoners in South Carolina. Fantastic! Oh, James Island Baptist, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. It would be almost impossible to count the ways because so many are doing so many wonderful things. Bless you for staying outward focused. Your generous giving will result in praise and thanksgiving to God.

Dear Father, you gave the best and most awesome gift, Your Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ.

See you Sunday, good Lord willing.

Pastor Tom

WORSHIP X 4

This past weekend, I was blessed with “worship x 4”. I had four very unique and very moving worship experiences. The first one came from what some may think of as a very unusual time. Saturday, we had a Life Celebration/ Funeral Service for Breanna Simmons. I had the privilege of marrying Breanna and Al Simmons almost 10 years ago. Bre developed breast cancer. She fought for the better part of 3 years with a positive attitude and strong courage. Our worship leader, praise team and tech crew put together a beautiful Life Celebration Worship service. I felt as though God would have been pleased and honored as we sought to give Him glory and ask for His mercy and strength. Bre’s life celebration service was attended by around 150 to 200 people. Only handfuls were from JIBC. That means a lot of people were blessed by our effort to show them a good and beautiful Father and to present the Good News of the Gospel.

The second and third worship times happened on Sunday morning as we gathered together with our church family. Our 9:00 service was attended by 94 people. It was a great way to begin this year’s advent season. We sang a favorite Christmas Hymn “O Come O Come Emmanuel”. One hour later, 127 of us gathered at 11:00 to celebrate the Hope we have in the advent/coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. I so love this time of the year as we celebrate “Best Day Ever!” The Advent Mission Gifts are beginning to fill the worship center stage. It looks beautiful.

The fourth time of worship was during Celebrate Recovery. Pastor David and his team lead the CR group in “celebrating” our recovery. The songs are always heartfelt. By the way, did you know that half of the people who attend Celebrate Recovery are there for reasons like co-dependency, control issues, relationship issues, PTSD, depression or other mental health challenges? I so love singing with others who are on journey toward recovery.

I felt I was particularly blessed with WORSHIP X 4. Worship makes the most wonderful time of the year even a little more wonderful.

Remember when you are out shopping to pick up one or two of the items we are collection this year: diapers, wipes, jelly or syrup and any clothes item for size 5 and 5T. We also encourage you to consider a gift to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. Thank you for the outpouring of love to our Father and to those who are under served.

See you soon, good Lord willing,

Pastor Tom

2024 Mission and Ministry Budget

Let’s start with blessings: God is good; His people at James Island Baptist are generous; our church has no debt; we are fully staffed with gifted and talented leaders; the Word of God is taught; outward focus to the community and world is a priority; and to God be the glory. In addition to the mission support in our budget, in 2023 you have given an additional $92,000 to local and global mission causes. That is above our budgeted mission and ministry line items. Really, that is not nearly all that you do, but it is enough to get us started shouting AMEN! Take a moment and think what you would add to this blessing list. Thank you for your generous giving and your generous living.

Each year our Budget and Finance Team gathers budget requests from all of our ministry and mission teams. Along with the staff, they review these requests with prayerful and expectant hearts. I cannot remember a mission request ever being turned down. There were many times when our team found a better way to provide and fund a mission or ministry request. Your Budget and Finance Team works with the belief that if God is leading us to a mission or ministry, HE will provide the means. That has been a blessed combination.

Copies of the 2024 Mission and Ministry Budget are available at all the entrance doors to the Worship Center. The names of the Budget and Finance Team are included in the brochure. Please feel free to ask them any questions you might have about the budgeting process. The Church Family will vote on the Church Budget on Sunday, December 31.

This Budget represents our church family’s efforts to carry out the purposes of God: to bring people into God’s family; build them up to be more like Jesus; involve them in ministries to the church and community; to lead them to be outward focused in their life, the life of their family, their Connection Group and Church; and to worship Him with how we live our lives and as we gather weekly.

To God by the glory,

Pastor Tom

THE BEST DAY EVER

This year’s Advent theme is going to be “The Best Day Ever”. It would be hard to argue with the concept…the day Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, up to that point that was the best day ever! Maybe we could say the resurrection was the best day ever…but certainly before the resurrection, the birth of God’s Son would be considered “The Best Day Ever”.

A reminder about why we celebrate Advent. The word “advent” comes from the Latin word meaning “coming”. Advent refers to the four Sundays before Christmas. It is the period of preparation for the celebration of the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It also refers to His second coming. We decided a while back to celebrate advent as a part of our church calendar for a few reasons. One, we wanted to provide help to those looking to break free of the incredible pull toward a secular and commercialization of Christmas. It was a Christian Holiday/Holy day long before it was a secular or commercial holiday. Second, we wanted to build a worship theme around “The Best Day Ever”, the birth of our Savior, Jesus. The theme of Advent changes from year to year. The purpose stated in the song says it well: Oh Come Let Us Adore Him. So we seek to Honor God, exalt our Lord Jesus and to lead our Church family to never forget the true meaning of Christmas.

