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E-Letter
December 2009
News and information about the Santa Fe River Baptist Association—and more
Prepared by Wayne Harvey, Director of Missions
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This is the month, and this the happy morn,
Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring,
For so the holy sages once did sing,
That He our deadly forfeit should release,
And with His Father work us a perpetual peace.
John Milton
Association and Other News and Events
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Celebrate Christmas with Us
Annual Association Center “Christmas Open House”
Monday, December 7-Thursday, December 10, and
Monday, December 14-Thursday, December 17
8:00 AM-5:00 PM
You are cordially invited to stop by, eat some goodies, and celebrate Christmas with our staff!
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Christmas Brunch at the International Learning Center
Wed., Dec. 9 at 10 am. We would love to have you attend.
Parkview Church, Gainesville
Enjoy some refreshments and meet our teachers and international students.
Season of Prayer for International Missions/Study and Lottie Moon Christmas Offering
November 29-December 6
WHO’S MISSING? WHOSE MISSION?
More than 3 billion people are still missing from God’s Kingdom.
Whose mission is it to invite them?
Yours...Mine...Ours
How do we do it?
December Events
5 SEC Championship Game
5 Prayer Council Mtg., Ridgeview Church, 10 a.m.
5 Blind Fellowship, Lighthouse Church, 4 p.m.
7 Monday night prayer, Ridgeview Church, 6:30 p.m.
7-10 Association Center open house
9 Last day of classes for International Learning Center, UF, and SFC
14-17 Association Center open house
18 Last day of classes Alachua Cty. public schools
23-28 Association Center closed
25 Christmas Day – Hallelujah! Our Savior is born!
31 Association Center closed
Local Ministries Report
May God be pleased during this holiday season as we minister to needy families. Our association provided food baskets to eleven families this Thanksgiving. Thank you, Northwest Church, for your generous monetary donation to help with these food baskets. We will be helping needy families during the Christmas season with gifts for children. If your church would like to help with this project, please call the association office. Most gifts that are purchased are clothing, dolls, footballs, or basketballs. Please help those who need our help during this season of celebrating Christ’s birth.
Merry Christmas,
Vicki Lawrence
Church & Community Ministries Director
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Our Association: Starting Churches Is a Priority
Over the past seven years, our association has invested more than $98,000 in local church starts, helping church planters to start eleven churches in and around Alachua County that are still ministering. None of that money has come from our budget but from the “Calvary Fund,” a fund created when the Calvary Baptist Church, Gainesville, closed about ten years ago and gave our association the proceeds from the sale of their property to use for new churches and new ministries. Our Missions Committee has supervised the use of these funds for church planters throughout this period. The Florida Baptist Convention has also provided funds for church planters and our association has matched those funds if a planter requested our help.
Below are introductions to two church planter-pastors in our association. This month’s featured church planters are both Hispanic. Most of the 15,000+ internationals in Alachua County speak Spanish, making the creation of new Hispanic churches more important than ever for our area and for the Kingdom. If you feel that God is calling you to help start a church, please call our Director of Missions, Wayne Harvey, to learn more about how you can get involved in some of the most exciting work in the Kingdom.
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Church planter: Jonathan Colon
Church: Iglesia Hispana Santa Fe
Church history: The church was started in 2004 by Iglesia Evangelica, Gainesville, a member of our association. Less than a year later, the pastor moved out of state to take another job and Jonathan stepped in immediately to become the pastor. |
The church: About fifty adults, several teenagers, and fifteen children meet each Sunday for worship, most of whom were not attending any church before they began to attend Hispana Santa Fe. Jonathan shares the preaching responsibility with three other men in the church. Each Tuesday and Friday evening church families meet in homes for Bible study and soon the church will begin a third home Bible study on Thursday nights, all part of an effort to reach more Hispanics in north central Florida for Christ.
Members come from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Panamá, Dominicana Republic, El Salvador, and Colombia. Most are farm workers who live here year ‘round but some return to their home lands after spending only a few years here. Because Jonathan emphasizes discipleship, most of those who return home become involved in churches there and some serve as church leaders.
The church’s ministry: Because some church members don’t have their own automobiles, Jonathan and others in the church continually provide transportation to doctor’s appointments, grocery stores, and other places. Sometimes Jonathan accompanies parents to their children’s schools to interpret in parent-teacher conferences. For several years two volunteers, Joan Harvey (First Church, High Springs) and Vicki Lawrence, our Church and Community Ministries Director, taught English there each Monday night. The church is always evangelistic, reaching out to Hispanics in a wide range from Santa Fe. In recent months, for example, twenty people made public professions of faith in Christ and Jonathan baptized eleven who still live here. In addition to Jonathan, one of his sons, Rafael, and two members of Iglesia Evangelica, their partner church, provide leadership for the church.
