Missions AND THE BRIDGE
August 2019/Bro. Mike
Since the resignation of Thomas Gamble as our Associate Pastor for College Students and Missions, I know some are wondering what will happen in each of those important areas of ministry.
In working with our College Students and Young Professionals, Bro. Mark Bateman has become the staff leader of The Bridge Ministry, at least for the interim. Bro. Mark has done this ministry for St. Andrew before, and he will do it with excellence. We are looking now for an assistant for Bro. Mark with Youth Ministry to give Mark the time to also do The Bridge Ministry.
Our Bridge Ministry still has excellent lay leadership in Chase and Lauren Hahn and Tim and Kim Barnard. These fine leaders are already planning and working with Bro. Mark to maintain continuity in this ministry.
I will immediately assume the overall leadership of our missions ministries, but I will not be handling it all myself for long. I will be assigning various areas of our mission involvements to Pastoral Staff. When we work out the details, we will publish them, so that everybody knows who is responsible for each area.
Be assured, there will be no slackening of our commitment to or participation in the many areas of involvement our church has on the mission field, at home, or around the world.
Please pray for Thomas and Chelsea as the Lord leads them to new ministry and for our staff as we make the adjustments here at St. Andrew Baptist Church.
In working with our College Students and Young Professionals, Bro. Mark Bateman has become the staff leader of The Bridge Ministry, at least for the interim. Bro. Mark has done this ministry for St. Andrew before, and he will do it with excellence. We are looking now for an assistant for Bro. Mark with Youth Ministry to give Mark the time to also do The Bridge Ministry.
Our Bridge Ministry still has excellent lay leadership in Chase and Lauren Hahn and Tim and Kim Barnard. These fine leaders are already planning and working with Bro. Mark to maintain continuity in this ministry.
I will immediately assume the overall leadership of our missions ministries, but I will not be handling it all myself for long. I will be assigning various areas of our mission involvements to Pastoral Staff. When we work out the details, we will publish them, so that everybody knows who is responsible for each area.
Be assured, there will be no slackening of our commitment to or participation in the many areas of involvement our church has on the mission field, at home, or around the world.
Please pray for Thomas and Chelsea as the Lord leads them to new ministry and for our staff as we make the adjustments here at St. Andrew Baptist Church.
WHAT KIND OF CHURCH WILL WE BE?
jULY 2019/bRO. mIKE
I am not talking about what our architecture will be like when we complete the renovation and rebuild of the Worship Center. I am also not talking about stylistic things that change with time and seasons like being contemporary or traditional. I am talking about characteristics that are more to the core of what or who a church is.
Jesus addressed this issue directly in talking to the Apostle John about the churches. Their conversation is recorded in Revelation 1-3. Jesus described seven types of churches, their pros and cons. The Risen Christ made it clear what kind of church He wanted His church to be.
We are going to be examining this passage over the next six weeks in worship. I hope you will be there as often as physically possible. As we consider what Jesus said, we will be collectively deciding WHAT KIND OF CHURCH WE WILL BE.
Jesus addressed this issue directly in talking to the Apostle John about the churches. Their conversation is recorded in Revelation 1-3. Jesus described seven types of churches, their pros and cons. The Risen Christ made it clear what kind of church He wanted His church to be.
We are going to be examining this passage over the next six weeks in worship. I hope you will be there as often as physically possible. As we consider what Jesus said, we will be collectively deciding WHAT KIND OF CHURCH WE WILL BE.
The post-hurricane state of the church
jUNE 2019/Bro. Mike
Since the hurricane seven months ago, many have asked me, “Bro. Mike, how is the church?” The short answer is that St. Andrew Baptist Church is the recipient of the great blessing of God! It is a tremendous privilege to describe that blessing to you.
Attendance – Of course our total attendance is down from a year ago. We, like every church impacted by the storm, have had people move because of the loss of a job or not having a place to live. However, our Small Group average attendance for the last 52 weeks (a key statistic we watch carefully) is 90% of the number from a year ago. In Worship attendance, we are running 92% of a year ago. Reports we have heard from other churches tell us these are numbers for which we should rejoice!
Finances – As of May 31st, our giving is at 93% of our Ministry Budget. Personally, I am thrilled with that! The one place we need to grow our giving is in our Missions Budget. We are running at only 85% of the budget. We need to strengthen this critical component in our stewardship. We ARE an Acts 1:8 church and our mission partners depend upon our faithfulness to both give and go!
Damage to our Buildings – We had a lot of damage, but my how God blessed us. God left us buildings that were sufficiently preserved that we did not miss a single day in ministering to our members and our community. Glory to God! Some churches, many businesses, many people lost everything. We cannot thank God enough for His protection that He provided for our facilities that we might be able to continue to minister in His name!
