← ArchiveSunday, January 12, 2014 (evening)DateJanuary 12, 2014Speaker—Text—TranscriptClick any line to jump there.0:00and hopes that what we'd be able to do is take care of some of the needs some of the more crucial needs that we see taking place in our church family taking place in our community taking place in our world so when we say we're going to do something i assure you the there's an underlying0:25reason for that that uh that we'll talk about as as we go first of all everything we're going to do is going to be based on what we feel like is a very important slogan saying however you want to do it but it it has a lot of meaning behind it that's christ-centered family focus as we said as a staff and looked around and and thought about what would best be best for us as a people to help us focus0:51what we're why we're doing what we're doing it needs to be christ-centered and for for something to be christ-centered to me what does that mean it means it has to be biblically based if it's going to be christ-centered that means jesus christ has to be the central focus of everything that we do well when you focus on other people you are focusing on jesus christ because jesus christ was about people he was1:16about reaching out to people he was about encouraging people he was about discipling people he was about saving people and so in 2014 that's what we want well where did we see a great crisis and and i guess we could say this for the last 25 or 30 years maybe longer than that but one of the greatest crisis that seems to to raise its ugly head is family crisis and you know we see families falling apart all the time1:41and uh you know maybe as a minister and talking to other preachers we hear about it see it more often than none and because we have a a counseling ministry we even see it more and there's probably nobody in this room that hasn't known somebody this past year that hasn't gone through some sort of a crisis in their home maybe it's a rebellious child uh maybe it's a husband that's just decided that he wants to2:07to live somewhere else to do something else with his life and so he's left his family maybe it's a wife that's decided she wants to live someone somewhere else and live with someone else and so she's left her husband and her children and that's a that's a family crisis so we said let's be christ-centered and family focused so everything that we want to do in 2014 we're going to focus on those2:31two areas now while you may say that's a hard to to really grasp no the family is going to to be ministered to and won by the christ-centeredness of what we're going to do because we believe that if christ can be the center of any situation we've got a winning victorious opportunity there and so2:54on a given sunday what's it going to look like at Bethel Baptist church very little of that it's going to change if anything uh we we how many of you saw the commercial it's pretty interesting we're doing somebody said when did that guy join the church thank god he's not a member they yeah he just does what we tell him to do and uh we want to what we want to do why why are we doing that what we want3:21to try to do and i want you to hear us here is you know one of the hardest things i struggle with on a sunday morning is having an opening prayer reading a reading scripture having an opening prayer and having a worshipful attitude and then have everybody remain standing till everybody goes down and give uh announcements and uh then everybody uh the the problem with that is is that we don't ever give everybody's announcements somebody's announcement we leave off and so somebody will come to us and3:51say hey you left this announcement off or would you please make this announcement and it just it clutters up a worship experience and so we want to try to get people reading bulletins more listening stop by listening to the tv the video so that we can have time in here doing what we want to and that's business being christ-centered in what we're doing is our worship time christ-centered in our preaching time christ-centered in everything we do in here for that hour and a half that we're here some of you may say4:19hour and 45 minutes brother chris um uh and uh make sure that that we are focusing on everybody that comes through these doors we didn't realize it i didn't realize this but it's been a little over a year year and a half ago there was a census uh study not taken it came from our census study but one of the the number one part are the largest percentage of our population4:47is single families and so if we want to look at people in need we just need to look out there and look among us as we have single families that are right here with us and how we can best minister to those single families or how we can also take the families that we have here that are not single families and help strengthen them so that they don't become single families5:15and uh so that's that's that's what we're gonna do so we got sunday morning we'll have a worship experience hopefully we're going to be uh we're going to see god do some great things we're going to have biblical music biblical preaching biblical praying we're going to be christ-centered everything we do except for the announcement i have yet to figure out how to do christ-centered announcements but uh you will you will encourage you there will be some things it's been said in the past you know if the preacher is not behind it and he don't talk about it it doesn't uh it doesn't get done and uh but5:44we're going to hope that with every opportunity that we got who knows when the next major event of bethel baptist church is coming up raise your hand when is it nope nope this weekend what's this weekend winter retreat for the youth exactly thank you so we got winter retreat how many of y'all knew that all right but we really didn't some of us really didn't know that6:11what's the next major event of our church men's weekend gosh you know them all shut up uh your dad said we're so proud he said he knows it all anyway um that's right we got men's weekend where's it at okay how much it cost that's right ladies you want to send your husband to this we've been doing this for several years crawford lorentz is going to be the speaker it's going to be great6:40what's the next major event got a bluegrass gospel quartet coming that night immediately following there for for those that they want to enjoy a fish fry and a bluegrass gospel quartet so we've got a lot of things that are that are going on but do you realize there's one event that happens here every Saturday that everybody's left out upward basketball