The North American Reformed Seminary @ New Life

Over the Summer I was accepted onto the staff at the North American Reformed Seminary (TNARS) as a local mentor. This arrangement enables me to be able to mentor seminary students locally at our church while all their reading materials and assignments are provided free online. At New Life we currently have two students enrolled and a third has applied. I see this as a great way for our church to help play an active roll in the equipping of our members for ministry without encouraging them to accumulate large amounts of debt in pursuit of formal, higher education.

As president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary Al Mohler remarked that he wanted to put SBTS out of business. Mohler was quoted saying in an interview, "There is always the danger that my statement will be taken out of context! I do not mean to say that Southern Seminary should cease to exist in the very near future. I emphatically believe that the best and most proper place for the education and preparation of pastors is in the local church. We should be ashamed that churches fail miserably in their responsibility to train future pastors. Established pastors should be ashamed if they are not pouring themselves into the lives of young men whom God has called into the teaching and leadership ministry of the church."

Saturday Night Services

We began conducting Saturday night services at New Life on November 17th. We plan to have a rotation of four differnt preachers so that some of the future pastors that we are developing can have a chance to preach at least once each month. Our current rotation features Buck Wilford, who holds an MDiv from Liberty University, Philip Decker, who is a graduate of Baptist Bible College in Missouri, Roger Nicolai who is currently enrolled at Boyce College in Louisville, KY, and myself. Our Saturday night services are at 5pm each week. Cassy Mathews has been leading worship.

Jesus & Guns

My friend Buck is going to be teaching a class on how to shoot pistols on Saturday October 6th at 9am at 8971 Stone Rd in Litchfield. The price for admission is only a box of bullets (about 50 rounds - he has pistols of various sizes .45, 9mm, etc.) ...plus Buck is going to be teaching about Jesus! More information about this is here and here

Getting Ready for Fall

We've been reviewing the New Life church manual and preparing to make changes to it and the church's constitution. Also getting prepared to restart some ministries to reach local families and teens.

Frontier Morgantown Trip

We took 13 people to Morgantown, WV this past weekend to help get the word out about the new church plant that we are supporting there, Frontier Morgantown. We were able to distribute approximately 1000 flyers and invitations to a house party and informational meeting for this new church. We did this through distributing cans of soda and water, feeding quarters into parking meters for random people, buying ice cream cones for people on the street, and engaging people in conversations through surveys designed by Campus Crusade for Christ.

First Funeral Sermon

I preached my first funeral this past week. It was for Charles Hand, my wife Amy's grandfather. The service was at Wm Thompson & Son Funeral Home in White Cottage, Ohio on Thursday July 12. The message was based on the text from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. Here is a link to the obituary.

VBS at New Life July 16-20

We are getting ready to host Vacation Bible School at New Life in Medina from July 16-20 6:30-8:30pm. I have participated in VBS before but this will be the first time that I am the director! Please pray that all goes well and smoothly. Our theme this year is Amazing Wonders Aviation. The material is from Lifeway. There is a ton to organize. Looking forward to the challenge! We have online registration at http://newlifemedina.org/vbs

On the Radio

I was interviewed on the radio yesterday about my first year as the pastor of New Life in Medina by Glenn Mertz on WHKW in Cleveland 1220AM for his show Living the Word. You can listen to the interview here.

New Life

Since July 2011 I have been the pastor at New Life Christian Fellowship in Medina, Ohio. For more information about the church visit us online at newlifemedina.org.