World Vision Baptist Church is changing names. Our new name will simply be Vision Baptist Church. This is due to a conflict with the name of the relief agency which was never our intention. We are still World Vision Baptist Church. We still have the same goals and heart beat and tho our name will be Vision Baptist Church our vision will be to take the gospel of Jesus Christ to the entire world.
We will continue to use both names over the next year or so and then the name change should be complete. Our web pages will still work but the new main web page will be http://www.visionbaptist.com/ or http://www.visionbc.org/. It will take some getting used to after this much time but we love the new name as well because it expresses exactly who we are.
Thank you so much for praying for us. God is tremendously blessing. Just today I heard of a young Muslim lady that has been attending our church giving testimony to the fact that she has prayed to Jesus Christ and is trusting Him for her salvation even though she is still a little confused.
Another testimony was of 2 young Muslim men that are learning a great deal about Jesus Christ and are interested enough that they are inviting their friends to church. God is so good.
We ended the month of August with an average of 63 in Sunday School, 81.75 in the AM service and 58 for the Sunday evening service. That is our best average yet. It is an increase in average attendance of 15.5% over our best average which had been June of this year.
Thank you and keep praying for us and the wonderful things that God is doing here.
I just got an email with the following link in it. It is a 60 second video that you would enjoy seeing. The Bible teaches that Jesus is coming soon. Watch the video and experience just a few seconds of just that. Click on the following link and just play the video:
I will write another post in just a few hours but we are officially changing the name of our church from World Vision Baptist Church to Vision Baptist Church. You will notice that in the name of the blog as I have already changed it. Please make a note of the name change. Everything else remains the same. We just had to change the name due to a conflict with the relief agency called World Vision.
Jacob Taube has written a very good article that I want to invite you to read. Here is a small excerpt:
So here we find an extraordinary incongruity: a humiliation in the heart of vindication. A triumph that was the opposite of everything he himself could have envisioned. Joseph wanted to go home, but a one-way ticket to Canaan was not in the plan. Before he knew it, Egypt was in his hip pocket. He was the man in Egypt. He never prayed for that, but God wanted Egypt. What God wanted is what Joseph got.
(I love that thought – “God wanted Egypt.” What did Egypt mean to Joseph as a teenager in Canaan? Nothing! Maybe less than China meant to me as a teenager in the United States! Joseph had a set of dreams, desires, and wants, but God wanted Egypt to recognize His glory. Joseph was picked for the task. God had to allow some awful things to happen to Joseph to align his wants with God’s wants! I’ve wanted a ton of things, even felt like God has torn many of those wants away from me – but God has done it to give me another all-consuming desire!)
On January 8, 1956 Jim Elliot, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming, Ed McCully, and Nate Saint were killed by the Auca Indians. We will remember their lives and contributions to the cause of Christ tomorrow. It has now been over 5o years since they gave their lives but God has accomplished untold and uncounted good from their lives. They died physically but not spiritually and their deaths were not in vain but caused a great harvest for the cause of Christ.
Here are some links that will take you to information about the men who gave their lives:
The following are quotes from the journals of Jim Elliot. I would like to challenge each of you to take the time each day to write down your thoughts from your Bible reading and study. Just a short brief note of how God is working in your life is a great tool to make you think and then to make you remember what God is and was doing in your life.
I would also challenge you to get an accountability partner with whom you share what you write each day. I do this in my e-sword Bible program and then email a copy to my wife and another friend. It is a great accountability tool to make sure you read each day and also that you really meditate and get something from your time in the word.
“I seek not a long life, but a full one”
Father, make of me a crisis man. Bring those I contact to decision. Let me not be a milepost on a single road; make me a fork, that men must turn one way or another on facing Christ in me.
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
I may no longer depend on pleasant impulses to bring me before the Lord. I must rather respond to principles I know to be right, whether I feel them to be enjoyable or not.
Wherever you are, be all there. Live to the hilt every situation you believe to be the will of God.
He makes His ministers a flame of fire, Am I ignitable? God deliver me from the dread asbestos of ‘other things.’ Saturate me with the oil of the Spirit that I may be aflame. But flame is transient, often short-lived. Canst thou bear this my soul—short life? In me there dwells the spirit of the Great Short-Lived, whose zeal for God’s house consumed Him.”