The dollar assessment of our damages continues. Right now we know we had $2.1 million in mitigation (tearing out damaged materials and preventing further damage), $2.9 million to replace 9 roofs and another $2.9 million of damage to the buildings beyond the roofs. Altogether that is $7.9 million. That figure will grow some more as we are in re-construction, and it does not include our loss in contents, which we are still counting. When all is said and done, we expect the total loss to be valued at around $10 million.
The positive side of all of that damage is that it all gets replaced with brand new stuff! We will have new roofs on all of our buildings except for the Warehouse of the Center of Hope. It was the only roof that weathered the storm without any damage. God protected all the supplies He had given us to give to needy people in His name! Several of our roofs that were destroyed in the hurricane would have soon been in need of replacement had the storm not come! The roof on the Worship Center was 35 years old! Because of the goodness of God, by the end of summer, we will have new roofs on all of our buildings and new leak-proof canopies over our breezeways. God is good, and we stand blessed!
Insurance – First, we were blessed by God to have good insurance coverage. Sometimes when money is tight, insurance is one of those things that is dropped. Some churches and some individuals were in this sad state when Hurricane Michael roared through our county. I grieve for them, and we should all continue to reach out and help them in every way possible. But we were well-insured. I give Bro. Rick a lot of credit in working to keep us adequately insured even in difficult financial times.
Only our A Sheltering Tree building was not insured. Because of its type of construction and age, insurance for it would have cost a fortune. Yet God has provided! Our roofing company that is doing all the other church roofs, donated both materials and labor to put a new roof on A Sheltering Tree. The church where Jeremy Colloms is a pastor has helped with both mitigation and reconstruction and given an offering to resupply the ministry. Others are helping, and the facility is getting rebuilt.
Many have had to wrestle long and hard with their insurance to get claims paid and construction started. I am not saying our insurance company has flooded us with excess money, but they have been reasonable to work with. Our final evaluation of their performance is yet to be made, but we are hopeful that we will receive a just settlement from them without undue difficulty.
So far, we have received just over $6.5 million toward our $7.9 million claim. Our deductible is $454,328! Of course, the insurance will not pay any of that, but God has covered it!
• First, the Lord provided a $100,000 gift from the Florida Baptist Convention!
• In the providence of God, we were able to negotiate a Quick Pay Discount with ServPro in the early days after the hurricane, that when the work was finished netted us $112,850 we could apply toward our deductible.
• We have received nearly $3,000 in gifts through the months since the storm that people have designated toward paying the deductible.
• Then, glory to God, a mission involved church in Georgia, a church much like ours, only larger, gave us a gift of over $240,000 to complete the payment of our deductible.
Our deductible is fully met, without taking a single dime out of our Ministry receipts! Is God good? Are we blessed? Who could doubt it?
Reconstruction – We can see the progress every week.
• B and D buildings and the Kid Zone are almost finished, inside and out.
• Fellowship Hall, the Student Center, and the Center of Hope are all about halfway done.
• We have held back on repairs of the offices and Worship Center while we worked on the new design of each of these authorized by the church before the hurricane hit. Read more on that below.
With the exception of the Worship Center and offices, I believe all of our reconstruction will be complete by the end of the summer. Even the WC and offices should have their new roofs!
Building 4 Generations to Come – In the midst of all that our church has been doing, including an extensive ministry to our city in Disaster Relief, and in putting our own ministries and buildings back together, we have not for a moment forgotten the direction the Lord has led St. Andrew - to build 4 generations with a focus on reaching more of our younger adults and teens.
The Disaster Relief Distribution Tent was a good example of four generations working together, ministering to hurting people, praying with them, sharing the gospel. Under and outside the tent, you could see little children stacking boxes, teens and young adults, median adults, and senior adults all working as one. Our recent Missions Cake Auction was a beautiful time of fellowship with all four generations actively engaged in a great time and raising over $19,000 for our students to go on mission this summer.
God has been working to develop our Building 4 Generations to Come plan as well, doing things only God could do. Through the hurricane, God “forced” us into two worship services and two small group hours. He then led us to use a different worship style in each of the two services, allowing people of each generation to worship in the way that is most meaningful to them. This also gave us the potential to move our Band Led Worship more toward the style of worship that is desired by the younger generations and to do so more rapidly.
We already see fruit from these things which I believe can only be attributed to the working of God. There is greater peace and contentment among people of each generation as concerns their desired worship style. In small groups, we have seen an increase of nearly 8% in the numbers of young adults and more than 4% increase in high school students!
Folks, only God can work through such difficult and tragic events as a hurricane to move His plan forward. We owe it to the Lord to open our eyes and behold what He has done and is doing. We are blessed! God is good!
