February 2021 - Celebration & Praise Report

February was an amazing month at Grace!!!  I just have to give praise to God and tell you what HE has done!!

Did you grow-up in or ever attend a church that sang the Doxology?  The Doxology is a short hymn-like chorus that gives praise to God. In years past, churches of various denominations would conclude their services by singing it. Listen to the words:

        Praise God, from Whom all blessings flow

        Praise Him, all creatures here below

        Praise Him above, ye heavenly host

        Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost

That is exactly what I want to do... I want to give praise to God for the blessings HE brought to and through the ministries of Grace Church and Highlands Christian Academy during February 2021.

First, as you know, February is known as the “Love Month;” so Grace capitalized on that theme:

• Pastor Gary has been preaching through a marriage series titled, “LORD of the Rings” and offering biblical counsel for Christian marriages.
• On Sunday, Feb. 14, couples stood across our congregation and renewed their marriage vows. COVID has added much stress to marriage, but with a commitment to Christ and to each other, we are confident that Christian marriages can weather the storms of life.

Other “Love” opportunities were seen each Sunday in February:

• Feb. 7 - we loved-on our community – and collected food, clothing & toiletry items for “The Lord’s Gift House,” a ministry to the homeless in our community.
• Feb. 14 – we loved-on our spouse, family & widows in our congregation.
• Feb. 21 – we loved-on each other, as our Grace family gathered around fire pits; cooked hotdogs and enjoyed making s’mores under the stars.
• Feb. 28 – we loved others as we distributed bread and pastries to the homeless, our friends, and our neighbors. Each loaf/box had a Gospel tract telling people about the Bread of Life.

February also brought us a feeling of some normalcy as we hosted some larger “events.”

• Our children are now meeting in-person and started a new Bible program titled, “Eat this Book.” Dozens of children are attending in-person and Miss Julie is also making the program available online.
• Steve Merritt brought a trio from FBC of Ft. Lauderdale that blessed our church family. We saw many guests in attendance and had our largest 1^st service attendance since the pandemic started.
• Grace also hosted a Winter Bible Conference, which included:
  • Guy Melton from Oasis Church in Pembroke Pines, FL
  • Chris Lane from First Priority of South Florida
  • Michael Chin Quee from Food for the Poor

Each of these men challenged us to look past the pandemic and “renew our passion” to reach people in new, creative and personal ways with good news of the life-changing Gospel.

“Praise God from Whom all blessings flow” for the people who are were saved, baptized, returned to worship and were added to the Grace Church family in the month of February!

We also experienced wonderful blessings in our school ministry - Highlands Christian Academy.

We have truly been blessed under the leadership of Dr. Steve Lawrence and God is blessing us with new leadership for our 2021-2022 school year:

• Mr. Larry Smith with take the reins as our new Head of School
• Mr. Bill Canning will become our new Upper School Principal
• We are also blessed to be adding several new faculty to our staff, which will allow us to bring back several elective classes
  
• In addition, budgeting and recruiting are in warp-speed for next year and look forward to going post-pandemic and seeming growth and enhancements in every area of HCA.

Another BIG achievement was HCA’s celebration of 100 Days of School!

• While many schools have remained closed or online only, HCA started meeting in-person back in August. Our thanks to Dr. Lawrence for his courageous leadership and also to Governor DeSantis for keeping Florida open.

We also want to congratulate our Knights Varsity Boys Soccer Team as the Regional Runners-Up! They had a great season under the leadership of Coach Davidson Loristan and we are so proud of our boys’ performance during this difficult year. We also want to congratulate HCA Senior, Payton Caja, who was selected to the Atlantic Coaches Association Senior All-Star Game on March 13 at Bryant Stadium in Lakeland, FL.

We have so much to celebrate & praise God for!  As Ed Stetzer stated, “The moment we are in; does not pause the mission we are on.” The ministries of Grace Church continue strong and we thank God for protecting us during the pandemic and blessing our efforts to make HIM known across our community!