do you know how many young people are signed up in our upper basketball ministry7:08213 how many churches will have 213 children in their church on any given saturday and a friday night who is that for who should be doing the ministry there we us you said but i don't have no kids there does it matter does it matter for the longest i didn't have any children or grandchildren and i would basketball but7:39i love to call the basketball games and they told me the hardest time they had to get people out was at eight o'clock so that's the game i called i called the eight o'clock five-year-old basketball game and i want to tell you that is the most fun month and a half that i have in a year on saturday mornings it is hilarious but we as a church need to know that these people are coming in our church do you8:04realize the percent there is probably 40 of them are not members of this church i know that some of you have been coming because your grandchildren your children are part of it but they know we never thought about what about a greeter ministry for upward basketball what about somebody standing at the door every time somebody walks in giving them information for8:33our church that we don't have to pay the mail out because here they are and they say well we already go to the gathering place or we already go to moody batteries that's okay we're so glad you're here anyway we just said that your church is too sorry to have such a wonderful ministry and you have to come enjoy ours no that's what i want to say but i don't say it but we can that's the kind of thing we want for 2014 christ-centered family focused upward basketball a ministry and a program an opportunity where we don't9:02only play basketball but young ladies uh cheer and we have uh a great opportunity to minister to to young men and young ladies in our community and help however we can teach them about jesus christ in the meantime because at halftime uh the last the first one i know was an informational one but i'm pretty sure that from now on every halftime we have a devotion and a gospel share9:28a devotion and a gospel shared and someone shares a devotion am i right about that yes so so guys that's what we're doing so back to a sunday morning i'm sorry i'm bouncing around i wasn't where my notes were so on sunday evening uh we're going to we do du why do we do du because there is a crisis in the church9:51and discipleship and that crisis happens because we just meet as a wad all the time and assume everybody hears everything we got to say everybody understands everything we're preaching and we all leave here believing everybody's growing at the same pace or rate and in reality that's not what's happening10:18because what is happening is we get a lot of people meeting for a lot of period time and some people are just here because it can be but when you start meeting in a disciple university where we have like i have the the information here uh behold your god who did behold your god this this time all right janine would you just take one second and give a quick did did this bless your life you and that's right it's overwhelming because of the the amount of knowledge it takes 12 weeks10:52actually 13 you'll have an introductory david newsbeckle is going to be doing it this time uh it is uh it is uh uh uh dvd driven that means that there's a speaker that comes on at the beginning of it and uh there'll be some testimonies that you'll hear from other uh great men of god that will be sharing concerning the subject matter for that week and then you have the that whole week seven days to do a five-day devotion and my wife said about how long is those devotions and i said gail11:19anybody ought to be able to do the average devotion in 15 minutes but if you really want to learn it you do it go ahead and answer the questions in there there are no wrong answers and then you come back and you study it again later or you take it a second time and let it begin soaking in behold your god is taking a biblical view of who god is it goes back to this thing that we all are concerned about and that is that church is becoming more like the world than the world is becoming like the church11:48and why is that and that's why we offer behold your god is because it takes us to an in-depth study of the character of god who he is what he's done what he's about doing and what he wants to do with our in our life the other one that we offer was the first one that i saw a year or so ago and was just blessed that david again david nusbeckle had knew knew about the truth project i wish i had a12:16workbook with me but we it has a workbook and uh the the truth project is another dvd driven with a teacher but each one of these have an opportunity at the end of them to have a time of question and answers if you want to and each one of them require an in-depth look of yourself into your soul and the truth project is more helping you develop a world view and understanding of who god is and12:44what god's about it's different from uh behold your god and uh it offers a totally different line of study but within it in a small group setting of of 15 20 50 people if we have them uh we could still learn and and it is and it is a study that will take probably taking it twice that's why we've offered these over and over again is because so many of the people have said i just didn't get everything i13:10wanted to get out of it can i come back and take it again so we're going to be offering again so we're going to be offering uh the truth project that'll be sunday evening this truth project and um behold your god will start 30 minutes early if i'm not mistaken they're at 5 30 is that right yes um they are here for the purpose of helping us grow in our spiritual walk with the lord jesus christ now13:35you'll also notice biblical counseling and training is is offered we're going to continue to offer that that's going to be an ongoing uh training because when we do training for when we do biblical counseling on tuesdays we like lay people to come in and help us out that have gone through the training and sit down with individuals and sit down with couples and listen to their hurts habits and hang-ups and then be able14:01to give them a biblical perspective of where we're coming from when we give them counseling because the world is not going to give them counseling the world will tell you right now that a crack at it has no hope a homosexual has no hope an adulterer has no hope a liar has no hope but i want to tell you something jesus christ and god's word provide us with the only hope of breaking those habits that can destroy lives