Personal Background: Jonathan has a bachelor’s degree in education and was a school teacher in his native Puerto Rico. He also was director of human resources for the national government before he and his wife, Anabel, moved to Gainesville where Anabel became a graduate student at the Univ. of Fla. After living for a few years in Tennessee, they returned to Gainesville and a friend of Anabel invited them to attend Iglesia Evangelica. Jonathan says he was very reluctant to attend a Protestant church because he was a Roman Catholic but they did attend, he heard the gospel, and became a follower of Christ in 1988. In 2005, after serving for years as a deacon at Evangelica, Jonathan felt the Lord’s call to take on a new role in the church and to become a pastor. Since taking the role of pastor, Jonathan has attended training conferences provided by the Florida Baptist Convention and by New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in Miami and has been a member of our association’s Missions Committee.
Pictures below: (Top) Taking the Lord’s Supper; (Bottom) Some of the congregation
Church planter: Aldo Mesa (with his wife, Raquel)
Church: Iglesia Hispana Gainesville
Personal background: Aldo grew up in Communist Cuba where the ideology of the government had a direct bearing on his destination and his career. The grandson of a Baptist pastor and the son of devoted Christian parents, Aldo was the only child in his school who refused to become a member of the Communist youth group. He suffered ostracism because of this refusal to accept the government’s atheist program and, as an adult, he continued to rebel, risking his life in the process. |
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As a Baptist pastor, he publicly and aggressively opposed the Communist government, especially its severe restrictions on churches, to such a degree that his family and friends feared for his life. Although he wanted to remain in Cuba where he was a leader with the Cuban Baptist Convention, the Cuban government demanded that he leave the country. At about this time, in 1989, an opportunity became available to move to New Orleans to become a pastor there. So, he and his wife, Raquel, moved to Louisiana where he started a Spanish-speaking church and graduated from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary with a master’s degree in marriage and family counseling and from Loyola University where he studied computer science. (He had already received a bachelor’s degree in education and a master’s degree from seminary in Cuba.)
In 1983, he and his family moved to Gainesville where he became pastor of Iglesia Evangelica, a member church in our association. He remained at Evangelica until 2002 when Franklin Graham led evangelistic services here. When invited by the Graham organization to become a member of their staff and to go to Spanish-speaking countries with Graham for crusades, Aldo took that opportunity and continues to travel with Graham to Central and South America where he has been instrumental in starting five churches in Argentina and Venezuela.
After leaving Evangelica and becoming a staff member of the Graham organization, Aldo moved his ministry to Mayo and Branford where he ministered to migrants with the Florida Baptist Convention until he returned to Gainesville over a year ago to start Iglesia Hispana Gainesville.
The church: Hispana Gainesville meets each Sunday at the Ridgeview Church in Gainesville with about 70-100 people attending weekly. Most members live and work here with no plans to return to their native countries, among them Mexico, Colombia, Spain, Cuba, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Peru, Dominica Republic, Argentina, Venezuela, and even Romania.
The church has been actively involved in the community, recently providing a dinner and participating in a walkathon for breast cancer research and the Shands Children’s Hospital for Cancer Care. The church also participated in the recent local Latino Fair in Gainesville, distributing tracts, singing, and sharing the gospel. They also were the only church represented on the Univ. of Florida campus at a recent Hispanic fair and, as a result, several college students are now attending the church.
The church has excellent leadership with an associate pastor, Jaime Zelaya; a migrant minister, Maria Clevenger; a minister to college students, Maria Zelaya; and four deacons.
Future work: Recently First Church, Alachua, gave Aldo permission to use their facilities for a new church that he plans to start there in January of next year. Already about twenty people have committed to help him start the church and reach more Hispanics with the gospel.
Pictures below: (left) A worship service; (right) Church members singing at the Gainesville Latino Fair
If your church has not turned in your Annual Church Profile, please do so as soon as possible. If you need any help in completing your forms, please call the association center, 352.373.5030
Events Coming in January
Saddle Ridge Ranch National VBS preview for 2010: Jan. 8-9, Jan. 28-29, and 29-30 at Ridgecrest. Previews are $55 per person and $45 per person for groups of three or more from the same church or association. Call the association center for more information, 352.373.5030.
Media/Library Workshop
January 30, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Place to be announced later.