God, I pray, light these idle sticks of my life and may I burn up for Thee. Consume my life, my God, for it is Thine. I seek not a long life but a full one like Yours, Lord Jesus (Jan 1948, as a junior in college).
Was much encouraged to think of a life of godliness in the light of an early death (Oct 27, 1949).
When it comes time to die, make sure that all you have to do is die (Mar 25, 1951).
Only I know that my own life is full. It is time to die, for I have had all a young man can have – at least this young man can have (Dec 22, 1951).
This Sunday we will celebrate or remember the 50 year anniversary of the death of 5 young men who loved God with all their hearts and were used to literally change the history of world evangelism. As I prepare for my message and also as I study these men I have found some very interesting links.
Jim Elliot has been one of my heroes for many years now and I believe that you will be thrilled to read The Life and Testament of Jim Elliot or The Shadow of the Almighty. I hope you get the blessing from it that I did
Last night, August 24, 2006, Tony Howeth and I had the privilege of participating in Tyler Master’s ordination service. The Masters are members of the Grace Baptist Church in Middletown, Ohio.
Pastor Roger Green did a tremendous job in the ordination council and service. I have never seen a greater expression of love and honor on the part of a pastor or church towards their missionary. Several times in the service as Pastor Green spoke from his heart to Tyler and Gretchen he was moved to emotion telling them that they were his children in the ministry, that they were loved, that their church was behind them. For those of you that truly believe in the ministry of the local church it was truly an emotional and exciting service.
Tony Howeth gave the Bible to Tyler on behalf of the Ordination council and gave Tyler a wonderful charge to love the Word of God and to honor it. I was privileged to give a brief charge to the Tyler as a former missionary to a missionary on his way to one of the hardest fields in the world. Pastor Green then charged Tyler and Gretchen as his pastor and later the church as to their responsiblities.
World Vision Baptist Church is very proud of Tyler and Gretchen. God is going to use them greatly. I encourage each of you to pray for them that God will give them their support and that soon they will be able to be on the mission field.
What an honor for Tyler and Gretchen to see Dr. Charles Blackstock, pastor of the Lighthouse Baptist Church, Dawsonville, Georgia and the young men from the Baptist College of World Evangelism from that ministry make the 8 hour trip to honor and love Tyler and Gretchen. Dr. Blackstock has shown a tremendous love for missions and for the young men and women that have given their lives to try and reach Muslims with the gospel message and especially those going to the very heart of the issue in North Africa.
Brother Howeth drove me to Middletown and then we left right after the service and arrived back at the house at about 4:30 am. I truly enjoyed the time God gave me to spend with Brother Tony. He is one of the choicest men of God that I have ever known
Just a quick note to thank each of you for your super kindness to me on my birthday. I have loved aquariums for many years and thank you for giving such a generous gift to help me purchase one. Thank you for the cards, the emails, the cake, and all the kind words. I love each of you and thank God so much for the blessing of being the pastor of World Vision Baptist Church. God has been good to us.
Mark Tolson, World Vision Baptist Church’s newest member!
Mark and the Asian Bible Fellowship!
Yesterday was another wonderful day at World Vision Baptist Church. Mark Tolson who is a student at the Our Generation Training Center joined the church. Mark is an extremely fine young man that is being used of God. He plans on going to China as a missionary. God is already using him in the Asian Bible Fellowship.
We were blessed to have 50 in Sunday School, 82 for the morning service and 65 for the evening service. God truly blessed us with many opportunities to share his love and salvation message with those who visited the church.
Sunday night missionary, David Bennet, and his family were with us. They are a very wonderful family with a tremendous heart for God and for World Evangelism. Their ministry is called Silent Word Ministries international and I invite you to check out their web page. With such a large family they certainly added to our attendance.
Please pray for them as they settle in to a new phase of their ministry at Silent World in Trenton, Georgia. Pray as they find a house and get moved in here in the United States. This is a very expensive ordeal as you move from one continent to another as Betty and I well know.
Pray for Rick Hudson, April Hudson’s dad, as he is in the hospital in Athens, Georgia after a fall on Saturday.
Thank you for being the most wonderful people in the world. Thank you for all you did for our anniversary and for my birthday. God bless you. This note is from a very grateful pastor.