and marriages i'm going to take uh well i got one more and then i'm going to take a break14:30and i'm gonna let brad uh share so i get my breath but uh financial peace university is also going to be offered we've offered this on multiple multiple times in the past greg price taught it uh several times we've had others to teach it uh we have some young couples who said hey we'd like to be strengthened we'd like to go through a class and and how to get out of debt and uh you know the14:55best class i know to help you get out of debt is you don't spend more than you got but uh dave ramsey does a much better job of explaining how you can do that and uh there's about uh there's a study book that goes along with that accountability that goes along with that as with every other du class that we'll be offering uh coming up just a quick look make sure i've got them we'll do building blocks for children first through fourth grade bible drills fifth through sixth grade um for students brad's got15:23family matters coming up that'll be at six o'clock and then uh the rest of them i shared with you brad by the way um family matters is something that goes along with our our theme for 2014 i'm putting together several different video driven uh type of uh messages um one of them is called teens versus15:47parents uh that we did several years ago and they've revamped that and we want to try our very best to teach our teenagers uh that parents are not your enemy um parents are not the enemy and guess what we can work together we can get you through this it's going to be okay um and so um just know that uh our youth ministry we we we want to become a more of a family family family youth ministry i think we're there but16:13i think we do much more uh to help and foster that and um and so that's just kind of one side note um one thing i want to talk about that a lot of people may not know about and i've been asking some people about a project jerusalem if they even know what that what that is um project jerusalem is something that i left my postcard down there it's something that we've been doing for some time now um basically what we decided to do thank you gail basically what we decided to do is we decided to16:40draw a radius around the church a six mile radius and within that six mile radius we're going to send everybody that moves into that six mile radius a postcard that's new to the area in other words if you're moving from hoover into that six mile radius you will get one of these it's a postcard and basically says brad i get one every month because apparently i move every month but anyway they send me one just to make sure that they know that we know that with it that's been it's been sent out17:10brad we're eager to meet with you basically it has a little bit of information about our church has the directions to our church has the address uh the info line has everything on there about our church um and also i get a list of those people their names their addresses and everything okay and basically on average is from 70 to 100 families every month that i get you may ask what do we do with17:35those i put together packets um basically the packets uh consist of the directions some information about them um and there's a little packet that goes along with it that people can carry to them um project jerusalem is now set up in a 200 and it's a permanent fixture it's there all the time um and so basically what we're doing is if you want to pick up a packet to go make a visit you can do that at any time18:04um anytime during our office hours or here if you want to pick up a packet for sunday pick up a packet and go and take it off and basically well all we want is the information to come back to us because there's some questions on there once you make that visit it basically asks for their age if they're going to another church if they're going to a church somewhere uh how can we how can we help you out with anything that they they may need and that information comes back to me once i get that information back18:30guess where it goes it goes to that age division as far as sunday school teachers go sunday school teacher gets it and hopefully that sunday school teacher will take that and make another follow-up with them um now is that happening i don't know there's the there's the big question i can kind of kind of help you with that answer not like we should um as a matter of fact um mike satterfield when he was here18:56uh this past march um he called me up probably about a week later and he goes brad it just hit me about something i really need to tell you this and chris i'm not even sure if i even shared this with you i probably should have um but it's something that we all know and it's kind of the elephant i feel like this in the room um he said follow-up follow-up i think is kind of a an area where you guys need to work on and can we all agree with that um and so how do we do that how do we get to that point to19:25where we're following up with our people um i can tell you that a lot of times cheryl and and our secretaries will take the first the cars that come into us and whenever it's marked first time visitor we get those either chris or myself for sharing we'll make the phone calls we'll call them up and says hey you know we really are glad you're here those actually go to a200 in project jerusalem hoping19:50that someone will come over there and pick them up and take them on a visit now they also go to your to the sunday school teachers packet so guess what every time a sunday school teacher opens the packet if there's a first time visitor that has visited our church that's in that age that age division it's there and that sunday school teacher should be picking that out and going hey who wants to make this visit now i'm not sure if that's happening on a regular basis but i'm just saying that i think20:17we can do a whole lot better job at following up on people um it's been said that if you follow up with people on a regular basis guess what if they're especially if they're not coming to a church then there's a huge chance that they'll come and i'm just gonna be honest with you our youth department is is can testify to that i know students is a little easier because it's easy to contact them and and it's easy for a student to contact another student because they're there at school20:43anyway um and so in other words if if i have someone to come into um our senior high ministry and they a senior visits our seniors then what's going to happen is hey somebody follow up with him and use that senior will go and contact that person or follow up with them