The New Building Part of Building 4 Generations to Come – The church elected a Building Team to bring the church a plan to update the Worship Center, update and expand the Mall, update and expand the restrooms in the mall, change the façade of the church facing Hwy 98 and Beck to make the church look more inviting to the younger generations, and to move the church offices and use the space they now occupy for Senior Adult Lifechange Group space so our senior adults with mobility issues could have small groups on the same physical level as the Worship Center and North Parking Lot.
The Building Team has been working long before the hurricane struck and led the church to engage the services of a church design and build team. When Michael ravaged the Worship Center and damaged the offices, two things happened.
One, the issues of re-design became much more complex because the damage, insurance,
reconstruction, and new construction all have to be molded into a single cohesive plan. The Building Team has been working on this steadily since the storm, but this is a mammoth-size task. The team has made some progress, but no final decisions can be made without knowing how much insurance is going to pay for the various things that must now be done.
Just this week, we received the first document from the insurance company´s consultant showing their preliminary calculations of what insurance should pay for the damage to the Worship Center and Church Offices. That report is about an inch thick! But it offers our Building Team and Design and Build Group a place to begin in making its decisions. They are working hard. Please be patient with them, and pray for them.
The second thing that happened is astoundingly good! There were many things that we would have had to pay for with our own Building Funds, that will now be paid by insurance. In fact, I see now, that if we had addressed the repair and replacement of all the systems that needed repair, we would not have had enough money in a building program to do everything we had planned to do. Again, it is only by God working all things together for good for those who love the Lord, that we have the possibility of doing what we hoped to do and still have the other needful things fixed or replaced.
In Conclusion – I know this report has been long and filled with great detail, although I have simplified things as much as I could and still give you an accurate assessment. I hope and pray that you can see clearly how wonderfully blessed by our great God we are. In the midst of a time of great trial and challenge, God has not forgotten us. In fact, it is as if God in His great mercy has focused His grace and providential care upon this portion of His people called St. Andrew Baptist Church.
Attendance – Of course our total attendance is down from a year ago. We, like every church impacted by the storm, have had people move because of the loss of a job or not having a place to live. However, our Small Group average attendance for the last 52 weeks (a key statistic we watch carefully) is 90% of the number from a year ago. In Worship attendance, we are running 92% of a year ago. Reports we have heard from other churches tell us these are numbers for which we should rejoice!
Finances – As of May 31st, our giving is at 93% of our Ministry Budget. Personally, I am thrilled with that! The one place we need to grow our giving is in our Missions Budget. We are running at only 85% of the budget. We need to strengthen this critical component in our stewardship. We ARE an Acts 1:8 church and our mission partners depend upon our faithfulness to both give and go!
Damage to our Buildings – We had a lot of damage, but my how God blessed us. God left us buildings that were sufficiently preserved that we did not miss a single day in ministering to our members and our community. Glory to God! Some churches, many businesses, many people lost everything. We cannot thank God enough for His protection that He provided for our facilities that we might be able to continue to minister in His name!
The dollar assessment of our damages continues. Right now we know we had $2.1 million in mitigation (tearing out damaged materials and preventing further damage), $2.9 million to replace 9 roofs and another $2.9 million of damage to the buildings beyond the roofs. Altogether that is $7.9 million. That figure will grow some more as we are in re-construction, and it does not include our loss in contents, which we are still counting. When all is said and done, we expect the total loss to be valued at around $10 million.
The positive side of all of that damage is that it all gets replaced with brand new stuff! We will have new roofs on all of our buildings except for the Warehouse of the Center of Hope. It was the only roof that weathered the storm without any damage. God protected all the supplies He had given us to give to needy people in His name! Several of our roofs that were destroyed in the hurricane would have soon been in need of replacement had the storm not come! The roof on the Worship Center was 35 years old! Because of the goodness of God, by the end of summer, we will have new roofs on all of our buildings and new leak-proof canopies over our breezeways. God is good, and we stand blessed!
Insurance – First, we were blessed by God to have good insurance coverage. Sometimes when money is tight, insurance is one of those things that is dropped. Some churches and some individuals were in this sad state when Hurricane Michael roared through our county. I grieve for them, and we should all continue to reach out and help them in every way possible. But we were well-insured. I give Bro. Rick a lot of credit in working to keep us adequately insured even in difficult financial times.
Only our A Sheltering Tree building was not insured. Because of its type of construction and age, insurance for it would have cost a fortune. Yet God has provided! Our roofing company that is doing all the other church roofs, donated both materials and labor to put a new roof on A Sheltering Tree. The church where Jeremy Colloms is a pastor has helped with both mitigation and reconstruction and given an offering to resupply the ministry. Others are helping, and the facility is getting rebuilt.
Many have had to wrestle long and hard with their insurance to get claims paid and construction started. I am not saying our insurance company has flooded us with excess money, but they have been reasonable to work with. Our final evaluation of their performance is yet to be made, but we are hopeful that we will receive a just settlement from them without undue difficulty.
