Hello Church Family,
I hope your day is going well! February has come and gone and it was a great month of ministry at Broadview. Thank you for you prayers for the Work as Worship Retreat. The event went well and I think it was a great opportunity for us to partner with other churches in Abilene to bless our city.
Over the past several weeks I’ve talked about our discipleship pathway at Broadview. It’s easy for churches to get overly focused on their programs and events and forget why those things exist in the first place. Church programs, events and the like are merely tools in service to a more overarching process of making-disciples. Our discipleship pathway at Broadview revolves around three words: worship, connect and bless.
We worship in gatherings, we connect in groups and we bless others in teams. When speaking with new members of our church at our new member orientation lunch, I try to emphasize those three things. There’s an abundance of activity that goes on around here. But one shouldn’t feel pressure to engage in every activity. Really, all that’s needed is those three things. Worship in a gathering. Connect in a group. Find a way to bless others by serving on a ministry team.
I thought I’d write this month’s update around those three pillars.
Worship:
Obviously, the worship of God includes much more than a weekly worship gathering but I want to highlight some of our gatherings for just a few minutes. For the past few days we’ve had guest speaker Cecil Peasley lead us through a seminar on Spiritual Warfare.
Cecil is the president of Living Ministries International. It’s been a helpful and informative teaching series. If you are interested in what the Bible has to say about spiritual warfare but was not able to attend the seminar then you can watch the messages on our websiteor in our app.
We’re about to start a new preaching series on Sunday mornings entitled “Letters to a Legalist.” As we continue traveling through the Gospel of Luke, we find Jesus interacting with scribes, pharisees and the religious establishment. The conversations between Jesus and that group are really instructive for us today. Nobody wants to be a pharisee but we can sometimes slip into the spirit of legalism without even knowing it. I’m hopeful the Lord will use this series to show you the freedom that comes from being “in Christ.”
Easter is on April 1st this year. Usually we’re able to get a little further into April before celebrating Easter but not this year! Easter is one of the largest services of the year at Broadview. Because of limited parking we cancel our Sunday morning small groups on that day. We will need extra help with hospitality and preschool workers so please contact Michelle(for hospitality) or Sherry(for preschool) if you’re willing to help on that day.
We will have a special photo booth set up (like last year). So if you’d like to take family photos on that day then wear your Sunday best and take advantage of the booth. It will be set up in the Gathering Place. We will kick off a new sermon series that day entitled “Uncommon: The Upside Down Kingdom of Jesus.” We will spend five weeks going through the Sermon on the Mount in Luke’s Gospel. It’s going to be a blast! Please invite a friend. 90% of people say they would attend a Sunday morning worship gathering if they were invited by a friend. Who could you bring?
Connect:
Even though we’re cancelling Sunday morning small groups during Easter, I do want to highlight some other exciting news about groups at Broadview. Recently, we had TWO new small groups start up at our Main Campus. Both of these groups are off campus groups geared towards younger adults.
The first is a singles only group that meets on Saturday evenings at 6:00pm. Daniel and Michelle Hessler host this group at their house. If you’re interested in attending or know someone else who might then please get in touch with Daniel or Michelle.
The other group is on Sunday evenings at 5:00. This is a group for marrieds or singles and meets at Randy and Marion Voorhees house. If you’re interested you can reach out to Randy or Marionfor more information.
For a list of ALL of our adult small groups you can check out the groups pageon our internal member site Broadview.Life. Our internal site is a great way to stay up to date with what’s going on, take your next step or register for upcoming events. If you haven’t yet checked it out then I’d encourage you to do so.
Another good way to discover small groups is the upcoming Group Connect Sunday on April 8th. This will be the weekend after Easter. We’re hosting a lunch with all of our existing adult small group leaders. If you don’t have a group or if you’re looking for a new group then you can join us for this lunch and get to know some of the group leaders. It’ll be a fun and casual environment so I hope you’ll consider joining us. You can contact Taylor Millerif you have questions.
The last thing I wanted to highlight in terms of group ministry at Broadview is a grief recovery group that meets on Sunday nights. Right now the group is closed but another one opens up every 6 weeks or so. Sandra Mitchell and Mitzi McAndrew lead the group and it’s a really helpful medium for working through the grief associated with the loss of a loved one.
If you are personally dealing with that kind of grief or you’d like to get information on behalf of someone who’d benefit from a group like this, please contact Sandraabout when the next group is going to start.
Bless
As I type these words our Spring Lesotho Mission Team should be landing in Johannesburg, South Africa. They’ll drive for eight hours in order to arrive at Lesotho so please be praying that God protects their travel. If you’d like to know how you can pray for the rest of their trip you can read the prayer guide. I encourage you to do so! We will take two additional trips to Lesotho this year as we engage the unengaged and unreached peoples of Lesotho. Your giving to the World Missions Offeringis what makes these types of trips possible so thank you for your generosity.
Next week we will have two additional mission teams being sent out on mission. There will be a group of men traveling to South Texas to do some construction work. One team of men will continue construction on a free youth camp facility for low-income families in the Valley. The other team of men will finish out some plumbing for Iglesia Bautista La Blanca’s new church facilities. Pastor Omar provides leadership for both of these projects so please be praying for him along with the rest of the team.
The second mission team will be going to Mission Arlington. Our student and young adult ministry will send a group of folks to pick up donations, make deliveries, pass out flyers, work in the food pantry, manage the clothing room and more. Be praying for both of these teams as they help advance God’s Kingdom throughout the state of Texas.
This update is getting a little long in the tooth so I’d better shut things down. As you can tell, there’s a ton of stuff going on. This is really just scratching the surface. Hopefully you’ve seen that we’re not engaged in all this activity just for the sake of activity. The gatherings, groups and ministry teams all serve as vehicles for a larger, more important, discipleship pathway.
I hope you have a great rest of your week. If there’s anyway I can pray for you, please let me know!
With you in the journey,
Pastor Wes