Mission

As a family of churches we have a unique opportunity to help provide relief to those in the Philippines devestated by Typhoon Haiyan. In God's kindness, we have had a long and fruitful partnership with pastors Nilo Ebu and Pete Valdez, both of whom lead churches in the Philippines. 

Dave Burnett serves us as our Deacon of Benevolence. In this post he invites us into that role and explains how he does it. As elders we have so appreciated his service, and we have seen time again that his wisdom and compassion bring great blessing to others.

A few weeks ago we had our 2013 Family Meeting, a time to annually come together and think about the past year and the year ahead. This year we felt particularly led to focus on the year ahead. God is doing great things in our church, and we wanted to cast vision along those lines.

The college group (CG) is an outreach-focused small group within Sovereign Grace Church. We believe that as young men and women we are called to "go and make disciples" (Matt. 28:19).

Michelle Alston wrote a testimony that wonderfully captures how God meets us in a variety of ways through the body of Christ. Sometimes that grace comes to us through a counselor, sometimes a patient friend, sometimes a friend who gives an afternoon to fix our car, and sometimes through singing hymns with our brothers and sisters in Christ. All of that is the body of Christ in action and the grace that comes from it!

Over the last months, and years, our youth leaders and pastors have been prayerfully considering changes to our youth ministries to make them more effective. This includes our Sunday children's ministry and our youth group(s). We believe we have found the will of the Lord for our church for the foreseeable future.

On August 25 Marty Machowski will be doing a seminar on a new curriculum we are using in our Children's Ministry. He will also be preaching that Sunday morning (26th). To introduce you to him a little bit here is an interview he did recently on Bob Kauflin's website.

Encouraging stuff about the first Council of Elders meeting and foreign missions: The Priority of International Missions for Our Future.

We're trying to build a church here that has an effective "every-member ministry." Thus, we are excited for men like John–as well as women and children!–to do the work of ministry at SGC.

After a recent sermon I knew of a major change it needed even before I left the stage. Usually it takes at least a few hours, sometimes a couple days, but when I preached on God's view of work from Ephesians 4:28, I knew I needed to address in a more helpful way those who were unemployed or under-employed.