and we try to get them to start coming on a regular basis um and so that can happen uh project jerusalem is there um it's all it's there all the time the information is always there we just need people to come and pick those21:11packets up and if you're in a sunday school class um ask your sunday school teacher for some help because i'm gonna be honest with you sunday school teachers they can't do it all by themselves they need help with that and um and if you're a sunday school teacher you haven't been doing that on a regular basis if you need somebody come go visiting with you and i'm available i know chris is available um there's people in your class that will be more than happy to probably go with you and make those visits um so that's just something we need to really work on one thing that we're going to do um hopefully in the spring is do some canvassing something i've been really praying about21:41something i've been thinking about and um but here's what i want to do i want to do it a little differently um in our missions meeting that we had um as a matter of fact one of our members had a really good idea um it's making maybe making it more intentional in other words asking people what they need as we canvass these these communities and i think that will kind of help us with where we go with with love serves and even not even operation change so as we walk through communities like avalon22:06and these these other areas as we canvass and knock on doors we'll be asking questions hey how can we help you how can we pray for you are you a member of a church somewhere and if you're not we'd love it we'd love to have you sunday um so that's that's another way we can kind of ramp up our outreach efforts uh at our church um sunday school sunday school is is something that um is always in the forefront one thing that we're going to do this coming year is we're going to create some new classes22:33some of the new classes are going to help foster families one thing that we're really wanting to work on is to create a class called first five okay first five basically is the first five years of marriage um i would be graduating from that class okay because jessica and i we went through our first five years of marriage and the reason why i picked the first five years because the first five was i'm gonna be honest with you it's hard um it can be very difficult um chris can contest to that he's been22:59in my office several times counseling with me just about some things that have gone on in our own life but first five is is specifically for those newlyweds for the first five years of marriage and then they graduate on to that next class singles as chris mentioned is a big deal as a matter of fact my wife jessica she teaches first grade and she will tell you that there's a lot and i was really surprised by this there's a lot of single men that are parents in our community that we need to find a way to reach23:28them find a way to touch them somehow and a lot of single moms too we need to find a way how can we administer them how can we touch them what kind of class do we need to develop to foster that relationship with them and to help them so those are just some things that you'll see coming up those are some things that we're working on to try to get um fostered and and um and help us out another thing that we're going to do is a church information class march 9th is our first class and the church information class23:57basically is is exactly what it is it's called next steps anyone that has visited our church hopefully within the in the past six months they'll get some information from us um that that what will happen is during the sunday school hour i will teach the first half and then also during there during the preaching time i will continue that before what we were doing was we're breaking it up into weeks and the first when we first started this thing it was 12 weeks long it didn't work we people wouldn't24:25come back they would they would they would they would skip some and and then we i i wrote it and we went down to six weeks still wouldn't get enough then i revamped it we went to four weeks i'm like you know what we're gonna just do this in one shot um and so i've got that thing down to basically two hours first hour sunday school second hour is the church time and then after that we'll have lunch with them the host staff will have lunch with all those people and just level on them for a little while24:52and just give them some information give them some some some things that they really need to know about our church because i'm really really honest with this people that are coming here they're look they're looking for reasons sometimes not to sometimes what's going on here what do these people believe are they a friendly church i want to meet the staff so that class will help us out with with those with answering those questions that's and that's going to happen four times a year each quarter um excuse me um as far as youth ministry stuff goes um everything's going really25:17really well i'm going to be meeting with our teachers um at seven o'clock um uh in the in the new senior room we're going to have uh some barbecue and everything there and i'm going to talk to them about some just some different things that we have that we're going to start doing in the in the in the youth ministry one thing that we're going to do just to kind of share with you guys we're going to really ramp up campus ministries um and one thing that i've realized is that is we have an open door in25:45our schools i don't know if you guys knew this or not but there are a lot there are times when i literally can walk into moody high school and they don't even buzz me in that does that make you feel safe they know me is what i'm trying to tell you um i will literally walk in look at the secretaries they'll say i say i'm having lunch and they'll go okay we'll write it down so they write me in and26:10everything and i go have lunch with students uh sunday on the morning times i'm usually there i'm at first priority at moody high school um thomas powers is our one of our one of our leaders there he leads that up and uh two two students as a matter of fact got saved um at first party in your in moody at moody high school okay um saints for christ goes on on thursdays also um st clare county has been generous enough to just let us in sometimes we did a school assembly for the first time this year at26:40moody junior high i'm planning on doing three different school assemblies one at leeds one at moody one at st clare county uh this year we're going to do four instead of one