September Already?

It's hard to believe but tomorrow will bring us to September and the final four months of the first decade of the new millennium.  For the mission work here it's another new fall season, our ninth since arriving in July of 2001.  So much has been accomplished and yet so much still needs to be done.  I feel we are finally at the "tipping point" of our work and am seeing progress more rapidly than in the past.  I'm confident, our finish line isn't too far off now.

Which brings me to this point.  We need everyone to pray for our spiritual and financial support in the coming season.  Our mission account has been hanging in the black perilously for the past few months (summer always is a tough time for missions) but we are now within the "red zone" enough that I'm concerned.  A few years back, our account was $15,000 in the red and through God's providence, we were able to erase that debt in a week.  Since then, we have been stable but for the first time in nearly two years, we are very close to going back into a deficit if we cannot bring in sufficient funds.  We dropped nearly $8,000 over the summer and if the losses we experienced over the summer continue, I will be back in the red by October 1.  This comes at a time when the work is seeing it's greatest progress since we arrived on the field.  Our church grew by over 50% this summer and new families are joining us every month.  It's imperative I stay here to oversee things and traveling at this time is extremely difficult with young kids at home and my oldest daughter now married and unable to help us with the household.

In my printed newsletter from Home Missions, I mentioned the use of SKYPE as a tool for me to actually be in service with our churches via the internet.  I've already done this once with a church in Tuckerman, Arkansas and the results were great!  I would love to do it again with any and all who would have me.  The cost is minimal as the software is free.  If you already have a computer wired to your church for movies, worship, and video, you already have all you need!  Call me at 720.296.1719 for information on how we could do this.  I need the support and would love to visit with you about this.

If nothing else, please pray for new givers and for our existing giving to stabilize.  This is an exciting time in Denver.  Lives are being changed and a strong Free Will Baptist Church is growing because of your love and support for the work!

Another Decision for Christ

Last night (Sun 8/16), I received a call from a family friend that Becky and I have prayed for for years.  At one point, we had gotten the family into church but for a few years, they had quit coming.  We never stopped caring about them and frequently called or visited them.  On Saturday evening, I felt led to go by and visit but there was no one home.  I left a card in the door and prayed for them and left to another visit.

Imagine my surprise at the call.  No, they hadn't yet seen my card though it had been nearly 24 hours since my visit.  But I was asked to come immediately.  I traveled to their home and noticed both of them on the front porch.  It was dusk so I couldn't tell that the wife had been crying.  There's so much to say but for brevity's sake, the wife told me how lost was feeling.  How separated from God she had been.  Her tears flowed when she told me of her pain and how my recent visits to their home had alerted her to make a change.  She could clearly feel the wooing of the Holy Spirit but was lost on how to respond.  With her husband by her side, I explained to her how she could be saved and know that Jesus would always be there for her.  She nodded approvingly and prayed the most beautiful prayer I've heard in a long time.  She was broken, lost, and totally surrendered her life to the Lord I serve.   Her husband took this all in and after several minutes of talk afterward, I believe God is working in his heart also.  What a wonderful God we serve.  There is a lot of "junk" in this lady's life that needs to go and today, she took the first steps in changing some of her surroundings away from home.  Please pray for her and her family.  Satan will no doubt attack her quickly about her decision so I need you to pray.  Names aren't important.  God knows who she is.  Just pray!

What a mighty God we serve!

6/14 Worship Recap

Today was a great day at your FWB mission.  For the past five weeks, we've had five new families find us and today, we completed a series of messages titled "Right Thinking" with a study in the life of Job.  Job was a great man both in good times and bad and that was our focus as we wrapped up the series of messages.  Over the past few weeks, we've talked about calming the storms in our lives, making better use of our time so we stay connected to God, building relationships with others so we have real friends to turn to in our good times and bad, and then today we focused on how to stay even minded regardless of the outside influences in our lives.

We are excited for the new few weeks.  My oldest daughter is getting married on July 11th and we have two youth groups coming down on the weekend of July 25-26.  These groups should be a tremendous blessing to our work and help us with some minor projects at the new site that we have not had time to tackle with everything that's been going on.

So how can you pray?  Well, here are a few things we need prayer for:

• Our finances.  Pray that our mission giving stays stable as we grow!
• Our church finances.  Pray that our tithes increase
• A renter.  Pray for another church as a rental partner to help us with expenses
• Our new families.  Pray for them to get connected and see the larger vision
• A new family.  Pray for another new family this month to join us.

These are just a few items.  As always, feel free to contact me at: scottc@minister.com (my blog email) and I'll be glad to share more with you either over email or phone.

Be blessed.  Have a great week!

Welcome To The New Blog

Welcome readers to the newly remodeled and somewhat stripped down "Rangeview FWB Mission Blog Site". Many of you had asked about this site since I haven't been posting to it much the last year or so. My writing endeavors have me posting elsewhere but recently, I had received some emails asking me to post here again specifically on the church, our progress, and how you can help.

So I decided to go back to the drawing board and remodel the site. I wanted it to be an informational base for our work so you can follow our progress now that we've moved to our new storefront site. I elected to go with a much simpler theme that will facilitate reading, a few less bells and whistles since those didn't seem to be used much, an "easier on the eyes" layout, and a freshening of the posts. I removed some old stuff and put it in the digital dumpster, dusted off the desk, and now am ready to resume some regular posting here.

I'm not sure about my posting schedule here. I will try to add material here at least weekly but more often if time allows. I hope you will take the time to subscribe again using the new tool at hte bottom of the page to do so. Many of you now use feed readers for this task so I wanted to improve that option as well.

So welcome to the newly remodeled site. I look forward to our interaction here.