December Celebrations
December has been a month of celebrations for me personally and for our church. We began our celebration on December 3 with our 40th anniversary as a church. It truly was like a reunion for me seeing many who have given their time and devotion to be an active part of Greater Portland Bible Church in the past and at the present time. The only problem I had was trying to remember names! I want to thank Pat Murphy for heading up the team for this event and the rest of the team that put a lot of time into the event. Thank you also to Shirley House and her team for organizing and putting all the pictures on display in the lobby.
For Doug and myself, we were part of the team that started the church but did we understand all that we would be going through in 40 years? Did we understand what our mission was as a church? The word “mission” or “vision” wasn’t even a buzz word, but we knew that we wanted a church that reached out to share the gospel, reached up to worship Jesus and reached people to grow in their walk with God. The three buzz words that we used then were: Upreach, Inreach and Outreach.
We look forward to all that the Lord will do in the next 40 years and beyond as we continue to trust Him in everything and as we continue to walk by faith!
Another celebration that we had was our Christmas Eve service, as we partnered with another church, Missio, in honoring and remembering the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ. Pastor Dominic shared the timely message of Peace. What a special service using the gifts and talents of two churches worshipping together!
By the time you get this blog the third celebration may have already taken place. There are four couples in our community (Wayne and Paulette Williams; Dale and Chris Ragel; Bob and Judy Cammann; and Doug and myself) that celebrated their 50th wedding anniversaries this year and we decided to have a fun party. The party is/was planned for December 29th here at the church from 7-10 p.m. Everyone is/was invited! What a milestone as we celebrate a total of 200 years of marriage!