Leading kids worldwide to know, love and serve Christ

Praise the Lord we had 7 people from our church take the Awana leadership training this past weekend!

Awana helps churches and parents work together to develop spiritually strong children and youth who faithfully follow Jesus Christ. The programs offer a proven approach for evangelizing and discipling kids in the church and community.

As a ministry leader for over 60 years, Awana is making an impact. A recent national survey found Awana to be as important to our alumni’s spiritual foundation as all other church activities combined. Among alumni who participated in our programs for at least six years, 92.7 percent still attend church at least weekly as adults!

Each week, more than 1.5 million kids ages 2 to 18 participate in Awana. Over 12,000 churches in the U.S. and nearly 13,000 internationally run Awana programs that change young lives through biblical truth.

Grace Bible Church will be launching Awana soon. Check out this space for details.

Busy weekend ahead at Grace Bible Church

Next weekend at Grace will be a busy one. Apart from preaching from a gripping text in the book of Ephesians that speaks about our giftedness we will have with us a brilliant trumpet player ministering to us. We will be celebrating the 4th of July Independence day with patriotic songs. You are not going to want to miss this message or any part of the service we have planned.

On Saturday morning we have men’s fellowship breakfast at 8am and then at 9 am the car wash in aid of our camp fund will start in our parking lot.

At 5pm we start out cook out followed by a workshop for our small groups. If you are considering being part of a small group I, would love to talk with you after our service this morning.

Easter Service

Grace Bible Church launching pilot phase of small groups

Many churches have made the mistake to go into a small group model too quickly. As a church, we do not want to go into small groups, but instead grow into them. In order for us to do that, we will start two pilot groups to model, and then phase in new groups, once the misconception people have about small groups have been clarified. Some of the mind pictures regarding small groups include the following:
1. Content – intensive Bible Study: Group filled with informational discussions about Bible doctrines, interpretations of the second coming, and a focus on being right. Lots of new books, reference books, Greek studies, word study etc.
2. Therapy groups: Groups where people come just to get their own “stuff” fixed or discussed. Little interest in giving to others, studying the Word or growing spiritually.
3. Social gathering: Groups where people hang out together, have refreshments, share a few prayer request and plan the next event. The focus is on Betty’s new drapes, Bob’s new car, Alaine’s new roommate and the latest box office hits.
4. Religious discussions: Groups where  people debate lots of religious issues but never get at the truth of scripture. Discussion focus on near death experiences, angelic revelations, what all religions have a common and the latest spiritual experiences of a member.

Because of these  misconceptions, I believe modelling is critical to catch the vision. It is for this reason that we will be starting two groups with potential leaders, to model the vision and values we want for the small groups and then phase the new groups in. I will be overseeing and facilitating these two groups, one on Sunday night and the other during the week. These groups will meet every second week in different homes.
Join us for our first meeting on Sunday evening, March  18 at 6.30pm. The venue will be announced in the bulletin.

Pastor Phillip

Happy Valentines Day

A young woman was taking an afternoon nap. After she woke up, she told her husband, “I just dreamed that you gave me a pearl necklace for Valentine’s day. What do you think it means?”

“You’ll know tonight,” he said.
That evening, the man came home with a small package and gave it to his wife.
Delighted, she opened it–only to find a book entitled “The meaning of dreams”.
Show your Valentine some true love on Tuesday.
Pastor Phillip