Volume 7 Issue 2

February 2017

FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, COOLIDGE

Note from Pastor 2

Children Update 2

Younger Youth 3

SB Texan 4

Chaplain’s Corner 5

Winter Bible Pics 6

Inside this issue:

2017

Winter

Bible

Conference

Our 2017 Winter Bible Conference, held on the last weekend of January was a wonderful success!. We studied the January Bible Study material, which this year was a study in the book of Malachi. We had good attendance even in spite of a stomach flu epidemic that had hit Coolidge.

Our teachers presented 4 lessons on Saturday. Laura led off our morning session with a very good introduction to the history, culture, and context of the book o f Malachi and showed how we could expect a message for today from a book written 400 years before Jesus came. Then Johnnie took over and pointed us to how we should worship God. Roger and Melanie followed in the afternoon, pointing us again to how we, as Christians should give our best to the Lord is worship and in our lives. On Sunday Johnnie and Chuck brought our concluding studies. We learned that in God, even we have failed Him, He loves us and calls us to come back home to Him. How we choose to respond is up to us.

Thank you to the Hullums for providing Breakfast and Lunch on Saturday. The food was wonderful, but even more the sacrifice of love for the people of God was deeply appreciated. Remember this from the book of Malachi:

“Return to me and I will return to you” says the Lord of Hosts Mal. 3:7 (HCSB)

Remember what David said: “The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and great in faithful love.” Psalm 145:8 (HCSB)

Come home to God today.

If January is any indication of all that God has for our church in the coming year, all I can say is WOW! Our new Sunday Evening class called “The Journey” has been wonderful and so many of you are coming and participating. Isn’t this an interesting class format? Looking at different subjects each week, taught by different teachers to keep us from becoming bored with just one (me!) The great thing is that if you have missed up to now, you can

now taken on the extra duty of

driving the van to school each

Wednesday to pick up students

at 3:30 and then taking them

home at 5:00. Jessica Bonilla is

doing a wonderful job of

helping me with the children.

We believe that God is our

provider, and we are asking

Him to raise up more workers

to help children come to know

Jesus as their Savior.

We are also beginning

preparations for this summer’s

Backyard Kids’ Club. Dates for

worker training have been set

for Saturday, April 29, and

Saturday, May 6. The tentative

date for Backyard Kids’ Club is

the week of June 5-9. Each year

our providential God has called

Wednesday afternoon Gospel

Kids and Youth have begun a

new unit in Gospel Project

called God the Provider. It is an

exciting study about Esther,

Nehemiah, Ezra, and Malachi.

We have been running 26 kids

or more, and we could still use

more adults to help with

refreshments, clean up, extra

supervision, and perhaps even

teaching or substitute teaching

a class in case Deborah or I ever

can’t be there. We could use a

teacher for the high school age

kids, and we would like to

divide the younger youth class

that Deborah teaches. Glen

Hullum, who for years has

cooked those wonderful grilled

cheese sandwiches for us, has

P A G E 2 C O O L C O N N E C T I O N S

Children’s Ministry report Jesus, however, invited them: “Let the little children come to Me, and don’t stop them, because the kingdom of

God belongs to such as these. Luke 18:16 (HCSB)

I t ’ s on my hear t . . . still jump right on into the class. It will really be worth your time. Then there was our Winter Bible Conference! Wasn’t that an amazing study in the book of Malachi? I’ll bet if you attended, you received a blessing from the heart of God just to your heart! Great job to the Team who put that together and thank you to Johnnie for leading this great annual project. I am looking forward to next year already! February, March, April and the beginning of Spring is upon us. Easter is just

around the corner. As we learned in our class in Malachi, God has a great love for us and is seeking to draw each of us closer and closer to Himself. Why not let God do just that in your life? Why not quit being satisfied with the minimum of God and instead seek Him with all of your heart? For the Christian, failure to fully seek out the heart and mind of God deprives you of all that God has for you in this life. Yes, we will see you in Heaven, but you will never again for all eternity have the chance you have today to by faith draw close to God! Why not choose to do that starting today?

Pastor Chuck

the workers we needed for VBS,

and last year He also provided

just the right locations for our 3

Backyard Kids’ Clubs. We look

forward to seeing the miracle that

the Lord does this year in making

this ministry possible.

I just had to close with the Bible

memory verse that goes with the

God the Provider unit.

Lamentations 3:22-23 “Because of

the Lord’s faithful love we do not

perish, for His mercies never end.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness!”

Jo Lynn

P A G E 3

January is a time to get started with new goals. Have you set new goal for yourself this year? The beginning of our new Bible study on Sunday night, The Journey, is going to help me reach my goal. I want to be further along in my spiritual growth than I was in 2016. I hope there will be others to set similar goals so that we an grow together, be accountable to one another, and encourage each other. One of the younger youth, Thalia Orduna, is challenging me to memorize each week's Bible verse. I love a good challenge. I just hope I can keep up with someone who is 50+ years younger than me! While I am on the subject of memory verses, the younger youth made memory books for t hose attending the Sunday night Bible study. Each week, they will add a new Bible verse to the book for you. If you want to use your book to just look and read your verses over each week, that's great, too. The students had fun making them. The 21 Day Challenge is still going strong. For the month of January the following students met their challenge. They are David Molina, Merissa and Natalie Mora, Thalia and Maria Orduna, and Emili Perez. These students have continued reading and writing their selected Bible verses in their journals, they lead in prayer, the memorize their Bible verse for the month, and they do service projects around the church and community. For the January reward, the girls are going to spend the night at the cabin and watch God's Not Dead 2. David will enjoy a day of attending a baseball game and fishing. Friday, February 3rd, we will have had a game night with all the younger youth. A big thank you goes to Betty Smith, Frances Carter, and JoLynn Holden for helping provide food for these hungry students! A short devotional entitled, “Choices,” will be given, and then the games will begin!!! A fun service project has been planned, but it's a surprise. I can't let the cat out of the bag just yet, but I'll write about it next month. Thank you for loving, praying, and supporting these young girls and boys.