back to school bash we're doing four different big events this year to help get students here and let them know that we love them we love them and we want to see them come to christ um so there's gonna be a lot of things that we're ramping up more campus ministry type of stuff and um and really it's really interesting because our students they're the one kind of driving the driving the whole thing i'm just kind of27:09facilitating and so it's really really exciting to see that happen and i'm really really proud of our students so chris that's all i've got well we just uh thank you brad i appreciate that and you see that that everything that we're planning on and hoping envisioning to accomplish is going to take a lot of work it's going to take a lot of people it's going to take you it's going to take a lot of others that aren't here now to pull alongside of us and say hey i catch your vision i understand what you're doing i want to do it now we know what a sunday looks like but here are some of the things27:39you're going to see change some of the things that we want to ramp up let's just say we've been around we've looked we've talked and we've we feel like there needs to be some uh reinvigorating that's a good word isn't it but anyway greeting greeter ministry in our church we want to focus and have more people involved more women as well as men involved in greeting people before the sunday school hour and before uh the worship time because what happens so often is is that we have so few28:08people out there that when someone comes and and they're visiting our church for the first time and they want to know where the worship center is well that's easy you can just say we'll just make your left right here and you turn right down there but if you you try to tell somebody in a baptist church where sunday school class is you might as well say we don't want you would you please go away and come again some other day because you are going to have to escort those people to where they need to go28:36and if i'm out there at any time before i was before i started teaching a sunday school class i i was if i was out there and somebody said hey i'm i'm going to i'm looking for david hole sunday school class i said come follow me i know right where we're going and i would walk them to that class if they had children i'd take them to where the children were first and would make sure that they knew their children were cared for and would and i'd make sure with the teacher this is the person29:02that's going to pick them back up whatever this is where y'all need to meet after sunday school that takes place that brings such peace brad made mention of what we do with first-time visitors this has been several months ago that we had several of them kathy will send them to me and she'll highlight want to know more about the church want to know more about children's ministry want to know more about youth ministry want to know more about college ministry i got on the phone i made a couple of29:28phone calls i got a hold of a gentleman i talked to him for 45 minutes i said man we got to get a sunday school teacher a hold of you and at that point he wasn't ready for an adult teacher but was ready for a children's teacher or child uh for because his child nobody's been there yet it's been three months i hadn't seen him since we got to do better i called another family woman answered the phone she29:51says this your brother chris at bethel she said oh i feel so honored that you're giving me a call i said you feel like my wife don't you know um she said no but but i need you to call my husband i said yes ma'am i'll be glad to call your husband all i want to do is let you know i was glad you were here if you had any questions um i'll feel free to ask i'm i want no i need you to call my husband here's30:15his number she gave me his number i called and i've called him twice i've left a cell phone i've left a message on his cell phone both times but i did get word word from her saying thank you he got your message guys we've got that's all people are just wanting to be loved on they want somebody that cares about them and we can do that uh my wife was recently on one of her facebook uh journeys and uh30:42she read this to me and i thought it was pretty interesting i won't listen list any names but it was on facebook she's looking for a church that isn't based around small groups preferably non-denominational or baptists preferably baptists nobody prefers baptists anymore but but she did she was preferring31:02baptists she wanted to get in us what she told me was she just wanted to get a sunday school class and was there any sunday school classes because so many churches have gotten in small groups listen there are churches that got small groups that if you like to go camping they're going to talk about how to build a campfire well i i'm not there i think the church still ought to be the church31:28let's come to wednesday night wednesday night is an extremely busy time here at bethel well let me make sure i've covered that we're going to ramp up our get our greeter ministry we're going to be asking others we want you to pull alongside uh and and help out here i am glad that teresa McCullough is going to use some of her insight and she and uh steward have had travels and other churches that have had very positive and and solid uh gritter ministries and uh she's agreed to work with us on31:57that and and help us get that off the ground and envisioning what i believe uh needs to be is that we can have a foyer full of loving caring people that'll make a difference in people's lives when they come in the church what i have found out in the last 10 years is where we thought that people were looking at parking lots and rose bushes and making sure that your walls were clean are not nearly as important as how they are treated when they walk through the doors uh because that is important to them so we're gonna that that's one of the things that'll change32:30uh a little bit not a lot but i mean a lot but uh it's going to take some time uh what brad said i just want to make sure you realize brad is not going to ever sunday not be in church and take all of our graders and go somewhere we're going to do this about what four times a year or as needed for your new members class perspective it's four times a year and uh so that means four times a year that's going to happen that's going to take place things that we're going to keep going as our men's night out32:56february the 11th uh we move it from tuesday to thursday i was asked today why are you sure that's the right day we usually do