Forestgate Quarterly Report (given before worship on Sunday, Jan 21, 2024)
As I do after every joint elder-deacon meeting, I have a report on some significant items in the life of the church: We had a good visit from Steve Stanton, who normally comes to our joint meetings, updating us on our church plant, Waypoint Church. He asked for prayer as they train deacons and as they look for God to raise up elder candidates, which will likely take longer. He’s been urged by many not to rush that process, and we’re grateful for Bartel de Leeuw and Bruce Harrington, one of our active elders, one of our inactive elders, who serve on Waypoint’s temporary session, until they’re able to ordain their own elders.
We’ve also been talking as a Session about things like future church planting, church health, our church building and possible expansion. To say a brief word about each of them: Forestgate is committed to future church planting, but we are not yet committed to a timeline. There are many factors to balance. And while our financial health is good, church health is not simply about $ or attendance. There are other harder-to-measure factors like spiritual growth. We want to spend more time thinking about that, though we’re just beginning that process and evaluation.
About our church property – What a great, beautiful building we have, with a great location, and plenty of land. And God has blessed us with no debt as a church. And yet we are continuing to ask – How soon would God have us expand our building for things like greater fellowship space, more classrooms or offices, or some other need that we haven’t yet clearly identified? We believe building expansion is needed in the future, but we still need to do some initial work to clarify that process. So please pray for us.
Here are some other items we discussed, either as a session or jointly with the deacons.
Officer training – We’ll begin a new season of training officer candidates on January 29. I don’t mention the names publicly until it’s time to elect candidates, but I encourage them to tell anyone they want and ask their friends to pray for them. If you would pray for them, too, as a group, then we would be grateful.
We’re in communication with our neighbors about the delay in driveway construction. We appreciate your patience with that. Please pray that we’d be patient with our neighbors, too.
In our joint meeting, we discussed a rise in the homeless and refugee population in our state and what we (or the ministries we support) might be able to do about that. We did not reach definite conclusions, but please pray that we would have a heart for any who need help and clear direction about how to do that, when needed.
As always, we prayed at length for various shepherding matters, some that are known publicly, some that aren’t. Pray that God would help us to help our congregation, in whatever way is needed.
Your church’s leaders are good men who love the Lord and want to serve Him most effectively as they continue to grow in Christ. None of us are perfect, but we’re grateful that God has given us the fellowship of other Christians, and the grace of the Holy Spirit, to carry out the calling He’s given us. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “Who is sufficient for these things?” And while there’s plenty of laughter and fellowship at our meetings, that question is also present. So pray, as Paul also says, that God make us (all of us in the church) – That God would make us sufficient for these things. Thanks for your prayers and your attention.
-Pastor Matt, Jan 21, 2024