This past Sunday was a great day at River Oaks! From the morning service with the fantastic praise and worship time and the observance of the Lord’s Supper to the evening baptismal service at the Strycker’s pond! As I said that evening at the baptismal service, this is the highlight of the year for me. We baptized 43 children, teens and adults. Their stories of how God worked in their lives to bring them to the point where they realized they needed Jesus were so moving and powerful!

I want to thank every person who chose to be baptized for giving me the opportunity to share in this experience with you. It is as good as it gets!

Tim

In Matthew 22:37 Jesus said the first and greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your mind. Jesus was saying that our first order of business is a passionate pursuit of God. During the Sundays of August we are going to examine the critical elements of that pursuit and hopefully come away with a deeper, more focused and renewed relationship with God the Father and a closer resemblance to Jesus, His Son.

I hope you can join me either in person at River Oaks or on-line at the River Oaks web site!

Tim

This Sunday I will respond to the question, “What happens to those who don’t accept Christ as Savior in this life?” Related to that question are questions about the eternal destiny of people in other religions, of those who live in cultures that have never heard of Jesus, or even those who simply don’t have the mental capacity to understand the message of grace.

I strongly urge you to come to one of the services this Sunday or make it a point to download the message next week. And for those of you who have friends or relatives with issues of the Christian faith because of its exclusive nature, please invite them to attend with you or to download the message.

I also ask you to pray for me as I prepare this message – that I will have true clarity, and that God will do amazing things this Sunday at River Oaks!

Tim

This year, for the first time in our history, River Oaks will celebrate several traditional services and themes of the Lent Season. We will begin with an Ash Wednesday service on February 17 at 6:30pm. The elements of this service will consist of corporate prayers, Scripture readings, meditation, the imposition of ashes (placing a small amount of ash on each worshiper’s forehead as a sign of repentance and sorrow for sin) and Communion.

For those of you in the River Oaks family, and for anyone in the Elkhart/Goshen area whose church is not offering an Ash Wednesday Service, I would like to invite you to the River Oaks Ash Wednesday service. To help us adequately prepare for this service, we are asking everyone to register the number of people (3rd grade and older) who plan to attend this service as well as the number of children, 2nd grade and younger, who will require childcare. If you are not from this area, perhaps you will be able to find another church that is offering an Ash Wednesday service.

Ash Wednesday has been observed by millions of Christians for centuries in order to prepare themselves for the celebration of Easter. I want to encourage you to join your brothers and sisters in this important and meaningful act of repentance and worship.

Tim

I got a surprise today in my e-mail. Unknown to me Michelle Fish, our Children’s Ministry Director at River Oaks, has now started to blog. She sent me her post for yesterday entitled, “A few good eggs“.  It’s on friendships and goes along with the sermon series we are currently in and so I though you might like to read what she wrote. You might even want to check out some of her other posts. Nice work, Michelle!

Tim

Good friends may be the most important treasure one will ever possess this side of heaven. In my new teaching series, which begins this Sunday, I’m going to take us through two of the deepest friendships in the Bible: Ruth and Naomi’s and David and Jonathan’s, to look for ways to make friends and to be a friend. The goal of this series is to help the River Oaks community become a place where deep and rewarding friendships can flourish. Here is the schedule.

January 3: Friendship – Life’s great treasure

January 10: Lingering – Friendships won’t happen without it

January 17: Essentials for deep friendships

January 24: More essentials for deep friendships

January 31: Benefits of deep friendships

February 7: Contexts for friendships

February 14: Marriage and family friendships

If you do not attend River Oaks, but would be interested in hearing some of the messages, you can download them at the River Oaks website or through podcasts on iTunes.

Tim