BOB's Blog

This month has really been busy. I led a special event evangelism training for the Oakwood Church youth leaders in Saline. They are doing an evangelistic concert for youth and will use our FINAL ANSWER Evangelistic Booth.

 

I have visited several of our churches for services including our Japanese Mission congregation. Since they don't have a translator in their services, I was lost (so to speak) for most of the service. Basically, I stood when they stood and sat when they sat ... and smiled a lot. I also was able to attend the EKG (which is intended to be a church growth conference sponsored by our state convention).

 

Every Wednesday night I have continued teaching the outreach Bible study at Willow Green Community Mobile Home Park in Monroe. The Bible study is sponsored by Monroe Missionary Baptist Church. They have had some good ministry in the park in years past and hope to see some kind of on going ministry continue. This is the same park where we did the ICE Training Outreach last month. Our prayer has been to see a good work begin and continue at this location. We have only had a few new people come right now, but they are excited to have the study starting. We have even been talking about doing an evangelistic block party sometime soon. We'll see.

 

Andrew's birthday was on the 10th. We had a party for him with a few friends on Saturday, May 12th. We went and played miniature golf and rode go-karts in Monroe. He had a lot of fun and he particularly liked his new bike.

 

I preached on Mother's Day at First Baptist of Brighton. Their pastor has moved to Farmington, New Mexico. The church passed out flowers to all Mother's and acknowledged them, but my message wasn't about motherhood. I preached on "What Do We Do Now Without a Preacher." My hope was that it would be an encouragement to the congregation after losing their pastor. I will also be helping the church over the next few months as they are committed to host a mission team in July. Without a pastor, they will need a little more help.

 

With that pastor leaving, we now have four pastorless churches. One has been pastorless for almost 3 1/2 years.   

Odyssey of the Mind is still taking up time this month since the boys school team went to the State Finals in Traverse City. We had a great weekend. We went up (3 ½ hours drive up North) on Friday night and had dinner at some friends home. That was fun since they live out in the woods and they had had 8 inches of snow the day before. Most of the day on Saturday was occupied with the competition. Sunday morning we checked out of our Motel 6 and headed to visit one of our new church starts in Traverse City, THE ORCHARD. The church meets in a school in the middle of an apple orchard. It is a great church start and we enjoyed our visit.

 

We hosted an ICE Training late in the month. ICE stands for Intentional Community Evangelism. After the training, we went to a local mobile home park to practice what we had learned. We didn’t get many opportunities to share Christ but we did have one profession of faith and another rededication. We also started a Bible Study on Wednesday nights in the park community room. I will lead the study initially as I train two other leaders to continue the study on behalf of the sponsor church. Our prayer is to see an ongoing Bible Study in that location and maybe even see a mobile home church start eventually.

 

This month I had the opportunity to be a presenter again for the BASIC TRAINING for CHURCH PLANTERS. We trained 5 more teams. It is exciting to have contact with so many of the new church planters that God is calling out in our state.

 

The final BIG event for April was our annual SPRING MEETING for Southeastern Association. The meeting was well attended with good participation. CLICK HERE to read my 2007 Director of Missions Report to the association.  

I started the month off making a Week of Prayer for North American Missions presentationfor a church in Hilton Oaks, MI. I told them about the Annie Armstrong emphasis and told them about our work in the association. One of the best parts of this particular presentation was that my whole family was able to attend with me. Usually, I am speaking so far from home I just show photos of my family and tell them a little our lives. However, since this church was just over one hour away, they all went with me.

 

Most every year during the Week of Prayer for North American Missions, we plan some type of outreach or ministry event. You ask why? Well, some of our readers of this journal know that Brenda and I both have birthdays every year during this emphasis. What that means is that even more people are praying for us during that week because our names both appear in Missionary Prayer Calendars in numerous publications. Brenda gets the extra prayers on the 5^th and me on the 7^th. 

 

ALL THAT TO SAY … this year we decided to plan a special AUDIO CONFERENCE for mission groups. In brief, here’s what we did … we called it Meet the MK’s LIVE (Click Here to see more). I hosted the interviews with Robert, Andrew and two other Michigan MK’s (Missionary Kids). We did the conference four times at 7:15 PM in all four time zones. It was neat. We had more than 1,300 registered participants, from 60 church groups, located in 19 states, in all four US time zones.

 

One of the real personal victories this month was having the opportunity to be a part of sharing Christ with a young truck driver after church one afternoon. After about an hour of discussion, he accepted Christ as his personal Savior. On top of the excitement of his decision, he wanted to follow the Lord in baptism, so he was baptized a few weeks later at the True Gospel Missionary Baptist Church in Monroe. As I told him, baptism is that first step of obedience after committing your life to the Lord.

 

In our March Missions Retreat, I was elected as the new President of the Michigan Director of Missions organization. Just what I needed … something else to do (ha, ha). Actually, it doesn’t require much time and effort. I was humbled that our other 9 Directors of Missions would want me to serve.

