The new calendar year of 2009 is upon us. We pray for God's grace, guidance and blessing as we continue to move forward here in time and on towards eternity with our Lord.
I believe that 2009 will witness quite a few new events and opportunities for Beautiful Savior. Vacation Bible School planning will begin shortly. For various reasons we did not host VBS in summer of 2008. We will attempt a major effort in 2009. One of our nearby neighboring congregations had close to 200 children last summer. Can we do the same?
In 2009 we also plan to do some updating of our website. The potential exists with today's technology for us to have people listen to our worship services on the Internet from our website anywhere in the world. We'll see if we can get to that point in 2009.
Pam will also be planning for a new and revitalized Sunday school program. How many children are there in our neighborhood who don't attend any kind of children's hour on Sunday mornings? How big of a Sunday school could we have? 25? 50 children? More?
Wonderful programs have been developed for welcoming and following up on visitors to our worship services. We will attempt to get visitor welcoming and follow-up program up and running again.
2009 will also be a year when we will reach out to our neighborhood with community outreach events. We will keep you informed as to how we intend to touch our neighbors with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Another new opportunity for 2009, also available because of technology, is our ability to work new hymns and music into our worship service folders from the new hymnal, "Lutheran Service Book." This will provide us with a greater selection of hymns and other music for our worship services.
There is a lot of exciting things in the planning for 2009. How will we be able to do them? The answer is WITH YOU!
Your prayers, financial and volunteer support will be extremely important for 2009 as we embark on some new things.
But most important for all of us to remember is WHY we want to attempt all these new things in 2009. The reason for all of our activity here at Beautiful Savior is for all of us to "grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ," and to be faithful to our Lord's command to, "go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you."
God's blessings to you all in the new year!