Easter Production

On the nights of Saturday, March 31 and Sunday, April 1, our adult choir and drama ministries presented a wonderful Easter program entitled, "The Thief." The script was original and written by our own Brian Geddes. As with most programs, those involved usually wonder whether it will all come together, and did it ever! I would call the set "simple-elegance." It was just enough, but not too much. The vocalists and actors did a superb job. Those in support roles (sound, video, lighting, costuming, stage hands, greeters, ushers, etc.) as usual... made everyone look good. We had great crowds on both nights, people were moved to tears, and 7 people started personal relationships with Jesus Christ! We also had several people indicate their desire to know more about EBC and express a desire to speak with one of our pastors. A heart-felt "thank you" to everyone who participated in making this program a huge success.

Due to the busy summer schedule of EBC, we chose not to do the giant EGGstravaganza this year. There was some sadness and a few calls of disappointment from our community, but there were also many "thank yous" from our church family. We weighed the benefits and felt that our people needed a break, more than we needed a few prospects. Our church is learning to do ministry that is effective and efficient, rather than events that just draw crowds. Having crowds is nice, but building God's Church is our goal.

ECS Open House & Business After Hours

Emmanuel Christian School hosted a Business After Hours through our local Chamber of Commerce last night. This is a monthly networking opportunity for Chamber members to stop by after work. Based on business cards turned in, we had approximately 35 attend from the community. They were joined by our ECS staff and faculty, along with several families that arrived early for our Open House. My thanks to Clark and Jenifer for leading the way in putting it all together, to our Food Service staff for the wonderful array of food, and to our staff and faculty for their participation. I also want to thank Johnna for the Chamber's help and for the leadership she is providing.

Following the Business After Hours, the teachers went to their classrooms and the business leaders were able to tour the school and ask questions of our staff and faculty. We combined this night with an Open House for our community. This was the best Open House we have ever had! Families from preschool to high school walked through, gathered information, and we had enrollments coming in the very next day!

Again, thanks to ALL who attended and helped to host this great event!

Sunday Summary - 3.18.12

Yesterday was "Baby Dedication" at EBC. God is blessing our church with MANY young families, and today He blessed us with 9 babies to be dedicated. This is a special time in the life of any church. The concept for this day is based on the story of Hannah dedicating Samuel to the Lord. We encourage parents to dedicate their children to the Lord, to dedicate themselves to be godly parents, and the church family dedicates themselves to do all they can to help these parents raise these precious children to know, love, and serve the Lord. We show pictures on the screens, read special summaries that the parents have written about their children, take pictures, and distribute certificates to remind parents of this commitment.

I continued the sermon series "Thy Kingdom Come" with a message about Kingdom Determination. I challenged our church member to seize the dream that God is placing in their heart, to pursue that dream, and to determine to be faithful until they complete it. I used biblical illustrations of dreamers including: Noah, Daniel, Joseph, Nehemiah, Paul, and Joshua & Caleb. I reminded our church that God gives individual and corporate dreams, that the majority will often oppose them, and those who remain faithful will be rewarded.

God blessed our services with Adelaide being baptized and becoming a member of our church family, and the O'Dell family coming for membership pending baptism. 2012 has been such a wonderful year. We have already had 75 saved through Team Impact, 10 saved through our services, and 30 new members added to our church. Praise God for what He is doing at EBC!

Sunday Summary - 3.11.12 (ECS Day)

Today was our annual service in which we highlight Emmanuel Christian School. ECS Day is a BIG event, since ECS is the largest ministry of EBC. Many of our church members don't realize that on any given day there are approximately 1,000 people on our campus just via the school events. These people include: students, parents, grandparents, teachers, athletes, coaches, vendors, etc. We are proud that ECS has been "Teaching the minds... and training the hearts" of students in Darlington County for 48 years!

During this ECS Day service, our EXCEL music students provide the prelude music, the elementary students serve as our choir, high school students serve as ushers and greeters, students make up our band, and faculty members serve as our praise team. In addition, our EXCEL art students set up an art gallery to display their work and for our members to enjoy. This year, we added a new twist as we showed several TV commercials that included personal testimonies from ECS parents and students.