it on thursdays well there are some guys that can't get here on thursdays that can get here on tuesdays and some guys can get here anytime you got a steak uh but uh we're going to swap it around a little bit we're still going to offer the same quality uh event every men's night out and that is a special speaker that will speak to the hearts and lives of men and where we are and33:23where we need to be spoken to so that we're challenged to become the godly men that god has called us to be that's a very important matter and i hope as men that you've been a part of our men's night out and that you plan on continuing to be a part of our men's night out so that you can uh be discipled develop friendships relationships with other men that uh may be going through the same concerns that you are but it would be good to develop prayer prayer partners along the way there now let's look at33:52wednesday night wednesday night is busy because of several things first of all brad again uh he has a full-blown worship service and always is thematic in what he's teaching and leading our young people on wednesday night they have their fun time they have their uh their uh craziness uh that goes on over there but then eventually he does get up and he teaches a very solid biblical message to our young34:18people those of you that are in there amen that's right he does and then we have awana children's ministry we're sending our awana children's director to commander camp uh she's going to be gone for a weekend here in a few weeks and uh jessica who has uh interned with us now for a year is going to uh is continuing to help work with us and give our uh direction to our children's ministries and so she's34:43going to go out for some extra training and uh awana ministry and what we can do to even ramp up and increase our one ministry but you know awana ministry youth ministry greeter ministry any ministry is going to require people and we can't do it without you we can't have a worship service without a nursery so we're going to need nursery workers for every main event that we have in this worship center35:13we're going to need people that that maybe you have raised your children maybe you have raised your families and uh you feel like well this is to the next generation listen we're asking moms who have children that that stay with them all day long to stay with them yet still again when we as older folks and i've told them in the nursery i said if i wasn't preaching i'd come keep the nursery i'd probably have a lot more fun than the kids did because i love being around children and i think that if35:40the more opportunity that we had uh the older we are the more wisdom we can share we wonder why them little kids act like that don't their parents know well not maybe they don't maybe they need you in there to help them amen wednesday nights choir choir is always a big event for our our adult leadership36:03and uh we have a a great number in our choir and i i'm really proud of the uh the the ministry and and all that brother rick is able to lead us through in the part time that he's here as i was talking to someone recently that's a part of a church he said man he said y'all have the perfect situation in y'all's church he said y'all have a part-time minister of music and you have a full-time student and36:30he said you your staff is just it it really looks good but when you have to have two maybe just two or or three staff members and they're all doing so many different things well i will say this brad's doing a whole lot uh but he can handle a whole lot more he's young and uh sharon's doing a whole lot sharon oversees and she's not here tonight because she's in route if she's not already home from the36:54wedding this morning uh that took place yesterday and uh she will oversee continue to oversee our women's ministry she had a women's ministry meeting this past wednesday night they talked about and maybe there's a lady in here that can share something with that is there uh anyone here that can can just kind of share what y'all talked about or some of the upcoming events for women37:16so they're they're being innovative listen yeah you bring 10 things you want to just don't bring37:30nothing back uh uh the uh the idea is is that we want to be innovative in how we're going to reach uh and uh our ladies as well as our men we're spreading ourselves out but guys we're here again37:58i was talking to a man the other day and he said chris and i say this to y'all he said i've never seen a darker day and he said i just believe we're at the 11th hour and if i everything i read and study and everything that i see if america is the last great spiritual hope of missions and gospel38:24centered nation we are getting close to the end and you know i thought about that and i said man i don't want to be that negative and think that way but it does behoove us to get more and more prepared preparing others sharing the gospel spreading the gospel teaching and living the gospel doing all that we can we run into this this is a conflict we run into all the time well chris i'd38:49like to participate in everything you do but i just don't have time don't let this overwhelm you you can't do it all but you can do well what you do do and we're going to invite you to be a part of well-designed discipleship classes we're going to invite you to be a part of well-organized children's ministry youth ministry preschool ministry uh adult ministry sunday school teachers um39:18du teachers discipleship orientation men's ministry we've got men's ministry we've got a special event coming up you'll hear a lot more about it it'll be the first weekend in march but it's going to be a all-day saturday event is called stepping up anybody here heard of stepping up uh we're going to do a stepping up ministry here we're going to it is a another video driven ministry andy austin came to39:45my office with a couple of men said we did this in our sunday school class we want to do this in the church and uh will can can we do it and i said give me some times and dates well originally they wanted you to do it the week before the super bowl so you could have some special uh advertisement we couldn't do it then because of all the things that we already have going on so we said how about march the first they said that'll be great and they're already in the planning and organizing stage of40:14of getting some men who can be some facilitators at this because it is video driven you don't have to be brilliant you don't have to be a bible scholar to be able to facilitate uh this event on a saturday you just have to be somebody