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Dear Brothers/Sisters and Friends,
This Friday and Sunday, a lot things are going on:
This Sunday is the Church's 40th Anniversary celebration - the big milestone of our church. I support the church celebration. 40-year is not easy, it is a long time. Praise the Lord for His guidance to bring us today. We are very privileged that we have a church to go to, we have a room for our fellowship gathering where we care and connect each other. Today I like to share a line of personal reflections, please do not laugh :)
Often I (like a lot of people) took it for granted that a church is a open, public place where everybody is invited, and everybody can free come and free go. Many times, I often reflect our church is a blessed place that belongs to everybody. Our church in fact is a big household where brothers, sisters, and friends are hosted and served by a portion of people (in the name of the God). Despite we call it the Home of the God, it still has all the worldly errands: Mortgage, all bills and service requests, kitchen, cleaning, activities, teaching/caring. Think of a 90-minute worship, it is prepared by a big group of people: PowerPoint preparation, worship pamphet authoring and printing, hymn and rehearsals, ushering services etc;When we drop our children into Awana or Sunday school, in the background, a portion of people who are sacrificing their own fellowship or worship time to serve other people's kids. Some people think the 40-year anniversary celebration is a superficial, and wasteful event, it is a well-deserved worthy event, we can use the moment to remember these who followed Jesus's footsetp and sacrificed to pass God's love to other people. 40-year ago, a few of Jesus followers (oversea Chinese), they established the gospel group, and grow the group, then rent, repair, and remodel, eventually build the church as of today. $4,000,0000 dollars, it is a lot of money, it is contributed and loaded by individual church families. I can hardly imagine the difficulties, the faith and courage, the persistence, and the effort to establish our church that we can take it for granted. In the household comparison, we, as parents, gave big birthday parties to our children when he/she reached a milestone age, we celebrate also for our own hard-work that we have sacrificed to raise them to the age. Our church is 40-year old, it is not easy, we got to celebrate it.
A few things to report:
1. This Friday: Our fellowship will practive a song for Sunday Celebration: This weekend, the church will celebrate, Dong Su suggested all of our fellowship walk onto the stage to join the celebration and sing a song to praise our Lord. We got to do it! Since this Friday Rev Lee (Rev Li Shou-Quan) will give special preachfrom 7:30pm, so we have to have a 30-minute brief practice/rehearsal before this Sundayt. Can you come on-time at 7:00pm? We have a 30-minute rehearsal. The song is very easy (I have posted on our fellowship website), please practice on your own, and remember the lyrics.
迦南诗歌 第一百一十四首：我要唱那最美的歌
我们要唱那最美的歌 唱给坐在天上的父 我们要唱那最美的歌 唱给配受赞美的主 拍起手掌，配上乐器，扬声欢呼 歌声嘹亮，响彻云霄，在每一个日子里 2. This Friday: We need to serve cleaning after Friday freshment time: After Rev Lee's preach, church will serve refrements, our fellowship will serve cleaning.
3. This Sunday Church Election Vote: This Sunday, it is the church annual member meeting to vote elders, and deacons. We need two families to distribute the voting ballot from 9:15am. Members of our church please come to vote to help church make decision and understand issues. (member mean who baptised in this church, or baptised elsewhere but certified by this church). Liqin (our church member committe) sent me an email, please read:
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Dear Lintao and Lixin,
I am sending this email to you, coordinators of my home fellowships.
I am not sure if you know that I am in the Church Membership committee. Recently we try to update our membership list. I noticed many brothers ad sisters in our fellowships do not vote, including some very active members. When you make announcement for the coming Sunday church meeting, lease encourage people to vote
Participating vote is the most important way for church office to follow up with church members. Church will list members as non-active if they do not vote, would eventually think these members have left our church, and do not issue vote to them anymore. More importantly, casting vote will help church make decision and understand issues.
Thanks,
Liqin
On behalf of Membership Committee
----------------- 4. Saturday Banquet: Do not forget the Banquet if you have signed.
Praise the Lord, our brother Zhang Jian/Pan Liya spent a big deal of time to designed poster and decorated for our church celebration. When you walk into the church hall, the "red" banner and all posters on the wall are done by them.
Awana is on this Friday, please sign your children between 7:30pm to 7:45pm.
In Him,
Lixin Gao
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团契消息 >