McAllen

On February 2nd I posted a few comments about a spring break mission opportunity in McAllen. Here are the details:

In order to keep costs at a bare minimum, we will be commuting each day. The plan is to leave FBC at 8 Monday and Tuesday morning, and to be back around 5. Just bring a few bucks for lunch and you're all set.

You can read more about the effort here. Please let me know if you'd like to help.

All In Favor Say "Aye"

Our pastor was out of town this past weekend, so I filled in for him Sunday morning. I started a series of what will be 4 messages on the subject of what the New Testament teaches about church membership. As luck would have it, this morning I opened up my new edition of On Mission magazine and found an article about this very thing (you can find it on page 7). The long and short of it is that about 60% of Christians disconnect from the local church either permanently of for an extended period time after the age of 15. Needless to say, this does not bode well.

In The Shadow Of His Wings

"How priceless is your unfailing love! Both high and low among men find refuge in the shadow of your wings". Psalms 36:7

Embrace

This weekend my wife and I went to San Antonio for the weekend. Our church is researching what is involved in adopting an unreached, unengaged people group, and our state convention was offering a workshop on the subject. As of this moment there are about 3,800 UUPG in the world, and the challenges to reaching them are substantial. I hope to be posting much more about this in coming months.

For a good summary of the subject visit this website. To see what Southern Baptists are doing to reach UUPG, go here.

Winter Texans

Every year multitudes of folks from the north come to the Rio Grande Valley to spend the winter months. Happily, some of them attend our church while they are here. So, each spring our church holds a banquet to honor these guests. This year the event will be held on Saturday, March 3, and the focus will be on world missions. Some of the ministries we have going, and some that we support, will have displays set up. It promises to be a good evening. Everyone, not just Winter Texans, is welcome to attend. The fun begins at 6 p.m in the FBC gym.

Ravenhill

Revival services begin Sunday morning at FBC Brownsville. The guest speaker will be Dr. Gene Williams.

My all-time favorite quote about revival comes from Leonard Ravenhill. Ravenhill was a British evangelist, who cared not a wit for political correctness. The quote is as powerful as it is short. "As long as we are content to live without revival, we will".

Forever Ruined

I've been a little remiss in updating the blog....humble apologies.

Last weekend I towed our water purification trailer to the disaster relief training in Corpus Christi. We ended up with close to 200 people at the training, including about 10 newbies from FBC. As practice in using our feeding unit, we had to serve lunch to everyone. Menu: brisket and fixings. I'm not sure where they got the brisket, but it was really, really good. I got back in town about 7 Saturday night. All came off without a hitch.

The Bible Institute continues at FBC, and it is going well. Pastor Steve has at least 25 signed up in the English class. Last night we held the first Spanish class. We had 7 in the class, including me. The first curso is Bible Study Methods and Rules of Interpretation. Everyone seemed eager to learn, and there was lots of interaction. And they didn't laugh (much) at my Spanish!

I must say a quick word about the Perspectives class. We continue to meet each Tuesday, with a different speaker each week. Each class is like a mini-revival. I'm never more at home than when I'm around others who are zealous for God's glory, be it here or somewhere else.

I once heard someone say that when a person gets in on what God is doing around the world, he is forever "ruined for the ordinary". O' God, may You ruin many more for your name's sake. Amen.

Spring Break

What are you doing during spring break? Well, if the idea of getting plastered every night at SPI doesn't appeal to you, then perhaps you'd be interested in taking a little excursion.

Last year you may recall that a group from FBC went over to Laredo to help (SBTC missionary) Chuy Avila blanket that city with information packets. These packets contained a gospel presentation, information about a local church, and a free ticket to an evangelistic event. Well, that same idea is being used in McAllen this year, with the big event to be held April 1. And again, they are needing teams to come over and help.

So, we are planning to leave Monday, March 12. Watch this space for more specifics.

(What exactly will we do? Just hang the packet on the door or gate, and go to the next house. It's incredibly easy; the trick is finding enough people to do it.)

By the way, the SBTC newspaper has an article about it here.