Third, we have married Advent to Missions. Let’s remember those who are underserved or in need. We have 4 mission partners that we join hands to support. We love our friends at Lowcountry Orphan Relief. True religion, as James says includes loving the orphans. They are in desperate need of size 5t and 5 children’s clothes. Any type: shirts, pants, pajama’s, etc. We also love our partners at Lowcountry Pregnancy Center. We help provide new moms who chose life with diapers and wipes. All you have to do is look at the price of diapers and you will know what blessing that will be! We also use the Advent season as a time to show some love to James Island Outreach. We are the “jelly” church. We were asked years ago to make sure they always have jelly. You do such a great job; they have asked if we could add pancake syrup to the list! Of course we can. Last, but not least, we support our International Mission partners at the International Mission Board. We will receive offerings for the next six weeks to help support over 3,500 full time missionaries serving around the world. This is usually my first gift I give during the Advent season. I am honored to be able to give.

So, why Advent? How about worship, focus on the meaning of Christmas, building generosity, and a full all out effort to support our mission partners. Thank you for being so generous. The stage will begin to be transformed with gifts of love starting this Sunday!

Pastor Tom

WOW AND DOUBLE WOW!

We knew the Taste of James Island Baptist event would be good. We didn’t know it would be that good, over the top good, borderline on great! Our thanks to everyone who worked so hard to make this such a wonderful event. We will have a very brief video of the event this Sunday as a part of our Thanksgiving Celebration. And…we will present the gifts to the three whose names were drawn. You may remember we were giving away a $200 Halls Chophouse certificate, two Yeti Lunch Boxes and a night out with Kyle and Melissa at the Charleston Crab House! Well done JIBC, very well done!

DON’T LOOK NOW, BUT ADVENT IS COMING

I know, I know, it is hard to believe that Christmas is less that 6 weeks away. We celebrate the Advent, the coming, of Christ. The Christ-birth stories are among my favorite in the Bible. We are already beginning to plan for this year’s Advent theme: “Best Day Ever”.

JIBC does something a little different for our Advent Celebration. We join together the worship of Jesus focusing on his first coming/advent and our commitment to missions. For the four weeks of Advent, we ask our church family and friends to consider giving gifts that support our Mission and Ministry Partners here and around the world. Here are the four gifts ahead of time. Let us know if you find really good deals anywhere. We will pass it along. Here is the list, in no particular order. You can buy any of these and bring them any week of Advent. We are not collecting items for a particular Sunday. You may bring them and set them on the stage. Our Elves will display them in a beautiful order.

There are FOUR ADVENT GIFTS we would like you to consider as a part of your Christmas giving list. FIRST, we will, of course, be bringing jelly and pancake syrup for our local mission partner, James Island Outreach. SECOND, you know those little babies at Lowcountry Pregnancy need diapers and wipes; any size, any kind. THIRD, we were told by Lowcountry Orphan Relief that they desperately needed children’s clothes size 5T or regular size 5. LAST, but not least, we will be receiving an offering to support International Missions through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering. One hundred percent of this offering goes to support 3,521 full time International missionaries. For as long as I can remember, the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering is our first gift that Janie and I give every year.

DON’T SKIP THANKSGIVING

I love me some Christmas season but I never want to forget about Thanksgiving. This Sunday, we begin a two part series on Thanksgiving. We will celebrate with the Lord’s Supper at the 9:00 and the 11:00 services.

See you Sunday, good Lord willing!

Pastor Tom

GOOD TIMES, GOOD FOOD AND GOOD FRIENDS!

This Sunday, November 12, is the Sunday of our Taste of James Island Baptist. I read a couple of quotes I really liked: Dinner is better when we eat together; the secret ingredient is always love; everything has been seasoned with love; good food and good friends make the perfect combination!

All of these are exactly what I have been thinking about The Taste of James Island. We are so excited thinking about this fun fellowship time.

So, if all things work together for our good, here is what we are anticipating. Ron Corry and his set up team will be at JIBC at 8:00 Sunday morning. Set up time will be from 8:00 until 9:45. Connection Groups will begin at 10:00. Then our combined worship services will be at 11:00. (We will not have a 9:00 service this Sunday. We will start back with the 9:00 service the following Sunday, November 19.) During this Sunday’s Worship, we will have an early dismissal time for all those who need to go outside to put the final touches on their booth.

Ron Corry’s set up team will be putting up tables and chairs and will be available to assist anyone who needs them. JIBC will provide tables, some chairs, paper products (bowls and utensils), drinks and ice. The different Connection Groups and Ministry Teams will provide the food seasoned with love. BY THE WAY…there is not a way to run electricity out to your tent. Some will use chafing dishes to keep food hot and ice chest to keep food cold. We have plenty of ice. Think “tail gating”. Decorate, be creative, let’s have some fun.

Let me go out on a limb here. My hope for this festive and fun event is to introduce our church family and friends to our different Connection Groups and Ministry Teams. I would love for us to have 200 people visiting every booth, tasting wonderful food and meeting wonderful people. Every booth will be sprinkled and seasoned with love. Good times, good food and good friends…let’s make it happen.

See you Sunday, good Lord willing,

Pastor Tom