Well, words are inadequate to express our surprise and deepest gratitude for the amazing retirement party this past Saturday.  Joye and I were overwhelmed to put it mildly.  We couldn’t believe all the trouble everyone went to in order to pull this off.  I think it’s fair to say that we have never felt more loved and appreciated!  So thank you a million times over for the blessing of this night – for this amazing outpouring of love.  This night has been etched indelibly on our hearts so that we will never forget it.  This was an event, the likes of which very few pastors ever get to experience.  I’m so grateful that Joye and I got to.

And there are a couple more things I want to thank you for.  First let me thank you for the generous monetary gift that you gave us.  Your generosity was mind-boggling.  The fact is that you just kept blowing us away the whole night – one thing after another.  Thank you dear, dear friends for  blessing us and causing our hearts to overflow with love and joy.

And lastly, thank you for all the cards and kind words you shared with us.  Joye and I read each one yesterday, and we were so encouraged and blessed by each one. 

Well, our time in Seneca is coming to an end and we have such mixed emotions about this move.  We are really looking forward to being with our children and grandchildren – eager to be able to invest in our grandchildren while we have the opportunity.  But to leave this amazing body of believers behind is painful.  How we love you all and how we will miss you.  But you can be sure that we will continue praying for you and are confident that God will continue to grow this body under David’s leadership and use you in some wonderful ways to grow the kingdom of God both locally and around the world.  

As most of you probably know, we are starting to build a house on Lookout Mt., and when it is finished, we would love for you to come and visit.  Nothing would make us happier than to have our Crossgate family visit us in our new home.  

With our deepest love and affection!  

Tom and Joye

This coming Sunday will be a special day in the life of our church.  For the past year and a half as all of us have struggled through the Pandemic and tried to maintain social distance, we have had to meet at two different times for worship.  I’m thankful we could at least meet for worship, but I know that all of us have missed being together as a whole body.  We have all felt like something was missing.  Well, this coming Sunday, all of that will change.  The Session has decided that it is time for us to return to one service and so we will revert back to our traditional times for CGC and Worship.  We will have our Christian Growth Classes at 9:30 am and then our worship service at 10:45 am.  I hope you are as excited as David and I are about this.  It’s going to be so much fun having everyone together again – seeing people that you may not have seen in a while – and then worshiping our great God and Savior together.

Let me encourage you to do a few things as we prepare to come together Sunday.  First of all, when you arrive, grab your nametag and wear it so everyone knows who you are.  Secondly, if you see someone you don’t know – and I’m sure that will happen – be sure and reach out to them by introducing yourself.  We’ve had quite a few new people begin worshiping with us, so don’t be timid.  Introduce yourself and get to know them. Thirdly, because Covid is still lingering around, if you or your children get sick or even display some mild symptoms, please don’t come to church and take the chance of exposing others to what could possibly be Covid.  For the health and wellbeing of the body, stay home and enjoy worshiping with us online. 

How important is prayer to you?  How important do you think prayer ought to be at Crossgate?  If we decided not to pray about the various ministries of the church and instead, just worked hard to have programs that were helping people to grow spiritually, do you think it would matter?  Interesting questions, aren’t they?  I know probably all of you would say that prayer is indeed important – or at least, ought to be.  And I’m pretty sure that most of you would say that prayer ought to be an important, if not central ministry in any church that is hoping to be used by God.  

Well, this coming Tuesday evening at 7:00 pm you’ll have an opportunity to make it known how you feel about these things.  We’re going to have a prayer meeting and we are inviting everyone to come and spend time together praying about the various ministries of the church along with other concerns and needs that may be on your heart. 

In the past, we have had a weekly prayer meeting in which a dozen or so people met to pray.  With the beginning of our Community Groups, we decided that we would encourage each group to pray for one or two ministries each time they met, and then we would have a church-wide prayer meeting on the last Tuesday of each month.  And so this coming Tuesday is the last Tuesday in October (I know it is hard to believe) and we would love to have a lot of you join us as we worship the Lord and join our hearts before His throne of grace.  We need this time together!  We need to seek the Lord and His face so that He might bless us and He might use us in a powerful way to promote His glory!

