We might as well eat! We will have a meal together after our worship service this Sunday at Kingmen’s Event Facility. The main course (BBq) and tableware will be provided. If families with last names beginning with A-L will bring two side dishes and families beginning with M-Z will bring a dessert and a side dish we should have plenty to eat. Also if each family could provide their own drinks that would be great.
See you Sunday at 9,
Pastor Colin
Dear Family,
Are looking for a new opportunity for fellowship and prayer? I am! I hope you will join Brenda and I at 840 Saint Giles Ct. tonight (9/14) at 6 PM to enjoy conversations with one another and with God about stuff that matters. There will be food involved.
All are welcome,
Colin
Dear Family,
There are a few blogs I subscribe to–Kevin DeYoung’s is usually worth reading. He is pastor at University Reformed Church in East Lansing, MI, hence also huge Michigan State fan. But in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, Purdue nor IU (nor even Notre Dame), Big 10 nor SEC therefore I will not hold his fandom against him. I thought his comments this morning were worth copying to you. The same questions could be asked for other pastimes to check the hold they might have on us.
Blessings,
Pastor Colin
Dear FBC Parents,
This Sunday, 9/7, we are kicking off another year of Junior High (6th-8th grade) and High School Ministry for our students at FBC. Both ministries will meet every other Sunday night in various homes throughout the year from 6-7:30 PM. Many of you have received an email from Kelly Lovell asking for families to pick dates to host these gatherings–please help her get our calendar filled out for the Fall. This Sunday, Junior High will be meeting at the Robards, 8120 Bucks Ln; High School will meet at the Grimms, 14245 Petersburg Rd. Bring or wear swimsuits.
We have selected a curriculum this year that we are very excited about, and are looking forward to getting started! This is where you come in. As you know, we want parents to be an active part of our youth groups: involved in conversations, building relationships, organizing events, and teaching. To take this a step further, this year we are organizing teaching teams for both High School and Middle School groups. Our goal is to sign up five parents at each level that will rotate teaching/leading the event scheduled. If we gather five at each level, you will have to lead/teach 1-2 times a semester.
We have already spoken to some of you, and we appreciate the responses and the willingness to help! We need to fill in a few spots, so please respond and let us know where we can plug you in!
For Junior High, please respond to Brandon Robards at brandonrobards@gmail.com.
For High School, please respond to Matt Lovell at lovellmt@gmail.com.
See you Sunday!
Pastor Colin
Dear Family,
We have decided to postpone our visit to homes in Cambridge until next week, 8/17 since we will be back at Cambridge for church next week anyway. It makes more sense for us to embark on our visits after our service next week than going back to Cambridge after our lunch at Kingmen’s tomorrow. I trust you will all find good use for the extra time!
See you tomorrow morning,
Pastor Colin
Dear Family,
As a reminder, Family Bible Church will be meeting at Kingmen’s Event Facility (corner of Baseline Rd. and Hwy 57) this Sunday at 9 AM for worship. During our service we will collect our pledges for our new building so please come prepared for that according to the letter and pledge card that was mailed to you. If you did not receive a pledge card and would like to contribute to our building fund, please contact us and we will email one to you. If you would like more information about our plans to build a new facility, please see the previous post. We will also be praying for God’s blessing on our children as they begin the 2014/15 school year.
After our service we will celebrate God’s provision with a meal. The main course (fried chicken) and tableware will be provided. If families with last names beginning with A-L will bring a dessert and a side dish and families with last names beginning with M-Z bring two side dishes we should have plenty to eat. Also if each family could provide their own drinks that would be great.
After lunch FBC will be visiting homes in Cambridge to invite them to a continental breakfast and worship service on September 7. Families willing to stay and participate will split up into teams so that we can visit each home in Cambridge. I know this will be a step of faith for many of us, but God will give us courage to get past whatever apprehensions we may have in reaching out to our neighbors in Cambridge.
Obviously this will be an important Sunday for our family and future families at FBC. I will be praying for all of you as you make preparations to join us.
Pastor Colin
Dear Friends,
If you are a member or reglar attender at Family Bible Church, you will be receiving a letter in the mail from me with much of the information below and so may find this post redundant. However some of you on our subscriber list are friends of Family Bible Church who are not able to attend with us regularly but still have an interest in seeing our ministry grow. I am writing to you to keep you informed on matters important to us.
For the past three years God has graciously provided a place for us to hold worship services at Cambridge Golf Club. During this time we have established our core values, bylaws and received 25 families into church membership. Our church exists to glorify God through teaching his Word, supporting the growth of families, praying together, and believing and sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with those around us and around the world.
This is a critical time for Family Bible Church. Cambridge is a beautiful and sufficient place for us to hold worship services, but we are limited in what we are able to do there beyond that. God has provided land on which we can construct a more permanent church home. In October of 2013 we purchased 13 acres immediately adjacent to the stadium complex at the new North High School without incurring debt.
