Month: August 2014

A Congregational Meeting Report from Tim Counts, Pastor of Family Ministries, Immanuel Bible Church, Summer 2014

Will you come along with me for a summer drive? It’s a ride full of excitement, activity, and growth, but there are also many quiet moments of worship. Go ahead, buckle up, and I pray that seeing the Lord’s hand throughout the summer will move you to worship too!

Take a look in the rearview mirror. The summer started out for Family Ministry with PNAMU (Parent Night And Move Up), a warm night in early June when parents and teenagers packed into our Youth Center to congratulate our graduating Seniors and play kickball together. Justin Reeves, our Middle School Coordinator, welcomed 10 new 6^th Graders into our Middle School Ministry that night. I also held a meeting with parents while the youth were in Bible Study, focusing on purity resources for parents and teens.

 

Vacation Bible School was the next major turn in the road, keeping Hilleary Sorenson, our Children’s Ministry Coordinator, busy. Immanuel hosted over 160 children throughout the week! We had about 100 Immanuel volunteers involved in some aspect of VBS. I summed up our week of VBS by saying, “As a dad, thank you for loving my kids in such a Christ-like way. As a pastor, thank you for representing Christ so well to each child and family who came through our doors.” With as many children as the Lord has blessed us with at Immanuel, Hilleary has been doing other projects this summer such as opening up an additional nursery room for during Sunday Worship Services.

  

The next turn was a sharp curve, as the week following VBS Immanuel sent a team of 5 High Schoolers and 5 adults to El Mirage, Arizona to help IBC missionaries Steve and Ruth Wilson. They held VBS, did work projects, and encouraged the young church through fellowshipping with the members and holding a special evening together with the youth ministry. I love how we strive to serve together as a church at Immanuel. We purposefully never called this a High School Mission Trip. I was thrilled to see 5 of our High Schoolers serving next to 5 adults from our church, some of whom did not know each other before.

  

The last stop I want you to see in the rearview mirror is the one we took in San Diego, attending Camp Regeneration for the second time. It was another phenomenal week of fun, fellowship, worship, preaching, and even salvation. This is what one of our High Schoolers said about his time of spiritual growth at Camp Regen: “as we continue ahead on this long, steadfast road, we can always look in our rearview mirror to see the memories we had at Camp Regeneration.  But, now, more importantly, we journey ahead toward the gates of Heaven where evil will be no more and where the good LORD prevails over all.”

 

                   You can stop looking in the rearview mirror now and take a look at the journey Family Ministry is currently on. Any Sunday morning in August you can find us in the basement going through a book on how to study the Bible with parents and teenagers together, as we have been doing all summer. But look over there at that sparkling lake! Justin Reeves, the Middle School Leaders, several parents, and 12 Middle Schoolers are on our Middle School Backpacking Trip in the Ross Lake wilderness area. They are being exposed to God’s creation up close, enjoying fellowship together, and thinking on how those who walk with Jesus are the ones who are “like a tree planted by streams of water…” (Psalm 1:3) Will you pray for them with me?

I am taking a week long detour to Camp Gilead in Carnation, WA at the moment, preaching the gospel and teaching God’s Word to 200 5^th-7^th Graders, including nine Immanuel kids. This is the camp where Alisha Friberg has been a counselor all summer, and where a young lady very involved in ministry in our church and community was saved as a Middle Schooler.

Will you pray that the Lord will work in hearts, through His Word?

Lastly, let’s take a moment to look at the road ahead. By God’s grace, you can see a Marriage Retreat at Semiahmoo Resort with Dr. John Street on the horizon in October, and even before that, a six week adult Sunday School class on marriage. If you squint, you can see our Middle and High Schoolers doing a service project together on a Saturday later this Fall. There will be other ministry events, marriage counseling, a sermon on God’s call in parenting, perhaps a baby dedication, and even a wedding at Immanuel November 15! But Family Ministry is just one vehicle on this road. In fact, if you take a closer look, it is just one section of a giant bus that we are all on together, as the body of Christ at Immanuel. And, in the words of one of our High Schoolers, we know where this road is headed. “We journey ahead toward the gates of Heaven where evil will be no more and where the good LORD prevails over all.”