VCNP Leadership Monthly for December 2008
Brian's Corner
Greetings!I hope you had a great Thanksgiving and are looking forward to the Christmas season! It is certainly upon us! We had a fantastic outreach to our community last week before Thanksgiving! We gave away about 550 turkeys and all the fixings to go with them to people in our community. We also had lots of games and fun for the kids, along with free clothing for the community and a free meal was served as well. Thank you to all of you who donated for this event, or served at this event! It was a huge success! I am beginning a series this weekend called "Christmas is Coming" which will hopefully get us more spiritually ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus that is fast approaching. We will be having 5 identical Christmas Eve services this year. The first two services will be on December 23rd at 6:00 PM and 7:30 PM. The other 3 services will be on December 24th at 3:00 PM, 4:30 PM, and 6:00 PM. Please be praying about who you can invite to one of these Christmas Eve services. Most people are very open to coming to church for one of these kinds of services. And, once they come, you never know what God might do in their life! We will have invitation cards for these services available in the foyer beginning this weekend. Please take several of these and invite several people to these services. The theme for these services will be "Return to the Stable." We will have lots of Christmas carols, a short drama, and a message about Christmas at these services. It should be a lot of fun! A bit of news that most of you already know about is Dave McPherson, one of our Associate Pastors, has taken a new position at Vineyard Church of Anthem as the Worship Pastor there. You might know that we planted that church about 7 1/2 years ago now. Terry Tarleton is the Senior pastor there. We are certainly sad to see Dave go, but we believe this is God's Will for Dave and his wife, Ginger. We know Dave will do a great job there as their Worship Pastor. Unfortunately, because of our financial situation, we will not be able to hire someone to replace Dave on our staff. In fact, as I told you a couple of weekends ago, we had to tell a few employees here at VCNP that we will need to lay them off at the end of the year. That has been a very difficult thing to do --- in fact; it has been the single most difficult thing I have ever had to do in my life. But, if we want to keep our church in the black financially, we had no other choice. We had already cut everything out of our budget that we could possibly cut, and it still was not enough. The last thing to cut was personnel. So, we had to make that decision. We are praying for these employees that they would be able to get great jobs to replace their jobs here at VCNP. I would ask that you would please pray for them too. I have told you before that we have never had to do something like this in the history of our church. Since the inception of this church, we have always increased in our tithe income and our attendance every single year until this year. Thankfully, our attendance is still increasing. But, our income has dropped dramatically this year - - by about 20%. I know it is because of what is happening in our economy. So, we are having to make difficult decisions just like every other business, company, and church in our country. Please pray this financial situation will turn around very soon - - for us as individuals, but also for us as a church. Thank you again for all you do to help make VCNP the church that it is! We are making an eternal difference with our lives! See you this weekend! Love, Brian Update on Recent EventsNovember Water BaptismOur Vineyard family celebrated the fourth and last baptism event for 2008. We were blessed as 53 men, women, and children obeyed Christ in being water baptized. Most of those baptized had received Christ in the last few months! We were privileged to hear many testimonies of God’s love and provision. I love baptisms, and I will never grow weary of seeing God’s powerful hand working to bring the lost to Himself! We are a grateful church filled with awe that the God of the universe is so good to us! I look with anticipation to what God will do through the Vineyard in 2009! -Dave Johnson, Associate Pastor |
Events and HighlightsHere are some major events that we can expect to see soon:
Upcoming Classes:
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