Many Good Things to Celebrate
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Mr. Mark’s Music Camp Begins! As I write this, a number of lively, excited children are moving around our FBCD campus learning about Music. Today (Monday) is the first day of our first of three Music Camp opportunities this summer. Once again, we are so fortunate to have our own Pastor Mark (Green) leading this incredible event, along with key leadership and collaboration from Shelley Woodruff and Casey Margerum.
Shelley as our Pastor for Community Engagement, and Casey as a talented and highly trained opera singer provide the camp participants with first class guidance in all things music. Mark is well known in our community as a leading expert in teaching children how to sing and how to read music. This is an all-star team we can be tremendously proud of. We can also know that thanks to their talents, good planning and hard work, our church and community are being blessed in fabulous ways.
Young Adult Brunch a Well-Attended Success: Beth and I were honored to host a terrific group of seventeen Young Adults in our home on Saturday. Along with great food, we enjoyed fun, fellowship and a meaningful discussion led by our fearless leader for the group, Devita Parnell. Beth and I were so grateful to be part of such a fine gathering. Please join us in praying for and giving support to Devita and this growing group of new friends and church members.
Paul Wallace’s Wisdom This Past Sunday: If you missed our service this past Sunday, be sure to visit our website to hear my conversation with Paul about The Elegance of Faith (and Science). As a professor of Physics at Agnes Scott College as well as an author of three excellent and accessible books on faith and science, Paul is uniquely gifted in helping regular people like us understand the value of science in the edification of faith. I am always honored to have guests like Paul to share in creative presentations of the gospel. And as usual, Paul graced both services with excellent words and terrifically helpful insights. Join us online if you haven’t already. And if you’d like to purchase one or more of his books, they are available online. I highly recommend each one of them.
Andrea Corso Johnson, Pastor to Families, Working Hard and Preaching This Sunday!
I have been so happy to welcome Andrea to our Pastoral Team over this past month. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that she would be able to begin with us much sooner than we had originally thought. As a result, we have already had a number of exciting additional discoveries. Thanks to Andrea’s many connections at McAfee School of Theology and Mercer University, we are interviewing and are getting very excited about the potential of two new interns (now called Ministry Associates for Children and Youth). Those we have interviewed so far are quite impressive. They are also very excited about the possibilities of working at FBCD.
Along with many other initiatives and detailed planning, Andrea has agreed to preach in both services this Sunday, June 18th. Unfortunately, I will be out of town over the weekend for some family obligations, so I will miss getting to hear her first sermon here live. But like many of you, I will look forward to hearing and seeing her online (thanks again Randall Hampton and Jim Harrison and Daniel Solberg and many others for your terrific livestreaming work each week!)
I hope you will join me in praying for Andrea and supporting her as she prepares to offer us an inspiring word from our lectionary passage, Psalm 100, this week. And let us continue to be in prayer for her as she continues to expand her ministry to us and to our surrounding community.
Thanks Again to Maggie Parker Andrews! We were also grateful Sunday to give thanks and to offer a special blessing to Maggie as she begins the next important phase of her life and ministry. After two valuable years with us during her seminary training as our intern and then as our Pastoral Resident for Children, Maggie blessed us. We were so thankful on Sunday to be able to offer additional words of gratitude and blessing to her. She and Matt will not be that far away, and they still have family in town, so we hope they will both continue to be part of our First Baptist Decatur family. Our arms will be open wide with welcome!
Love,
David
David Jordan
Senior Pastor