I continued the sermon series "Thy Kingdom Come" with a message about Kingdom Love. Using Mary's act of breaking her alabaster box and anointing Jesus with costly perfume, I challenged our congregation to lavish their love on Christ, to hold nothing back, and to express their worship with disregard for what anyone else might say. Karen sang a beautiful song that tied it all together. God blessed our efforts with Edna joining our church family; and Tiffany, Josh, and Billy being baptized. Billy shared his testimony of being "religious, but lost." He ended his wrestling match with God and accepted Christ as his Savior on the last night of Team Impact.

Sunday Summary - Team Impact - 3.4.12

Yesterday was the climax to a GREAT evangelism event at Emmanuel Baptist Church. We had Team Impact www.team-impact.com at EBC last week, Feb. 29 - March 4. Team Impact uses feats of strength to draw crowds, then they share a very clear presentation of the gospel. TI conducted assemblies in seven area schools, at Coker College, and at the Hartsville Boys' & Girls' Club. TI preached at our Sunday afternoon basketball church and saw three men make decisions for Christ. Approximately 2,200 people attended the evening events with 160+ making decisions for salvation, assurance, rededication, and prayer needs.

During our morning service, God's Spirit moved and we had an amazing morning! I've been working with a man in his 20's who was saved yesterday! I got the privilege of baptizing my daughter and another young man who were saved several weeks ago. We also added nine new members to our church family! Last night, a man who has been active in our church and sings in our choir, realized his need for salvation. He stated that he had a head-knowledge of Christ, but he needed to surrender his heart to the Lord. Praise God!

I want to extend my thanks to all of our EBC volunteers who helped to make this event a huge success. Our church family has caught the vision for reaching beyond our walls, reaching our community, and impacting eternity! Thank God for people who are willing to serve the Lord in whatever way is needed! I also want to thank David, our EBC Children's Pastor, for the work he did in organizing this event. God has blessed us with a great ministry team!

SC State Evangelism Conference

Each year, our church staff attends a conference together. For the past couple of years, we have gone to the "Refuel" conference at Thomas Road Baptist Church. This year due to a format change and date conflict, we chose to attend the SC State Evangelism Conference hosted by the SBC. The conference was definitely "old school" and I think our staff was the youngest group in attendance; but the messages hit the nail on the head and we considered it time well spent.

God used the messaages to challenge our hearts toward evangelism and the need to keep the main thing, the main thing! Conference speakers included: Jr. Hill, Jeff Laborg, Rick Corum, David Gallamore, Randall Jones, Earnie Perkins, Jim Austin, and Phil Hoskins.

A couple of great quotes from the conference:

1. If you determine to win your city for Christ, you will have critics. Sadly, most of them will be in other churches, and even some in your own.

2. The Church is supposed to be a body, but has become a business. When a body becomes a business, it is a prostitute. The Church is supposed to be a bride, not a prostitute! (That will make you think about the condition of today's church.)

3. Too many are doing church work, but not the work of the Church.

4. Three types of church members: a) Spectators - sit and watch what they consider an event, b) Scowlers - taken years to perfect their negativity and pessimism, and 3) Singers -true worshippers both in private and in public.

5. Preachers need to stop trying to be amateur psyhologists and get back to preaching the Word.

Sunday Summary - 02/19.12

We started our services yesterday with Pearl being baptized! It's exciting to see people getting saved, baptized, and joining the church almost every Sunday! I'm not sure what was going on yesterday, but we had an incredible crowd of almost 600 in church!

I preached on Kingdom Considerations and how we must understand that the power to change lives comes from the Holy Spirit, that we must endure as we serve Christ, that our hopes and dreams may have to change in order to follow fully, and that it is all worth it in the end.

Sherman taught a financial seminar last night adapting many of the principles from Crown Financial for our church family. Financial common sense isn't so common these days. It was startling to hear that last year only 4% of Americans gave 10% to any charity. That means that 96% of Americans didn't tithe! Blame the government or anyone else you want to blame; but when you disobey God's plan for giving, you cannot expect God's blessings. The Bible tells us that when we don't tithe, it's as though we are stealing from God.

