First of all, I would like to apologize to all of you who had to endure the frosty conditions at Sunday morning’s worship gathering. I appreciate your faithfulness and assure you that the heat will be in working order by this Sunday. Additionally, I want to thank those who have labored over our heating and cooling system, both this last Sunday and at other times. It is often a thankless job, but I appreciate the effort and concern that go into it.
I also wanted to share with you a door that the Lord is opening for us. For the past three years, the pastors of Gilead, along with some volunteers from our fellowship have been assisting the Creekside Elementary Family Resource Council by providing after school homework help for kids in 4th and 5th grade. Additionally, we have assisted in the serving of meals for Grandparents day and Thanksgiving. We have done this because we know that God has a heart for children and no one is beneath His attention. We have also done this because it is intrinsically satisfying to take a child who normally struggles with homework and see him or her be able to make progress with a little attention from a patient adult. One boy that I helped with his math and history homework proudly reported to his mother that he had done all of his work. She told me that this was the first time that she could remember him being able to finish his homework. As you can imagine, it is good to be used in this way, and it is good to form meaningful relationships with kids who need it. Even so, I have always desired to be able to go even further and share the gospel with kids in our county.
As a result of this desire, I have for sometime been praying about the possibility of our church sponsoring a “Good News Club” at Creekside. A Good News Club is an hour long after school program that seeks to introduce unchurched children to the basics of the gospel. My desire is that the Lord will burden enough people at our church to participate so that we can reach kids who are not going to church anywhere on Sundays. Our intention is to launch the club in January and to run until school ends for the summer. I want to ask you to prayerfully consider helping out with this ministry, because it has the potential to change a child’s eternal trajectory. I believe that the Lord is opening a door for us and I hope that we will have the courage to walk through it.