June 2007

 (this isn’t me, just a cool picture of outdoor baptism)

 

This Sunday was a great day in the life of Whispering Pines Community Church. It was one of those days that can keep your excitement for ministry up for several of months.

Around two months ago a man in our church told me about his daughter’s salvation. He explained the conversation they had and how she described her conversion experience. She had made a real commitment to follow Christ with your life and asked Jesus to forgive her of her sins. He then asked if I would baptize her at the beach. I was pumped about the baptism part, but a little weary of the beach idea. I, like most people, like to control my environment and having a baptism service at the beach would offer us little control over the weather and other conditions.

After a couple of weeks I came around and decided to at least try it. If it didn’t turn out very well then we could always go back to doing all our baptisms at a pool.

We set the date of baptism for the evening of June 24^th at one of our local beaches. After the initial conversation with the man about his daughter it seemed like the flood gates opened up in our church. We saw people become new believers and want to get baptized, as well as people who had been believers for several years but had never followed through in baptism. By Sunday night we had 8 people ask to get baptized.

Of this 8, 6 were adults, 1 a teenager, and 1 child. All of them invited their “worlds� to come and celebrate this commitment with them. Our little section of the beach was packed with people (probably around 50-60). We even had beach goers come over and check out what we were doing. One of the ministers of our church was able to share his salvation story with a father and son who walked up to check out what was going on.

Almost on a daily basis I find myself telling someone to just stop trying to control everything and let God control it for you. I love the fact that God is not satisfied with my level of trust right now and continues to teach me this same lesson as well.

Please thank God for moving in such a powerful way in bringing these new believers into His Kingdom. Thank Him for rekindling an old love for Him in the hearts of some of the older believers in our fellowship.

Finally, please join us as we pray that Sunday night was just the tip of the iceberg. Church planting and ministry in general is a marathon, not a sprint. Pray that we are mindful of the long race ahead of us and that we haven’t peaked yet.

Those that have been baptized, saved, discipled, and ministered to are as much a testimony of your prayers and financial support as it is of our work. Thank you!

Love and Laughs,

Billy

Luke 10:2
He told them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

Dear Friends,

Many of you have been journeying with this church since before we were a church. Some of you have actually been praying for this church even before Ellie, Elle, and I landed in Port Saint Lucie. For you who have been around awhile, you also know that the most requested prayer need for this work has been for another family to bear some of the load with us. It took God longer than I would have liked (patients schmatients), but He answered this prayer in an incredibly great way. Josh, Melissa, and little Andrew joined this work at the beginning of this year and have been an even bigger blessing than we imagined. Not only has Josh taken the worship arts and done a wonderful job with all of that, but Melissa has been one of the best children’s ministry leaders I’ve seen. Oh, yeah she is 100 times better than I was.

This blog has two parts; first join us as we continue to praise God for bringing this talented, humble, and hard working family to our team. Second, please pray for them as they continue to pursue God’s will for them financially. Many of the Rowell’s friends and family have stepped in to support them financially and prayfully, but they are currently unable to afford health insurance. Ellie and I went through this in New Orleans and the combination of having a child and not having health insurance can cause an emotional toll on the parents. Both Josh and Melissa have had incredible attitudes about this and are praying for God to provide, not just for them but primarily for their new son Andrew. Pray that they will never doubt God’s call for their lives and ministry. Pray that God will provide health insurance for the family.

Your prayers have moved mountains. This Sunday our young church is baptizing 7 people. This has happened because of the passionate prayers of hundreds around the globe.

Thank you for your prayers, financial gifts, and strong words of encouragement.

Think, Feel, Worship

Billy

Last night was a very important night in the life of this brand new fellowship (Whispering Pines Community Church). If you have a moment or two I would love to share this share this with you.

We publically launched the church about three months ago. Since then God has done some amazing things and we have seen our attendance more than double. While that is great news, that cannot be our end goal. Our goal is to take people from the community and make them “attenders” of the church. Our next and most crucial step is to take these “attenders” and make them “ministers”. Attenders don’t affect culture much. Attenders rarely grow the Kingdom or change the world. Ministers are the ones that are change agents and Kingdom growers.

Last night we had part one of our two part “Boot Camp” meetings in one of our new family’s home. We had a total of 17 adults there to learn about the church and how to become ministers here. 17! That means that after next week’s final Boot Camp meeting our ministry team will double.

This is amazing to us. We are grateful to God for each of these families. Some are brand new believers who will be baptized later this month. Others have been believers for several years and are ready for leadership roles in the church. Some are great out front people and others are looking forward to working behind the scenes. The bottom line is that all 17 are eager to not just come and get fed, but to go out and to feed. These 17 are not just looking for God and us to bless them, but that they can be a blessing to others.

Jesus changed the world with 11, I think we’re off to a good start with these 17.

Life is good,

Billy