The Friendly Church
We woke up on Friday morning October 2, with the news that the President of the United States and his wife were tested positive for the corona virus. Whereas we are saddened by this and we pray that they will both recover well.
This is a question that Jesus asked on several occasion and particularly in his encounter with Mary and Martha. I’m borrowing the question, not expounding the text.
Dear members and friends of BBC, as we approach this new month in the year 2020 and another Emancipendence, there is cause for celebration and concern.
We celebrate 100 years of witness as a church. We revel in gratitude to our foreparents for their faithfulness, vision, courage, resilience, fortitude and obedience to God as we acknowledge with awe the grace and goodness and mercy of God.
Recently I was introduced to this book,” Rebooting Church”, by Walter Franklyn Davis on Amazon. It is about how the church can access the current technology to attract more members and also to deepen its relevance in a world which is seeing a decline in church membership by 20 percent over the last two decades. Davis sees the threefold goal of the church in pursuing this path of becoming more technologically astute as, Re-thinking, re-imagining and re-booting.
Just prior to Easter most of our churches closed their doors as it was seen more prudent to do so than to open for the required number of 10 persons to congregate in light of COVID-19. A few churches never closed their doors but found creative and sometimes risky ways to keep them open, sometimes encountering the wrath of the law in doing so.
The Jamaica Baptist Union has just completed its 170th Annual Assembly So what does this mean? The JBU is over 170 years old, or put another way, it is over 170 years since the Union has been meeting together as a family of Baptists. That’s a pretty long time. It may be of interest to some of us while to others, it means nothing at all.
The practice of fasting has been observed by the religious community which has informed Christianity ever since we can recall. Moses fasted for forty days and forty nights and in that time wrote the Ten Commandments as given by God (Ex. 34:28). Daniel decided that he was going to fast for three weeks by refusing to eat meat and the choice food of the Babylonians as a means of protest and preservation of his faith. (Dan 10:3) Esther had to make a grave decision, which was to petition the King, her husband on behalf of her people.
Last month I invited you to dedicate some time to prayer and fasting for the church Let us continue in prayer and fasting and particularly for the Millennials which is our focus for this month.
One of the mandate given by Jesus to the Church is to evangelize (Matt 28:19), in fact to make disciples. The Church has employed different methods over the years to accomplish this goal and one of these is an evangelistic campaign. This year the church has decided to hold another of these meetings in the church. This will run from Sunday April 7 to Saturday April 13.
May I remind you again that the main purpose of having these meetings is that we can further our outreach of evangelizing and discipling the lost.
The months of May and June are usually observed as Family Months. During these months we specifically celebrate mothers and fathers and to some extent the whole family. It is a great time for many persons as those who are biological mothers and fathers are celebrated and affirmed. It’s an opportunity for children to let their mothers and/or their fathers know how much they love them and that’s a good thing. It may even be a good time for those who mainly have a commercial interest.