Hello Church Family!
I hope you’re having a great week! Today is Wednesday and so in just a few hours will will have two campuses full of people coming to worship the Lord, connect to the church and bless other people. I love this season for many reasons. The cooler weather, fall specific activities (like football games and hunting), and a host of other important dates (like my mom’s birthday! lol).
But it’s also my favorite season on the church calendar. So many people visit our church for the first time in the months of August and September and it’s been really neat to see all the new faces in our congregation on Sunday mornings. I’ve actually included some of our recent guests in this monthly update so that they can be in the know about some of the upcoming events.
Before we get to the upcoming events, let me give you a quick testimony about some of what’s happened since our last update.
2020 Vision Celebration Service
Several weeks ago we had our 2020 Vision Celebration Service. It was a really neat time of worship and celebrating what God has done these past 12 months in and through Broadview. There was about a 30 minute video that covered various different testimonies from this past year’s mission trips and other projects related to our vision.
Because of the sensitive nature of some of the info in that video we aren’t making it public online. This will help ensure we’re still able to take international trips in countries closed to the Gospel. However, if you’d like to watch it you can reply back to this email and I’ll give you a private link with temporary access.
If you weren’t there I’d really encourage you to watch the video. It was really encouraging to see everything that’s been happening this past year. The band at Broadview West led us in worship and they did a great job. Several folks from our main campus hadn’t seen the “before-and-after” difference since the construction began for Broadview West. The difference is overwhelming! Everyone left encouraged and thankful. It was a great night.
Revive TX :: Abilene
We also just finished a week long mission trip to the city of Abilene this past week with Revive TX. Every day, two times each day, we had teams go out into our city to pray for people and share the Gospel. 663 people made first-time decisions to trust in Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. Amazing! There were about 15-20 Broadview members there each day. I was so proud of our church for showing up and going out to engage people with the Gospel.
The outreaches didn’t just help introduce people to Jesus who previously didn’t know him. They equipped and encouraged the people of God to be more bnew and intentional in sharing the Gospel today. My own testimony was that I needed a spiritual B-12 shot as it related to personal evangelism. I just wasn’t doing it on a consistent basis. I had lost my zeal. My heart no longer matched the heart of God as it related to the unreached in our city.
Thankfully, the Lord renewed a zeal in my heart for reaching the unreached and being personally committed to the discipline of verbally sharing the Gospel with those whom God puts in my path on a day to day basis. I know I won’t be a “Billy Graham” or something like that. You probably won’t either. But that was never the goal. I was just praying the Lord would increase the evangelistic temperature in our church and he has done just that.
There will be ongoing outreaches in our city each week for the next 6 weeks. You can find the schedule here or further down in this email under upcoming events. That means if you weren’t able to make it this past week and you still want to be trained in how to share the Gospel in a simple, non-intrusive way, you should join us next Tuesday! It starts at 6:00 on September 25th and the first location is New Hope Church (3122 S. Clack). Different churches will host the training and outreach each week. Broadview will host on October 23rd.
THIS WEEKEND!
In terms of things that are coming up this fall, I want to highlight a few. But I want to start with what’s going down this weekend (if you start your weekend on Thursday! hahaha)
Here & Now – September 20th
Tina Diaz has expressed a willingness and calling to start a single’s ministry here at Broadview. It’s actually a single’s ministry that’s for ALL of Abilene but since we are her home church we want to help her make it successful and encourage as many Broadview people to participate as possible
The name of the ministry is “Here & Now.” They will be hosting their first worship experience tomorrow, September 20th, at 201 Mesquite. It’s a building in downtown Abilene. The service starts at 6:30 and will go until around 8:00. The speaker for this month’s gathering will be Broadview’s own Jayce Barbee. Leading worship will be Kirk House. Please tell every single person you know about this event. We are really praying the Lord uses this to minister to our single adult population here at Broadview.
Ladies Retreat – September 21-22
The other event happening this weekend is our Ladies Retreat at the MCM Elegante Suites. You’ve been hearing about this in the Sunday morning services for the past few weeks. The speaker for this year’s retreat is Dianne Davenport. She will be sharing about the faithfulness of God in the midst of life’s worst tragedies. She will share a personal testimony from her experience with Hurricane Harvey.
Night of Worship
The first Sunday in October we will be hosting a Night of Worship. This will be a time of corporate prayer, singing, confession and thanksgiving. We’ve done these types of gatherings in the past and called them Solemn Assemblies or Covenant Renewal Ceremonies. I guess the name is less important than what takes place during our time together.
We will spend time seeking after the Lord. There will be opportunities for us to pray for various different needs facing our church and our world. We will also have opportunity to pray for one another and take the Lord’s Supper. Folks from both campuses and all four services are invited to come. There will be a brief church business meeting afterwards. I’m personally really looking forward to this service and I hope you’ll join us.
Fields of Faith
On October 10th we will participate in the annual Fields of Faith event at Shotwell Stadium. Our Big Country FCA has a very important presence in our local community and there will be a need for us to provide as many field encouragers for this event as we can. If you’d be willing to serve as an encourager and pray with students as they come down to the field, then please reply to this email. I’ll send you the registration link once all the clearances have been met.
India and Brazil Trips
We have two remaining mission trips this year that you can be praying about. We will have a team of four leaving for India the first week of October. While some of the details on this trip can’t be publicized online, you can give towards the trip if the Lord so leads.
Our Brazil team leaves for Brazil on November 27th and will be back December 5th. You can pray for each team member and/or give towards their trip through our website. Both trips will include times of personal evangelism, encouraging believers and strengthening existing churches. In Brazil, there will be an effort to plant as many new churches as we can. You can contact David Casonif you’re interested in more info about the trip.
For those of you who weren’t able to hear about our last Lesotho trip, it’s in the video I mentioned earlier. We also created a page on our website that gives some video footage of the Lesotho trip if you’re interested in that. Again, if you’d like to see the 2020 Vision Celebration Service video then just reply back and let me know.
The Rest of the Story
As for the rest of this fall season it’s going to be pretty simple. We will have our church wide Thanksgiving service on November 18th. That should be a great time as always. We’re also working on creating a few additional gatherings that will allow people from all of our services/campuses to mingle together and better get to know one another. I’ll share more details as we have them.
Also, as you may have already heard, we’ve created two reoccurring monthly experiences that help facilitate a person’s “next steps” at Broadview. The first is held on the second Sunday of every month. It’s called “Discover Broadview.” This is an experience that will teach people the mission, vision, values and ministry strategy of Broadview. For folks who are new to Broadview and/or looking to join the church, this would be an ideal environment. Lunch is provided as well as childcare. You can RSVP online.
The second experience is called “Find Your Fit.” This experience is somewhat similar to the first but a little more interactive. The goal of this experience is for people to walk away and have a better idea of how to make Broadview feel like a place they can call home. It’s not easy finding a church and even when you think you’ve found a church that fits you, it still takes a little while to figure out how you best fit in to the bigger picture. This experience is meant to try and streamline that process so that your next steps are clear and easy to take.
Our staff goal for 2018 is that every person in our church would be able to understand and successfully take their next step as a follower of Jesus. This is just another tool in our tool belt to try and make that possible. I think I’ve written enough for today so I’m going to bring this thing to a close.
As always, if there’s anything I can pray about or anything you’d like me to know, just reply back to this email. It’ll go directly to me. I’m also happy to answer any other question you might have. I hope you have a great rest of your week!
Blessings,
Pastor Wes