Lebanon Road Report: January 4

We got off to a great start to 2009 at Lebanon Road. Our attendance headed up again, and we had very uplifting services.

At the beginning of our time together yesterday morning, our treasurer presented the congregation with the budget for 2009. Even with the economy in turbulent times, our elders challenged us by increasing our budget. We know that our families will meet and exceed the challenge set before us by our elders so that we can do as much good as possible through our giving.

Yesterday morning, I preached a New Year’s sermon that was entitled, “A.D.” We used the phrase, “The year of our Lord” as the basis for each of the four points:

The final point served as an appeal. While no one visibly responded, I got a lot of compliments for trying and preaching that point. One of our elders gave me such encouragement. He said, “Sometimes we preach our hearts out and no one responds then…but they will.” Those words meant so much to me!

Last night, I began preaching through the entire Bible. We are trying to encourage as many as we can to read through the Bible in 2009. We have schedules that many are using, so they read the same thing each day. To encourage them further, I am preaching a lesson from the previous week’s text each Sunday night. Last night, I presented a sermon called “Get On the Ark!”

We were blessed to have 352 in our worship yesterday morning. That’s an improvement over our numbers for December, so we hope we are through with having so many away for holidays!

It was also exciting to have an excellent number on Sunday night. We had 260 worshipping with us last night, and that was in spite of the fact that over 30 of our number travelled to the monthly Winter Youth Series last night. Add them in, and we were just under 300 on Sunday night. That’s so encouraging!

We say it each week, and we mean it: if you are ever in our area, we hope you’ll stop by and visit with us at Lebanon Road. We know you’ll be glad you did!