Journey to True Financial Freedom Seminars
Two seminars are scheduled in or near our area in December and January. You can register online at http://www.crown.org/CrownEvents/default.asp. This is a great one-day seminar. The cost is only $25 per person.
Here are the dates and locations.
Southpoint Community Church
7556 Salisbury Rd
Jacksonville
Lunch available for charge; pay at church. NO CHILDCARE PROVIDED
Session Date: 12/5/2009
Time: 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM
For information, call: 904-281-1188
and
First United Methodist Church
348 SW Rutledge St.
Madison, Fla.
Lunch and childcare included.
Session Date: 1/23/2010
Time: 8:30 AM - 4:30 PM
For information, call: 850-973-6295
Your servants in Christ,
Sam & Sandy Register
Area Director, North Central Florida/South Georgia
Crown Financial Ministries
352-375-3591 Home
352-284-3850 Cell
Marlene Gardner is available for top quality music at weddings, Christmas parties, dinners, and other special occasions. She will present a complete program using her digital piano. Contact Marlene at 352-380-0699.
Training for Those Starting Special Needs Ministries
Northwest Church - Fellowship Hall
5514 NW 23rd Avenue, Gainesville
P.U.R.E. Ministry Project Training (www.pureministryproject)
Saturday, January 9, 2010 - 8:00 a.m. - noon
Light breakfast served 8 - 8:30
Training presented by:
National Consultant for Disabilities Ministries, David Glover. David is president of Zachariah's Way and God gave him a vision for the P.U.R.E. Ministry Project. He has a great deal of experience in disabilities ministries both as a professional and as a grandfather of a disabled child.
Free but preregistration is necessary: Contact Dianne at dianne@nwbc-gnv.org or call 352/378-9692
We invite you to join us in the P.U.R.E. world:
Perfectly created by a loving sovereign God, designed for His purposes.
Unique in his or her own gifts, blessings, talents, and desires.
Receptive and responsive to our communication, touch, and acts of love.
Eternal - There are No Disabled Souls.
Thank You for Your Church's Contributions to Your Association
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Member Churches |
Thru Nov. ‘09 |
Year to date |
1 |
Alachua First |
561.12 |
841.68 |
2 |
Antioch |
372.15 |
813.86 |
3 |
Centerpoint Christian |
.00 |
.00 |
4 |
Country Crossroads |
.00 |
32.02 |
5 |
Eden |
.00 |
.00 |
6 |
Eliam |
1,500.00 |
2,370.45 |
7 |
Evangelica |
.00 |
.00 |
8 |
Faith-Tabernacle |
.00 |
.00 |
9 |
Fellowship |
.00 |
609.51 |
10 |
Forest Grove |
650.00 |
1,300.00 |
11 |
Gainesville First |
379.50 |
693.54 |
12 |
Grace |
120.90 |
258.30 |
13 |
Hague |
97.68 |
191.59 |
14 |
Hawthorne First |
.00 |
.00 |
15 |
High Springs First |
1,280.85 |
2,466.24 |
16 |
Island Grove |
.00 |
.00 |
17 |
Journey |
.00 |
.00 |
18 |
Korean |
.00 |
.00 |
19 |
Lake Butler First |
200.00 |
400.00 |
20 |
Lake Forest |
.00 |
.00 |
21 |
Lighthouse |
64.54 |
161.68 |
22 |
Living Covenant |
102.14 |
414.22 |
23 |
Mount Carmel |
.00 |
.00 |
24 |
New Hope |
.00 |
.00 |
25 |
North Central |
495.47 |
984.68 |
26 |
North Pleasant Grove |
141.28 |
200.67 |
27 |
Northwest |
501.53 |
934.54 |
28 |
Oak Park |
746.39 |
1,405.39 |
29 |
Ochwilla |
.00 |
50.00 |
30 |
Parkview |
500.94 |
1,058.39 |
31 |
Pine Grove |
164.04 |
305.97 |
32 |
Pleasant Hill Missionary |
.00 |
.00 |
33 |
Ridgeview |
247.20 |
247.20 |
34 |
River Cross |
248.00 |
558.00 |
35 |
Santa Fe |
171.29 |
371.78 |
36 |
Sardis |
200.00 |
613.48 |
37 |
Waldo First |
659.00 |
1,318.00 |
38 |
Westside |
3,037.01 |
6,783.79 |
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Affiliated Churches |
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39 |
Harvest |
.00 |
.00 |
40 |
Hispana, Archer Road |
.00 |
.00 |
41 |
Hispana, Gainesville |
30.00 |
60.00 |
42 |
Hispana, Santa Fe |
.00 |
.00 |
43 |
Micanopy |
.00 |
293.38 |
44 |
Journey of the Word |
39.60 |
39.60 |
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Totals |
12,510.63 |
25,777.96 |
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Monthly Needs
$15,688.00
Percentage of Budget Received to date: 82% |
Budget Needs through Nov.