who loves the lord who loves the men around you and desires to see them grow spiritually that that's that now let's go back to wednesday wednesday we got one of children's ministries we got um they're going to be going on on on on wednesday nights we got choir we got youth40:43ministry guys we got prayer meeting you know i have come to understand why in our study last uh and and behold your god one of the one of the devotional studies said that one of the great i i'm trying to remember exactly how it went but one of the great problems that pastors have in developing prayer ministries in their church is that that we just want to go41:09ahead and believe that everybody's going to come on a wednesday night and pray and what happens is everybody don't want to come on wednesday night and pray they want to come and hear you teach they want to come and hear you preach but they don't want to come and pray and uh we've come to understand and believe and and i've got some other brothers and and sisters that that meet with me on wednesday night sometimes we'll have 12 sometimes we'll have less than 12 but we pray how long do you pray brother41:39christ we we pray pretty much the whole hour uh we we don't break up into groups those that want to pray pray those that that can't pray publicly pray within their heart and they follow along in our prayer time but i believe that praying is one of the most powerful events that we can do in the church and uh i understand if you're in the choir and i understand if you're in the youth with youth42:04ministry and i understand if you're in children's ministry but if you're just at home on a wednesday night come out and pray with us you say brother chris is it just it's just so awkward to spend an hour praying it is to get used to it and then it isn't awkward anymore is it james it becomes a very powerful moment and if we get through a few minutes early that's okay if we get through a few minutes late that's okay they'll wait on us outside we hear the kids start42:34running at 8 15 when awareness is over we'll quit but that's wednesday nights friday nights at bethel baptist church you a lot of people don't even know cr celebrate recovery helping people with hurts habits and hang-ups you hear about it all the time you used to hear about it a lot more than you do now but hurts have people with hurts having saying we have people that are court-ordered that come to our friday night or friday night want to ministry our friday night cr ministry they come when they've tried43:04everything else everywhere else and can't find any relief from the agony and pain of their addiction and they come we've got people that come because they just love being here they love being here with the people that that are going through some of the same hurts and problems that they have and in their small group they're able to share those and they become they find strength and they find encouragement43:29they find accountability that they desperately need and they love it and we've got a great group of people brother rick leads as he as he leads into worship band there on wednesday night he also is doing this in renovations on sunday afternoons uh up in pale city where a group of people there meet just like they do here and they do the very same thing that they do here there brother rick leads that one there this one here from time to time we bring in very special very special guests i i come in and43:58speak brother brad comes in and speak other people come in and speak lay people come in and speak they they have a a time all to themselves that we can eat and love on them you say well brother chris i'm not not having any problems with drug alcohol let me ask you is there anybody in here that doesn't have a hurt a habit or a hang-up then you ought to be here on friday night now i don't always come on friday night not nearly like i should44:28but i'll tell you what if you'll come i'll come and we'll see what god does as god and you say well what would we do just love on people just love on people you don't look at them and say man that guy doesn't look like me no he may not he may have44:52been through no telling what for the last six months or six years of his life or she may have lived through no telling what for the last six months six years of her life but they come here and the one place that the doors ought to always be open is a church45:14where people will love on people we ought to do it on sundays we ought to do it on wednesdays we ought to do it on fridays we ought to do it every time the doors are open not counting the times times that we should do it outside of here getting close to the end of my time um brad talked about our next steps we've talked about our children's ministries we've talked about45:42our sundays and what they're going to look like um here just just some thoughts and thinking uh we want to do ministry we we really people don't know this but we do have a sunday school class that we've had to pass i think y'all still meet blended families we still we still meet and and and if you know of of a family that that's blended that's going through some struggles and they just like to to come to a class where they could sit down and talk to people who've gone through those various struggles46:12we've got those um we we we are in need now many of you know that don alvey uh because of his illness and because of the massive treatments that he was taking um wasn't able to teach his class anymore and we had several people that left and and they went to other places but but we we don't have that class now we're going to look at uh placing those folks that that want to be a part of a singles class we have andy austin who does a men's class we have um uh donna love johnson who has a women's46:42class uh and and uh and in a kind of a mixed age group uh gail has a women's class and a mixed age group and then we have of course our regular sunday school classes and if we need to start a class we have we have a heart of addiction class i was able to share with a young lady this morning who's been in and out of drug rehabs for probably the last 15 years of her life her life's been shot47:09on it and uh i was uh preaching for brother billy this morning and she was sharing some of the things that she'd been through i said listen i would do nothing to take you away from brother billy's church but i would encourage you if you can get away at nine o'clock in the morning on sunday mornings you come up to bethel we have a uh um uh class it's called heart of addiction it's about 12 to47:34is it 12 15 weeks 12 weeks and uh and you can go to it as