Reflecting on the Year

With 2025 behind us and we enter into a new year, it’s the natural place to share highlights of the past year where God has been at work and invite you to join us for our Annual Church Meeting that is coming up. In just over a week we will gather on January 11th at 4PM for this all-important meeting. If you can join us, you will hear from our ministry leads and from me over the past year. We will communicate our financial update and what it looks like for us in this year. We will also look to affirm John Schlothauer as our new appointed elder as we say thank you to Terry for his six years of service as an elder. After which we will celebrate all together with dinner from our favorite Taco lady.

2025 was significant for us as a church. The answer to years’ long prayers for a new facility we can call our own was answered by the Lord. And it is a beautiful facility and I think we’ve utilized the space well for what we have – a beautiful answer to prayer! We also celebrated our 25th anniversary as a church! I smile as I think of that special service we had in thanks to God for His kindness to us!

We also found difficulties, challenges and disappointments that marked the year. Moving into a new place brought with it a neighboring church who has fought to see us not there… or at least not be able to park there. The year also saw us remove Marc as one of our pastors. That was difficult and miserable.

But then I think too of how the Lord was kind to us as we walked with Him… We sent a team to Macedonia for a prayer trip of God’s work there. We expanded Pastor Jeremy’s role to “Pastor of Discipleship” as he took on the role of the discipleship in our Small Groups. We also had a few podcasts we recorded (new one coming next week!). We counselled many folks in hard places in life. We had a beautifully unified elder team and growth in prayer. We have been grounded afresh in the foundations of what we believe as a church on Sunday mornigns. We’ve also seen growth as a church numerically, we now average 333 on a Sunday (from 309 last year). We have 185 members (from 173 least year). And we have 140 members serving on Sunday’s from 124 last year. This is encouraging. Small growths – that’s the best growth I think. It allows us to not outgrow our ability to care for folks.

So here’s a few of the ways I have seen God at work in this past year. We’ve seen many ways we have been blessed, and we’ve seen ways we have been stretched and drawn to Him. That’s good! God is good!

Without wanting to be trite in this… I truly hope and pray that we will walk with the Lord in all the more dependence in this year. I want to look back at the end of this year and see how He held us and drew us all the more fully to Him. I hope that we get to do this year together, church.

Held Abundantly By His Grace,

Pastor John