One Year at Northwest Baptist Church

Jane and I celebrated our one year anniversary at Northwest Baptist Church yesterday. I want to highlight a few of the many things that God has done for our church is this past year. The church had been without a pastor for three and a half years. They had an Interiem pastor for about a year and a half of that time. Some of the folks thought would have been a good pastor for them but he did not feel it was God's will. When we came out here to see the church and preach for them I was encouraged by their desire to see the church grow and move forward. We had several meetings already on our schedule and a trip to Hawaii for our 30th anniversary so we really did not get started right away. On our first service a Wednesday night we only had 10 people but they had about 20 or 25 most Sundays. I set a personel goal for the church to have 60 in a year.

So when we returned from Hawaii in December I started a Soul winning and Visitation class. We had 8 attend and the class ran through Feb. Then in March we started doorknocking with the eight people and God blessed us with visitors each week and many souls saved. We planned for a "Friend Day" on the last Sunday of May. We had 94 that morning and the folkes were excited. We have continued to see visitors each week and when I counted the total number of visitors for the year we have had 322 first time visitors, 6 per week.

We have had a few setbacks, one of the two deacons, (a family of 9), job moved him and his family to Oklahoma City. This was a great loss for our church because he was our treasure and song leader and Sunday school teacher, He went door knocking every week, but God has sent us other to help. The other deacon and I had several disagreements and he and his family also left. He taught Sunday school and his wife played the piano. Jane ane I figured we only have 6 people left of the faithful ones. We have lost about 17 or 18 but God has sent others in their sted.

Our goal of 60 by the 1 year mark looked out of reach a few times but God has blessed our faithfulness to go doorknocking each week and last Sunday we had "Patriot Sunday" and had 71 and then yesterday we had 63. My goal is 100 by this Sunday next year then we will need to start working on a new auditorium. The one we have now will only seat about 120 so if we split the children off for childrens church we can only run about 150. We do have room to build a 350 auditorium behind the church and have 100 parking spaces.

We have also remodeled the foyer and cleaned up the front of the church with new flower beds and cut down a tree. This opened up the the view of the front of the church. I think the first impression has been greatly enhanced.

I am very excited about what God is doing here and can hardly wait to see what He will do this year. We want to be faithful to continue to door knock and invite as many as we can. We are looking at a van we can ues to start a bus ministry with and will have a big spring campaign.