 

Family-wise, the boys have both been involved in the Odyssey of the Mind club at school. They went this month to the regional competition in Brighton, MI. It was a long day that was a part of many months of preparation (building and practice). We were so proud of their team as they advanced to the state finals. Those finals are next month in Traverse City.

 

We hosted another AUDIO CONFERENCE for Pastors this month with Pastor Jon Hays. Pastor Hays is the pastor of Jersey Church just outside of Columbus, OH. Our topic was “Rekindling Evangelistic Passion.” It was an exceptional conference. CLICK HERE to listen to this conference. We discovered this month that the recording of our AUDIO CONFERENCE ministry is the EIGHTH top rated pod cast on the www.ChristianPodder.com web site, where we host the recordings. You can listen to any of the past conferences by CLICKING HERE. In addition, when you listen … make sure you RATE the training.

 

Every year we host two MISSION LEADERSHIP ORIENTATIONS in March and May. This month’s conference was well attended. We use the time to orient the leaders of mission teams to ministry in our context. Our area is very different from most of the places where mission teams live. Especially when you consider that volunteers come from 14 or 15 different states. YOU ASK, “What do you do?” Well we have sessions on Spiritual Preparation, Our Religious Culture, Our Ministry Context, Recruiting and Promoting Your Mission Trip and Evangelistic Strategies (Servant Evangelism, Evangelistic Block parties, Canning Hunger Outreach, Photo Evangelism, etc.). You can actually listen to the latest training by CLICKING HERE. The MP3 pod casts can be previewed or downloaded.  

 

Robert and Andrew also enjoyed our annual associational Pinewood Racer Derby competition. We barely got our cars built this year with all of the extra stuff going on with the Odyssey of the Mind. Neither of their cars placed this year out of 101 cars entered in the derby.  

On Super Bowl Sunday, our church hosted an Evangelistic Watch Party. It was fun, but we didn’t have near as many unchurched or lost people in attendance as anticipated. Robert, Andrew and I all went while Brenda spent a relatively quiet night at home. I say relatively quiet, because she still had Smokey, the dog to watch over. He’s still such a puppy at 8 months old! But, she’ll often lie down in her bed to read and he’ll lie down beside the bed.

 

I enjoyed speaking in the Hawkinsville & Cochran, GA area for an ON MISSION CELEBRATION with the Pulaski-Bleckley Baptist Association. All five churches warmly welcomed me and committed to join our other prayer partners in uplifting our mission work in Michigan.

 

On Saturday the 24^th, I facilitated our Church Planting Network meeting for those involved in starting new churches in our area. Dr. Ted Lindwall of Church Starts International was our special guest for about one hour via a telephone conference call. He discussed a “Comparison of Contexts in Church Planting.” He has planted churches in California and Guatemala. He helped our group see the importance of their context and gave encouragement on discipleship approaches. You can listen to the recording of the conference by CLICKING HERE. 

This month I had the privilege of attending the 2007 Associational Summit of the Network of Baptist Associations in Fort Worth, TX. It was a very rewarding few days of interacting with more than 100 associational leaders from across the country. While attending, I was elected to the 17-member NoBA National Leadership Team to represent the Northern states. I was also asked to serve on the Communications Sub-Team, responsible for the new website and all of the organization’s communications.

 

My dad flew up on Thursday the 11th to go with us to Detroit's North American International Automotive Show (www.NAIAS.com). On Friday, Robert and Andrew had a Middle School Mixer where they had a gym full of inflatables, games and tons of snacks. Robert was most interested in the dunking booth. Several of his teachers were in the booth and I think he spent a small fortune of his allowance money to DUNK his "favorite" teachers. They had fun. After the mixer, I took my dad and the boys to the indoor go cart track for their “all you can ride” Friday night. They get a wristband and can ride go-carts or play laser tag for four solid hours. It was a blast. Robert (our NASCAR nut) spent all of his time on the track while Andrew spent a good bit of his time playing laser tag. Dad and I mostly watched the fun and guarded our personal belongings. On Saturday, we attend the Auto Show. The boys always enjoy it and dad seemed to enjoy his time also.

 

The third Tuesday of January we hosted another Audio Conference for Pastors. Our guest was Dr. Johnny Hunt from First Baptist Church of Woodstock, Georgia. CLICK HERE to listen to the 59-minute conference. Dr. Hunt was so practical giving conference participants numerous practical tips for being effective in ministry. Dr. Hunt was also very generous in giving participants several resources that we were able to e-mail after the conference.

 

I also meet this month with a Korean Church Planter that is interested in starting a new church near the University of Michigan. His target is to reach out to families of Korean students on local campuses. We'll see how that develops.

 

January is also the month of our Huron Winter Youth Retreat at Bambi Lake Retreat Center. Our youth had a great time in worship, Bible Study and playing ice hockey, snowball fights and tubing down tube hill out onto the lake. Robert went with FBC, S. Lyon since there weren’t any youth able to go from our church. Every year the Winter Retreat is a highlight.