So far, we have received just over $6.5 million toward our $7.9 million claim. Our deductible is $454,328! Of course, the insurance will not pay any of that, but God has covered it!
• First, the Lord provided a $100,000 gift from the Florida Baptist Convention!
• In the providence of God, we were able to negotiate a Quick Pay Discount with ServPro in the early days after the hurricane, that when the work was finished netted us $112,850 we could apply toward our deductible.
• We have received nearly $3,000 in gifts through the months since the storm that people have designated toward paying the deductible.
• Then, glory to God, a mission involved church in Georgia, a church much like ours, only larger, gave us a gift of over $240,000 to complete the payment of our deductible.
Our deductible is fully met, without taking a single dime out of our Ministry receipts! Is God good? Are we blessed? Who could doubt it?
Reconstruction – We can see the progress every week.
• B and D buildings and the Kid Zone are almost finished, inside and out.
• Fellowship Hall, the Student Center, and the Center of Hope are all about halfway done.
• We have held back on repairs of the offices and Worship Center while we worked on the new design of each of these authorized by the church before the hurricane hit. Read more on that below.
With the exception of the Worship Center and offices, I believe all of our reconstruction will be complete by the end of the summer. Even the WC and offices should have their new roofs!
Building 4 Generations to Come – In the midst of all that our church has been doing, including an extensive ministry to our city in Disaster Relief, and in putting our own ministries and buildings back together, we have not for a moment forgotten the direction the Lord has led St. Andrew - to build 4 generations with a focus on reaching more of our younger adults and teens.
The Disaster Relief Distribution Tent was a good example of four generations working together, ministering to hurting people, praying with them, sharing the gospel. Under and outside the tent, you could see little children stacking boxes, teens and young adults, median adults, and senior adults all working as one. Our recent Missions Cake Auction was a beautiful time of fellowship with all four generations actively engaged in a great time and raising over $19,000 for our students to go on mission this summer.
God has been working to develop our Building 4 Generations to Come plan as well, doing things only God could do. Through the hurricane, God “forced” us into two worship services and two small group hours. He then led us to use a different worship style in each of the two services, allowing people of each generation to worship in the way that is most meaningful to them. This also gave us the potential to move our Band Led Worship more toward the style of worship that is desired by the younger generations and to do so more rapidly.
We already see fruit from these things which I believe can only be attributed to the working of God. There is greater peace and contentment among people of each generation as concerns their desired worship style. In small groups, we have seen an increase of nearly 8% in the numbers of young adults and more than 4% increase in high school students!
Folks, only God can work through such difficult and tragic events as a hurricane to move His plan forward. We owe it to the Lord to open our eyes and behold what He has done and is doing. We are blessed! God is good!
The New Building Part of Building 4 Generations to Come – The church elected a Building Team to bring the church a plan to update the Worship Center, update and expand the Mall, update and expand the restrooms in the mall, change the façade of the church facing Hwy 98 and Beck to make the church look more inviting to the younger generations, and to move the church offices and use the space they now occupy for Senior Adult Lifechange Group space so our senior adults with mobility issues could have small groups on the same physical level as the Worship Center and North Parking Lot.
The Building Team has been working long before the hurricane struck and led the church to engage the services of a church design and build team. When Michael ravaged the Worship Center and damaged the offices, two things happened.
One, the issues of re-design became much more complex because the damage, insurance,
reconstruction, and new construction all have to be molded into a single cohesive plan. The Building Team has been working on this steadily since the storm, but this is a mammoth-size task. The team has made some progress, but no final decisions can be made without knowing how much insurance is going to pay for the various things that must now be done.
Just this week, we received the first document from the insurance company´s consultant showing their preliminary calculations of what insurance should pay for the damage to the Worship Center and Church Offices. That report is about an inch thick! But it offers our Building Team and Design and Build Group a place to begin in making its decisions. They are working hard. Please be patient with them, and pray for them.
The second thing that happened is astoundingly good! There were many things that we would have had to pay for with our own Building Funds, that will now be paid by insurance. In fact, I see now, that if we had addressed the repair and replacement of all the systems that needed repair, we would not have had enough money in a building program to do everything we had planned to do. Again, it is only by God working all things together for good for those who love the Lord, that we have the possibility of doing what we hoped to do and still have the other needful things fixed or replaced.
In Conclusion – I know this report has been long and filled with great detail, although I have simplified things as much as I could and still give you an accurate assessment. I hope and pray that you can see clearly how wonderfully blessed by our great God we are. In the midst of a time of great trial and challenge, God has not forgotten us. In fact, it is as if God in His great mercy has focused His grace and providential care upon this portion of His people called St. Andrew Baptist Church.