often or through it as often as you want i said but you come and then you hustle back down here and get brother billy in the late service and and you'll be fine you don't have to join our church to be a part of this class we just want you to know that we've got something that we believe is is biblically based and helpful we have48:00that so if you've got neighbors you've got friends you've got family that have uh various needs and concerns you want to bring them to church with you they don't feel like they're going to fit into a a normal sunday school regular sunday school class then and now you're saying the so the hurt habit hang-up classes are they uh the heart of addiction is not normal no it is normal it's just you got folks that are hurting like you are there they're being honest about it48:27sometimes we're not honest about our hurts and habits and hang-ups and so we want to try to make sure we touch base with everybody i do the scariest thing that i ever do do you have any questions48:51okay48:57they should be out i i wouldn't know are we just we still don't have those we'll get some more out there we have them they may be out of them louise are there some still to welcome this they're not there anymore we've given them all out49:27don't know where they went well don't throw them away no more we'll have those back out there thank you especially with our with our encouraging our greeter ministry because those would be one of the things we were able to put in their hands that kind of it's a map of the building and it shows where all the classes are and the class numbers and that kind of thing so we can take care of that thank you49:54march the 9th is it 9th 16th 16th i'm sorry so march the 16th is four days life action ministry it's a family uh crusade what what i did with when we decided that we wanted to do something family-oriented christ-centered um instead of just having a regular revival inviting an evangelist in that's going to uh be evangelistic we wanted to do something that would be more family50:21focused and more family encouraging and life action ministry set up for this they've been set up for this for years and instead of doing a two-week crusade which we've done in the past uh i called them them they have a four-day crusade it'll start on sunday go through a wednesday and they will and and the emphasis will be on family kind of like our emphasis uh a couple years ago on prayer when we brought brother david in from texas and he did that prayer conference for us that's it and uh50:49greg price are you in here he's doing security scott you're here uh you go to that you've been to their family vacation time haven't you quality so you're going back this that's because these guys do a great job with the family and we feel like by bringing them in and letting them utilize the knowledge and the experience that god has given them now here's51:18what it's going to require of us and you we the reason i'm glad you asked the question i had it somewhere there but uh that is is that it's going to be much like a two-week crusade in that they're bringing just as many people they're going to be about 18 young adults uh three couples several children as they travel but we will be asked to house them and we will also be asked to provide51:41transportation for them and so we're going to need some loaner cars we're going to need some homes and uh people that will be able to bring them back and forth uh how many of you have ever kept a life action ministry couple in your home all right here we go josephine you had you've been a part of life action was it blessed was it a blessing was it a blessing anybody else who else raised their hand52:09how steward how was it it is impactful and opportunity the ministry is extremely encouraging when we're able to bring the people into our homes and then see what god's doing in the kind of quality and uh spiritual lives that that people are a part of there thank you next other question got one minute52:33spiritual lives that that people are a part of there thank you next other question got one minute52:47i don't brad yes yes we do it's on our calendar it's like june the 25th 22nd thank you i knew it was the 20th something 22nd should be on there is it on there this information the calendar dates are on there all you got to do is look up the calendar uh my wife's got my phone and all i could have and i was doing that earlier in our deacons meeting when i was wanting to make sure about the uh the date for the53:13revival because i knew we were doing that in march and we also got the men's uh conference coming up mark the first sun saturday in march and uh we've got a lot oh by the way love serves we will bring it back uh it comes back about at the end of du this year and just like it did last year and we will also provide on our web page opportunities for you to do ministries hopefully your sunday school classes will53:40get involved or if you don't find a sunday school class you develop a group and you go do things i had the opportunity to go to a hope lodge a couple of times and really enjoyed that uh some of you've made relationships with people at hope lodge that you've been able to keep up with them uh since then and uh i was talking to someone recently that had met the same individual that i had met it was a lost man um that was at hope lodge with cancer and uh he had a son that was a missionary uh and and uh his54:07son was a christian his wife was a christian uh and he wasn't then we uh picked trash up uh jim thomas's class i still got the pinchers in the back of my truck uh we went out on the interstate and uh the on and off ramp i want to tell you you got to have faith to do that jim don't you brother uh when those guys come off and you hear that and you realize that you're just picked up a bottle of beer that54:34you're fixing to die with a bottle of beer in your hand because this car's gonna run off the road and hit you and everybody's gonna think that you slipped off and got under the interstate and got drunk but anyway love serves a very important part of of who we are we want our ministry to be real thank you let's pray father in heaven thank you for the day and the opportunity54:59and god i pray that in 2014 we'll see you do more in my life and our life as a church family than you've ever done and god we pray that we'll see more people that god are not afraid to surrender all that become totally committed not to me but to you and find the fullness of your joy the fullness of your peace the fullness of your rest and the hardest time of their life55:28and it's in jesus name we pray amen god bless