$31,376.00
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Giving under budget through Nov.
$5,598.04
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A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes... and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.
Dietrich Bonheoffer
Church News and Events
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December Birthdays
3 Jean Rye (ministry assistant), Grace
4 Dede Stephens (wife of youth pastor), High Springs First
5 Michael Mosby (music/education), Northwest
6 Kelly Carr (wife of pastor), North Central
7 Tania Mederos (wife of pastor), Evangelica
7 Sue O’Carroll (wife of pastor), Journey
7 Nancy Smith (ministry assistant), Grace
7 Mary Shorr (ministry assistant), Westside
8 Robin Steele (wife of worship leader), Alachua First
12 Pr. Hee Young Sohn, Korean
15 Shelly Donnally (ministry assistant), High Springs First
16 Linda Garmon (ministry assistant), Lake Butler First
19 Joan Harvey (wife of Director of Missions), Association Center
20 Lydia Kendall (wife of pastor), Antioch
21 Pr. Brian Coleman, Living Covenant
24 Veronica Freeze (ministry assistant), Parkview
25 Billy Stephens (youth pastor), High Springs First
29 C. J. Burroughs (student minister), Alachua First
Wedding Anniversaries
9 Stephen (music) and Christy Wells, Lake Butler First
21 Pr. Jonathan and Anabel Colon, Hispana-Santa Fe
29 Pr. Greg and Karen Magruder, Parkview |
Church Anniversaries
Michael Mosby (music), Northwest, 12/3/2003
Pr. Mike Killian, Lighthouse, 12/8/2002
Pr. Paul O’Steen, Sardis, 12/12/1998
Linda Garmon (ministry assistant), Lake Butler First, 12/16/2002
Kelly Redding (ministry assistant), High Springs First, 12/28/1994
Michelle Acree (ministry assistant), Eliam, 12/30/2004
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In the same manner in which we clean and prepare our homes in the anticipation of welcomed guests and family members this Christmas season, let us also prepare our hearts in anticipation of the Lord's coming. Christ, our most honoured and eagerly anticipated guest, desires to meet with us in a heart prepared for his arrival. So eager is he to meet with us that he offers to help us with our spiritual housecleaning, working with us, creating a resting place for Himself within our hearts.
Katherine Walden
Think on These Things
Competitive National Bee Concept Takes a Biblical Turn
By Adelle M. Banks, Religion News Service
Under the bright stage lights Daniel Staddon, an 18-year-old home-schooler from Salem, W.Va., squeezed his eyes shut as he methodically recited verse after verse from the Bible at the inaugural National Bible Bee.
The concentration technique came in handy as he recited the first 20 verses of the fifth chapter of Ephesians and the 21 verses of Psalm 145 in the tie-breaker round on the stage of the JW Marriott Hotel ballroom.
His skills paid off big-time, earning Staddon first place and a $100,000 prize.
The most glorious promises of God are generally fulfilled in such a wondrous manner that He steps forth to save us at a time when there is the least appearance of it.
C. H. von Bogatzy
For Those Who Endured to the End
Maybe Americans Aren’t So Bad after All
In a recent CBS News poll, half of Americans chose laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as a ceremony in which they'd most like to participate. That swamped the other choices: lighting the Olympic torch, tossing the coin to open a Super Bowl, starting the race at the Indianapolis 500, ringing the opening bell at the stock exchange, and throwing out the first pitch at the World Series.
A Sunday School teacher was discussing the Ten Commandments with her five- and six-year-olds.
After explaining the commandment to "honor thy father and thy mother,” she asked, "Is there a commandment that teaches us how to treat our brothers and sisters?"
Without missing a beat, one little boy answered, "Thou shall not kill."
[forwarded by Don Atkinson]
Not only am I a master of suspense, but I
Some People—and Cats—Just Don’t Like Christmas!
A Christmas sign outside a church: "The original Christmas Club."
This Christmas, May . . .
Christ be at the heart of your celebration
Your heart be merry because of that
You not be discouraged by those who wish you only “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings”
Your heart be merry in spite of that
You be bold enough to wish others a “Merry Christmas” so they may know the heart of your celebration
Your heart be merry because of that
This Christmas . . .
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Cartoon by the Christian cartoonist, Gary Varvel |
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Merry Christmas
