Friends of Faith Baptist of North Chili,
This Saturday, Oct. 6, we will be hosting a Balanced Evangelism Seminar with Pete Mothershead. Please pray with us for God’s blessing as we endeavor to equip believers to do the work of ministry!
Category: Faith-Friends
September 27 – FaithFriends
Friends of Faith Baptist of North Chili,
David Jeremiah writes in his Today’s Turning Point devotional thought this past Tuesday, “Many people mistake thanking the Lord for praising Him. Oftentimes we rattle off a list of things we are thankful for and move right to our requests, believing we have spent time giving glory to God. But there is a clear distinction between thankfulness and praise.” He then observes, “The primary difference is that when we give thanks, our focus is on what God has done for us, whereas during praise, the focus is solely on Him.” Then he closes with this quote: “When I give thanks, my thoughts still circle about myself to some extent. But in praise my soul ascends to self-forgetting adoration, seeing and praising only the majesty and power of God, His grace and redemption.”
This is a good thing to remember in our self-absorbed, narcissistic society. Have you praised the Lord today?
In a little over a week (on Saturday, Oct. 6) we will be hosting a Balanced Evangelism Seminar with Pete Mothershead. Please pray with us for God’s blessing as we equip believers to do the work of ministry!
September 20 – FaithFriends
Friends of Faith Baptist of North Chili,
I trust this letter finds you well and growing in your walk with the Lord. As you will see from the information below, we are starting a series on Prayer in our evening services. At this moment it is a bit open-ended. I haven’t finalized the complete list of texts and/or topics I will address. So, if you have some specific questions about prayer, I invite you to send them to me. Perhaps the Lord will lead us to use that question and a Biblical answer to encourage your friends at Faith Baptist of North Chili.
Thank you for your interest and prayer as we serve the Lord together here.
September 13 – FaithFriends
Friends of Faith Baptist of North Chili,
It sure feels (and looks) like Fall is here. It was 47 degrees this morning and some leaves are turning (I love it)! We started up our Olympian and Teen clubs last night. There were 19 children who came to Olympians and we’d only set fifteen as our goal. So, we’re off to a great start, praise the Lord!
Would you pray with me as we anticipate two events this October. We desire God’s blessing in and on both of them:
October 6 (Sat.) – we will host a Balanced Evangelism seminar with Pete Mothershead. The basic seminar will run from 9am to 1pm – it will help us discern our gifts for witnessing and help us progress from a method of evangelism to a natural way of sharing our faith. There is an advanced seminar from 1pm to 3pm for those who are ready to get more involved in personal evangelism. We invited sister churches and trust it will be an encouragement to this part of New York state.
October 27 – 30, our Fall Bible Conference with Pastor T.W. Teall of Canton, Ohio. The theme for the conference is: “Our Holy God and His Healthy Church.” We will begin on Saturday night with a carry-in dinner and message, then on Sunday Pastor Teall will minister during the SS hour as well as both Morning and Evening. We will also have services on Monday and Tuesday nights.
September 6 – FaithFriends
Friends of Faith Baptist of North Chili,
This Saturday (the 8th) is our Annual Sunday School Picnic. We will be gathering at the Parma Town Park – you can check out pictures and directions at the following web site: http://www.parmany.org/Parks/index.html
We will be there from 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm and eat around 4-ish. The weather prediction looks decent (as much as we trust those predictions), but no matter what comes, we have a pavilion reserved (Burritt Pavilion) and we will enjoy the fellowship of likeminded saints as we visit and eat together. The church is supplying hot dogs, hamburgers, condiments, and soft drinks. People will bring the salads and desserts to share and we will all be well fed. Let me know if you can come (and haven’t already signed up) we’ll look for you there.
August 30 – FaithFriends
Friends of Faith Baptist of North Chili,
Hello there, did you miss these letters? We enjoyed our two weeks of vacation and are now back “in the saddle” with our “shoulder to the wheel” and our “nose to the grindstone.” What are we doing? Obviously… apparently out metaphors!
Actually, it’s great to be once again fully engaged in the work of ministry – handling the Word of God and preparing to teach and preach the precious truths of God to hungry souls. Bless the Lord for the privilege of serving Him!
August 9 – FaithFriends
Friends of Faith Baptist of North Chili,
I will be taking some vacation from August 13 to 27. So, maybe some of you will send me some jokes.
But that does mean there won’t be any FaithFriends for a couple of weeks. While I’m away from the pulpit we will have ABWE Missionaries Alan & Katherine Niles (in prefield ministry going to Togo, Africa) on Sunday, August 19th. Then the next Sunday, August 26th, we will have two of our own men speaking: Jim Todd will preach the morning message and Dan Noyes the evening message.
August 2 – FaithFriends
Friends of Faith Baptist of North Chili,
Last night it was 86 degrees (inside the auditorium) and it felt like a sauna. I was expecting 10 or 12 to show up for Prayer Meeting. I decided that we would set up chairs in the shade under the trees in the back yard of the parsonage. We set up twenty chairs and then people started coming, and just kept coming. About 50 showed up for our Bible Study and Prayer Meeting! Wow! God is great. We had a delightful time in the Word – from Genesis 12:10-20. We saw Abraham whose faith we have come to respect and admire, showing his feet of clay as he runs from a famine, though God hadn’t told him to go, straight to Egypt and greater problems there. It’s easy to see how God was testing his faith and where he failed. The point isn’t to disparage him and feel superior, but to see how easily and quickly our own faith falters. When trying circumstances and/or people enter our lives – TRUST THE LORD! He is faithful!
July 26 – FaithFriends
Friends of Faith Baptist of North Chili,
This week I put a quote (unknown source) on our church sign: “Knowing the Bible is one thing – knowing the Author is another!” Just a reminder that we don’t come together to fill our minds with knowledge, since “knowledge puffs up” and we aren’t going for arrogant, we’re going for authentic. I trust that you are experiencing a spiritual hunger that is driving you this summer to strengthen your relationship with the Author, God Himself!
July 19 – FaithFriends
Friends of Faith Baptist of North Chili,
We have been having a great Vacation Bible School this week – 47 children the first day up to a high (so far) of 56 on Wednesday. Today was our penny day and the children brought in large quantities of pennies which will be used for Shepherd’s Ministry in Wisconsin. The weather has been great – cooler than normal and (so far) no rain during the VBS hours. This morning the weather prediction was for rain and thunderstorms. I watched the weather map on-line and saw the precipitation headed straight for us…. And then, it all broke up and passed by to the south. The Lord is gracious.
Our theme verse is Psalm 147:5, “Great is the Lord, and of great power.” We have explained how God exhibits His power so that we will know we can trust Him. We talked about the difference between what God CAN do (as shown by parting the Red Sea, feeding Elijah in a famine, keeping from harm three Hebrew boys in a fiery furnace, and calming the storm on the sea of Galilee) and what God WILL do (as He explicitly promises – like healing the brokenhearted, lifting up the humble, and taking pleasure in those who fear Him). We are glad for an opportunity to proclaim the true God with an attentive audience of young listeners. Pray that the seed sown will bear fruit!