What a joy to celebrate the risen King this past Easter Sunday!  How awesome to see our church full, and to hear people praising God with full hearts. 

As I walked this morning, the trees were in beautiful, full bloom…signs of God’s faithfulness and the new life he brings.  Jesus is risen!   What a blessing to see the new life we are seeing him give to people through the witness of our church.  It was a joy this past Sunday to celebrate with Jane Turney, who was baptized as a follower of Jesus.  Pray for Jane and for all those who have made decisions for Christ in recent months.  Since the beginning of August, we have seen more people coming to Christ and into church membership than at any point I can remember.  This is a wonderful thing! 

When I returned from Sabbatical, I found that the Spirit of God had given me a burning passion for evangelism and discipleship.  The extended rest and time with God was incredibly helpful.  I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my time in ministry leading our church to focus on three things:  Winning people to Christ, seeing them grow to maturity, and seeing them trained and sent out to make disciples.  This fulfills our FBC mission statement:  “To glorify Christ by making disciples who make disciples, in our community and around the world.”  

Please pray for me as you get this newsletter.  I will be attending an evangelism training conference in Texas this weekend.  Pray it will fuel the fire and give me more ideas about how to give leadership to our church in evangelism and discipleship.  David will bring a special post-Easter message this Sunday. 

God is at work in our church, and Christ is risen!!   

By His Grace, For His Glory, To The Nations, 

Dr. Thurman Hayes, Jr.