Our Blog

Women on Mission May 2016

Please remember these prayer requests brought to us by missionaries:

PRAYER FOCUS - TEXAS:  Gene Gersten is a chaplain serving with Dallas Life Homeless Shelter.  He shares, “ I am requesting prayer for my wife, Donna Gersten, asking God to continue healing her body of cancer and to stop the onset of lymph edema in her left arm.  Thank you all in advance for your prayers.  I take comfort in the knowledge that we serve an awesome God Who answers prayer.”

PRAYER FOCUS - SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN PEOPLES:  New missionary families who arrived in Africa earlier this year may be finding day-to-day life wearing and hard.  As the days heat up in West Africa, ask God to blow the refreshing of His Spirit on their hearts and souls today.  Pray they will remember the day He called them to Africa, and that they will have renewed strength for language acquisition and cultural understanding, in spite of the heat and homesickness they may experience.

PRAYER FOCUS - ALABAMA:  Evangelism catalyst Diane Smith requests prayer for youth and college students to serve in Kids Clubs in the government housing communities of West Anniston.  Pray churches will seek opportunities to build relationships in government housing communities by reaching out and sharing Jesus.  Pray for God to send her girlfriends with whom to just have fun.  Pray for her as she disciples 14-year-old Rico, as he has surrendered his life to the Lord.

PRAYER FOCUS - SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN PEOPLES:  Would you pray today for the missionaries from Africa who retired from IMB last year, led by God to do so, who may now be experiencing “reverse culture shock” as they adjust to the culture of the United States?  Life in the US has changed greatly since they left for Africa.  The pace of life in Africa is often slower and more relationship based, which can bring feelings of loneliness when returning to the fast pace of the US.  Pray for good relationships with churches and friends as they adjust.

PRAYER FOCUS - MICHIGAN:  Kevin Hester serves as a church planter with his wife, Mary, in Michigan.  Pray for their church plant in southwest Michigan as it reaches out to the lost and unchurched in the area where few strong SBC churches exist.  Pray for partners to help resource their ministry needs.  Also pray for upcoming evangelistic events and for the lost to be saved.  Pray for the new Bible studies and martial arts out reach they are starting.

PRAYER FOCUS - SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAN PEOPLES:  He is a faithful shepherd to his flock of believers, yet recently his mother-in-law was killed due to persecution.  How can he take care of family needs and still care the new believers under his watchcare?  He meets with them to encourage them, but he needs encouragement as well.  Ask God to guide and guard the heart of this West African shepherd and pastor.

Our Annie Armstrong Easter Offering receipts were $4,453.18.  (19.6% of our World Mission Club Offering will be added to that amount at the end of the year.) 

Women on Mission will meet Monday, May 9th at 6:00 p.m. at the church.  All our ladies are invited to join us.

April 2016 Pastor's Points

Dear Church Family,

Wow!!  What a great Easter weekend we had this past month!  The Easter
Eggstravaganza was a great event.  Thank you to all the volunteers who made it happen.  Also, a big thanks to April Sharp our Children’s Ministry Director for giving great leadership!  Kids and parents alike had a great time and I know personally that I was able to have some great interaction with people that are not normally a part of our church!  We followed that event up with our three Easter services the next day.  All of our services were led by our new worship pastor Jared Mitchell, and he did an outstanding job leading us!  We had right at 800 in our worship services and had one person join the church and two people pray to receive Jesus as their Savior and Lord!  We need to thank God because He is the one that brought the people to worship and moved on the hearts of those that made decisions.  He is a good, good, Father and He truly blessed us this year at Easter.

Also, I am looking forward into the future as our good father is going to continue to move among us and bless us with His direction.  I have been seeking hard to know His will for our church family for the next months and years and I feel Him giving me leading in this area.  In May I will have been the lead pastor of Oakhill for ten years.  That just does not seem possible.  We have seen God do many things in those ten years.  We have seen many salvations, people have grown in their faith, we have built buildings together, expanded our worship services and ministries, and seen our budget grow.  Our lives truly have changed as we have worshiped, grown, served and given together!  I am so thankful for all that God has done for us and in us.  And I am very excited to consider what He is going to do in the next ten years of our ministry together.

I shared back in November of 2015 in two separate messages that I know part of what God is leading us to do is to invest like never before in the “Grow” portion of our “Life Change Cycle”.  Our worship has expanded, our service in the ministry is strong, and our people are giving faithfully.  Now we need to invest in our disciple making here at Oakhill.  And we are going to come to understand that the only way to grow as a disciple is to be “counseled” by God’s Word.  So we are going to intentionally set in place a discipleship emphasis that will include a biblical counseling ministry that will help us come to understand that biblical counseling is simply a part of the discipleship process.  Please pray for your ministerial staff as we continue to ask God to show us the details of this emphasis. You will be hearing more about this in the months to come.  I cannot wait to see what God is going to do!!!

I love you and I love being your pastor,
Pastor Alan