A few months ago our elders called together a building committee to begin exploring what it will take to occupy the land that the Lord has given us. Our building committee’s task was not unlike that of the 12 spies God directed Moses to send into the land of Canaan before the sons of Israel were to invade and take possession of it. The building committee collected bids from several architectural engineering firms for the initial stage of site preparation and conceptual church design. They selected Kinetic Church Builders, a local church design company with a good reputation among churches in our area. Over the past two months, our elders, building committee and Kinetic have been meeting to determine what kind of building would best serve our church’s needs for the next chapter of our life together. We took into account all that we might hope to do in the foreseeable future (if the Lord wills, recognizing that none of us can see very far) and therefore produced a long-term “master plan” for a basic church design. This design is broken down into several stages, beginning with a modest facility that can be expanded as our needs and resources grow over the years.
Thus we have arrived at a basic design for “stage one” of construction. It includes a multi-purpose room that will serve as our gathering place for worship services but can also serve as a half-court basketball gym or suitable place for church meals. It also includes a basic kitchen that will allow us to serve pot-luck or catered meals. We have included sufficient classroom space for children and adults to expand our teaching ministry, a nursery, an office, bathrooms, storage, and a welcoming “living room” or lobby. Our building committee and elders are quite pleased with the process Kinetic has guided us through and the conceptual design we produced together. We believe the design is aesthetically pleasing, practical, and reflects a biblical stewardship of material resources. To continue the biblical analogy, the report of our committee’s “spying out the land” is that “it is indeed a land flowing with milk and honey” and our design “is its fruit” (Numbers 13:27) though I am sure you would agree that the people who will occupy our new church home are more properly “its fruit.”
However, you know what comes next in our biblical analogy. The report of the Israel’s spies also included numerous giants (“Nephilim”) and fortified cities who would oppose their occupation of the land God had given them. In our case, the opposing forces are the financial costs of building a new church home on the land God has given us. They are large and compared to our own resources “we seem to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” (Numbers 13:33). One important goal of our design process was to determine the total square feet we need to serve our purposes adequately so we can arrive at an estimated cost. “Stage one” is 8,200 square ft. which will cost approx. $1,243,000, which includes $218,000 for site development. That is a “Nephilim” sized number! It is a huge number compared to the size and resources of our congregation.
Nevertheless, our elders and building committee, courageous men like Caleb and Joshua of ancient Israel, agree that we should surely occupy the land God has given us and trust him to provide the resources for us to do so. Our people are praying and asking God to direct them in what they are able to give cheerfully and sacrificially. But construction costs are high and our people are relatively few.
If God has been laying it on your heart to help Family Bible Church build its first home by giving generously, now would be a great time to do that. On August 10 our church will collect gifts and pledges from our families for the first stage of construction. If you desire to help us, please send checks payable to Family Bible Church, PO Box 141 Inglefield, IN 47618-0141 and mark the memo line “Building Fund.” If you wish to give monthly, please let us know that and the duration you intend to give. Or, if you desire to give by some other means, please contact us.
God’s Word tells us that he “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” (Ephesians 3:20). I am glad that is true because, though it is a small thing for God to provide the resources for us to build a home for Family Bible Church, it seems to me abundantly more than I could ask or think. I am confident that God will grow our faith considerably in the process.
Thanks for taking the time to read about this!
“And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 4:19).
For Christ and His Kingdom,
Colin Kerr
Pastor, Family Bible Church
Evansville, IN
Dear Family,
This weekend marks the three year anniversary of Family Bible Church’s first worship service. Come celebrate with us at the Danks’ home, 8100 Azalea Dr. Evansville beginning at 3 PM. We will enjoy the company of great friends, good food and a beautiful lake for swimming or fishing. If you would like to swim, please bring life jackets for the kids, and fishing gear if you want to fish. You will also need folding chairs and a cooler of drinks for your family. FBC will provide BBQ chicken and pulled pork as the main course for dinner and delicious anniversary cake for desert. If your last name starts with A-L please bring two appetizers to share and M-Z please bring an appetizer and a fruit or green salad. Dinner will be served at 5 PM.
After dinner we will continue our celebration with a lakeside baptism and prayer service beginning at 6 PM. You are welcome to stay as long as you like. Baptisms and anniversaries are an important event in the life of our family. I hope you will join us and enjoy our time together.
Pastor Colin
You can access a map to the Danks by clicking on the address above, or the embedded map below.
Hello Family,
We will be meeting for worship at Stringtown Elementary School this Sunday, 6/29 and 9 AM. Please enter the parking lot from Mill Rd. After worship, we plan to eat lunch together. Family Bible Church will provide the main course and tableware. If we could have families with last names beginning in A-L bring a dessert and a side dish and families with last names beginning in M-Z bring two side dishes we should have plenty to eat. Also if each family could provide their own drinks that would be great.
We will also be holding a members meeting after lunch to give an update on our building process and get some input from you in the preliminary design stage. Our kids can play in the gym during this time.
Also, it’s not too late to join us for canoeing the Blue River this Saturday morning, but if you would like to go, please contact us to get details.
See you Sunday,
Pastor Colin
Dear Ladies,
We would love to have you join us on Wednesday nights beginning June 11th from 6:45 -8:30 at the home of Dan and Ellen Grimm (14241 Petersburg Rd) as we study the book of James. We will do a DVD driven Bible study by Beth Moore which does not require any homework ahead of time. After watching the video, we will have time for discussion and fellowship. Feel free to invite your friends and join us when you are available.
Questions? Contact Sarah Aiton, Ellen Grimm or Brenda Kerr