Do you know how to listen to a sermon?  On the surface that may seem like a crazy question to ask, but it really isn’t.  Actually, I think it may be one of the big problems in the church of Christ today.  People have ears to hear, but cannot hear – they cannot hear what God is saying to them through His Word.   They don’t know how to listen to sermons.  They are like the people that Jesus addressed on a few different occasions.  These people obviously heard the words that Jesus was speaking and they were even amazed at his teaching, but they really didn’t grasp the spiritual significance of those words.  In other words, the message didn’t penetrate their hearts so as to make a difference in the way they lived.  Sadly, I believe a lot of people sitting in churches on Sunday mornings fall into this same camp.

Why is that?  There are probably a number of reasons, but let me mention a few.

Well, I could list some more reasons, but I don’t want to be too wordy here.  The point I want to make is this:  if our hearts are right with the Lord and we really want Him to speak to us so we can change AND if our focus is on the Word and we’re trying to understand it so as to apply it to our lives, God’s Word will feed our souls and it will change us.  We may not think the messenger is the most eloquent in his presentation, but if he is faithfully turning our attention to the Scriptures, God will speak through him powerfully and we will grow as true disciples. 

As you all have read in my letter and the letter from the Session, we have two very important congregational meetings coming up. We don’t have many congregational meetings at Crossgate, so I wanted to clarify what is about to happen.  

Next Sunday, August 8, we will have the first of these meetings to elect a Search Committee for the next Senior Pastor at Crossgate.  As you already know, the recommendation of the Session and the motion that will be presented to you is that the Session serve as this committee.  And if so elected, the Session intends to recommend at the next congregational meeting two weeks later that David Story be elected to serve as your next pastor.  This is the direction that the Session believes God is moving our church.  We believe that David is a man of God who can effectively lead this church in the days/years ahead.  But having said that, you as the congregation have the responsibility to either confirm or overturn this.  It is not a “done deal” until the congregation votes.  This is one of the great privileges and responsibilities of a member of Crossgate.  You have a voice and get to have a say in who will pastor this church.

So next Sunday, you will vote by ballot on the Search Committee and if the motion of the Session passes by a majority vote, the Session will serve in this capacity.  But in the interim two weeks before the next meeting, the Session would like to hear from you if you should have concerns/questions or simply want to affirm the direction we are moving in.  We believe that God uses the counsel of godly men and women to reveal His will for a church and so we want to hear what you have to say.  In this way, we believe that Crossgate can move forward as one – in the unity of His Spirit.  This doesn’t mean that everyone agrees on every single thing, but it does mean that we “be subject to one another in the fear of Christ” (Ephesians 5:21) and that we “give preference to one another in honor.” (Romans 12:10)  In other words, we must be willing to accept the vote of the majority in the congregation as, not only the will of God for Crossgate, but His will for individual members.  

I love the passage in Psalm 67 which says “God, our God, blesses us.  God blesses us that all the ends of the earth may fear Him.”  Think about that for a minute.  God doesn’t simply bless us so we can be comfortable or feel good about ourselves or simply enjoy the good life.  He blesses us so that people around the world will stand in awe of Him, and will love, trust and obey Him.  God wants the nations to know of His mercy and grace that is found in Christ and proclaimed in the Gospel.  And He invites us to collaborate with Him in this great work.

One of the ways that we can join God in this is by giving.  Now there are two ways that you and I can give.  We can give by sight or we can give by faith.  Giving by sight is what you would imagine.  It is simply pulling out your budget and going over your income and expenses and then deciding how much you can afford to let go of.  Giving by faith doesn’t completely overlook this process;  you still look at your budget and evaluate where you are financially.  But when you give by faith, you take it a step further by asking an all-important question:  Lord, how much above my regular giving can I trust you to channel through me for your work?  At this point, it’s not a matter of how much you can afford – but how much can you believe God to supply through you out of His resources.  And so as you pray about this, you simply ask God to put an amount on your heart that He wants you to give (and it’s usually an amount that is greater than you could imagine giving), and once He does that, you promise to give that as He provides.

Over the years, our congregation has been able to support numerous missionaries around the world through our Faith Promise Giving.  Our congregation has accepted the challenge to help reach the nations by giving generously to this work.    Now the time is here once again for each of us to prayerfully consider what the Lord would have you give to missions over the next year.  Our commitment to various missionaries and missions over the next year is $122,400 but our hope is that we could even surpass this number so that we could expand our world outreach even further.