Sherman did a great job and we are sad that this will be his final week here at Emmanuel. He is leaving us to become the assistant director at Grace Bible Camp in Goshen, VA. This is a dream come true for Sherman, but he will leave a gaping hole in this ministry. Thank God that He takes care of His ministry. He has already provided someone to fill that gap.

Sunday Summary - 02.13.12

Our attendance was off a little yesterday morning due to the 20 degree weather. Upon arriving at church, we discovered that 3 of our 4 heaters were not working properly and the inside of the building was 54 degrees. The A/C man was here working on it and the temperature was up to 60 degrees by the time we started the service. For that reason we cut the service a little shorter, and walked out 20 minutes earlier than normal. In spite of the temp's, God still worked. Yesterday, Jerome was baptized, and his family joined the church. PTL!

I preached on Understanding the Kingdom. So many people are focused on building their own personal kingdoms that they miss God's BIGGER plan for their lives. We are in a small town, but truly believing God can use us to reach the world! I tried to share with our church family that following Jesus will mean taking up our cross, running against the grain, and standing against the culture; but it appears they have accepted the challenge.

Finally, last night almost 80 of our men gathered to watch the movie "Courageous." What an awesome movie! The lights were out, but I heard sniffles across the room. Hearts of men were being touched by the Holy Spirit. Pray that God will do something special at EBC this year as we reach men for Christ. I closed by asking for men to volunteer to serve and help me develop tools for our men (sermon series, resources, training materials, etc.) If the men will get serious about serving Jesus, then their wives and children will follow.

Sunday Summary - 02.05.12

What a great day at Emmanuel. We hosted a "Super Bowl of Caring" and collected several shopping carts full of canned foods for Hartsville Interfaith Ministries. This is a ministry supported by local churches that assists those who find themselves in a temporary crisis and need some assistance to get back on their feet. Our church family responded so generously! Thanks EBC for caring about the less fortunate in our community.

This morning's sermon focused on having Kingdom Vision. Too many individual believers and churches are plagued by tunnel vision. They can only see their immediate surroundings and have no concern about those who are still in need of having a relationship with Jesus Christ. I challenged our people to look for ministry opportunities to those who are not being reached by any church, to think outside the box, and to move toward the other's oriented philosophy that Jesus modeled for His disciples. This year EBC will focus on being the people God wants us to become, rather than doing all the programs that people want us to do.

At the close of today's service, God blessed us with a great altar response. Among those were 5 new members and 1 coming for baptism! PTL.

Tonight we will host the Super Bowl EHOPs (Emmanuel Houses of Prayer). The LIFE Groups will gather in a member's home, invite their friends, watch the Super Bowl, and pray. This will be a great time of fellowship and hopefully a time when others come to know Christ!

Something's wrong with this picture!

Has anyone noticed how freely our culture throws around terms like intolerant, politically incorrect, and bigoted at those who express their thoughts and opinions on almost anything except Christianity? Don't dare crack a joke about Jews, Muslims, gays, or ethnicity. Sports casters, news anchors, and radio talk show hosts have been fired for such comments; but let a late night talk show host bash Christians and for some reason that is acceptable.

Consider all of the controversy around Tim Tebow. Tebow proved that he can play in the NFL, was kept while Kyle Orton was traded, and Denver's sorry start turned into a run for the playoffs. Rather than praising him, many keep bashing him for his faith. Terms such as "Tebowing" were introduced because of his prayer posture, SNL aired a blasphemous skit, and other professionals were very unprofessional.

Well... I'm tired of "Christian bashing" being acceptable. America was founded as a Christian nation, we have a rich Christian heritage, our judicial system is based on Judeo-Christian ethic, American schools taught children to read using the New England Primer (which contained Bible verses), and the list goes on! This nation is great, because "In God We Trust!" So, as a Christian and as an American, I want someone to explain the picture below: