Laclede Update

September

 

Fall is upon us. September was another first for this new Director of Missions. We have dates on the calendar for the next year’s associational meetings. The fun part was driving and delivering the book of reports to each individual church pastor or leadership. I did not get to see everybody but did get to connect with several in our Association. We had a good annual meeting of our churches. We had eighteen churches represented, with sixteen pastors present and around seventy total people at our meeting. Thank you so much for coming out to take part at the annual meeting. I appreciate each everyone of you.

We had our first Association prayer breakfast on September fourteenth. We had 7 of our churches in attendance. Brian McKimmey gave the devotion out of Luke 19. His message was about what are we doing with the talents that the Lord has given to us. Jesus has gone on to Heaven with the promise to come back, will he find you using His gift to you furthering the Kingdom or are you going to give Him just what he gave to you. How are you about His business till He comes? Are you about the Master business? We had good eats, a great devotion out of God’s Word and a wonderful time of prayer with brothers in Christ.

The camp board has been planning how to rent our camp out to other ministries to use our facilities for the Kingdom. We will have a booth at the Missouri Baptist Convention to promote our camp. We will have a video of the different activities as well as brochure of the resources that camp offers. Renting the camp will allow for more updates to the camp and for the camp to help with expenses that it brings to the association like insurance, maintenance, and improvements. If the churches want to reserve a date to enjoy the camp in 2025 season, they can do that now. Call the Association office to reserve your date. Remember the Lord has blessed us with this beautiful camp, take advantage of it in 2025.

For the last couple of weeks, we have been working at Russ Church, putting up wain’s coat, fixing the cracks in stucco wall covering that is in the sanctuary. We had an excellent group of people from different churches come out to help. We will have another workday soon. We are sanding and painting and putting trim up in the sanctuary. If you would like to help, contact the office and we will let you know when the workday is going to be.

We do have people that have gone or are going to help Missouri Disaster Relief in Georgia. If you are a trained volunteer for disaster relief and want to go help in some way, contact me or the office and we will put you in contact with people that might be going from this area. They are doing food ministry, chainsaw ministry, shower ministry and laundry ministry.

Save the date! We have a conference coming up on November 15-16 with Mark Clifton from the North American Mission Board. And other special speakers that we will announce. We will have breakout sessions that encourage and challenge you in revitalizing your church to thrive in the work of the Kingdom. We will also be planning a time to go gigging and fish fry at the end of November or the first of December.

Once again thank you for allowing me to serve in this position. It has been a joy to serve the Association during this first year of ministry.