Deborah

Younger Youth News

V O L U M E 7 I S S U E 2

ARE YOU READY TO RETURN?

If you missed our January Bible Confer-ence, you missed a blessing. The study of the book of Malachi reminded us that God calls us back to our first love –God. In all areas of our lives God calls us to “GET RE-AL”. Let us encourage each other to strive to improve our worship, our study of the Word, our giving, our prayer life, and our devotion to God.

A special thanks to all that had a part in the delivery during the week-end: Chuck, Laura, Roger, Melanie, Glen and Deb.

One of the ways we can grow in the areas mentioned is to actively participate in the JOURNEY on Sunday evenings. Join us!

Johnnie

P A G E 4 C O O L C O N N E C T I O N S

DALLAS—The congregation of First Baptist Church, Dallas, has taken in stride its debut as a featured tar-get in the January release of the Islamic State’s (ISIS) official online terror magazine.

During the Christmas holidays and in the days imme-diately following, ISIS called attention to non-Muslim churches. On Dec. 21, ISIS published a list of thou-sands of United States churches’ names and ad-dresses, calling for attacks on them during the holiday season. On Dec. 23, prompted by the ISIS release, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released to law enforcement agencies nationwide a joint bulle-tin with the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI).

The bulletin was issued, officials are reported as say-ing, “out of an abundance of caution.” No specific, credible, planned threats were known, but the pub-lished list called for vigilance. The bulletin said that ISIS continues, “aspirational calls for attacks on holi-day gatherings, including targeting churches.” On January 6, ISIS publicly released the 5th and latest edition of its Rumiyah magazine. With that release, it continued its targeting of U.S. churches past the holi-day season.

The Baptist New Mexican obtained copies of the ISIS magazine from the FBI and from the Middle East Me-dia Research Institute. In general, its content propa-gates radical Muslim theology and promotes and glo-rifies killing and carnage of defiant non-Muslims. First Baptist, Dallas is specifically mentioned in an article titled “Just Terror Tactics.” The article is part three in a series by the same name. The first two installments of the series encouraged and described knife attacks and attacks using trucks. The third article outlines how to make Molotov cocktails, how to use them and how to select targets for fires.

According to the article picturing the church, “This in-formation will assist in execution and increase the likelihood of killing or severely injuring those inside.” Just after the heading “Ideal Target Locations,” a large photo of First Baptist Church appears. The cap-tion beneath the photo gives the church’s address and says, “A popular Crusader gathering place wait-ing to be burned down.”

In an interview with the New Mexican, First Baptist Church’s pastor, Robert Jeffress, said that he was amazed at how his church had received the news about the magazine. “It has really had no impact,” he said. He described how the church had continued peacefully with its ministries. But, the church did con-

tact DHS, the FBI, and local law enforcement immediately after receiving the report.

Jeffress said the church has not changed any precautions or procedures because the church had already implemented security measures “to make sure our congregants are safe.” The church also encourages its members to be vigi-lant and encourages other churches to take pre-cautions, as well.

Unofficially, one federal official said that the lack of any specific known threat makes the maga-zine appearance and the publication of the church list less of a concern. He encouraged general vigilance, just like First Baptist encour-aged.

To help churches generally prepare for emer-gencies, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) created the “Guide for Develop-ing High-Quality Emergency Operations Plans for Houses of Worship.” The detailed guide walks through emergency response concepts, structuring a response plan and team, and im-plementing an emergency readiness plan.

In the guide, FEMA categorizes emergencies a church can face as caused by natural hazards, technological hazards, or adversarial and hu-man-caused threats. Terroristic threats fall into the last category. The guide suggests prepara-tions for other emergencies because they are more likely to occur. Key factors in assessing risks for planning purposes are the probability of a risk and the likely magnitude of the risk, should it occur, the guide says.

DHS has prepared an additional report on “Potential Indicators, Common Vulnerabilities and Protective Measures: Houses of Worship,” which emergency planning teams may want to review in drafting emergency operations plans. Both documents are available as online down-loads via a simple Internet search for their titles.

Jeffress said he has shared with his Dallas con-gregation that the Bible says, “God did not give us a spirit of fear” (2 Timothy 1:7). He said, “If we give in to fear, ISIS wins; and, worse, Satan wins.” In the meantime, no one can take a back-pack inside the church. Jeffress feels that the lack of attention by mainstream media to the church’s appearance in the magazine indicates that the threat is not yet specific or credible. Taken from SBTEXAN online 2-4-17

ISIS Threat to Churches in Texas? From the SB Texan

P A G E 5 V O L U M E 7 I S S U E 2

As a chaplain I daily come in contact with patients

and their families that are physically, emotionally,

and spiritually tired/exhausted due to the

circumstances of terminal illness that can affect

their total self. When this happens it often robs

the person of being whole in their physical self,

their spiritual self, and their emotional self. This

can cause anxiety, sadness, anger, loneliness,

questioning, fear, and many other overwhelming

emotions. This is not limited only to the terminally

ill, but to all of us as Gods children/people. During

these times it seems easy to lose our focus and

place it on our circumstances/self rather than on

God our Heavenly Father. This brings bondage and

robs us of our “Freedom” in Him to live and to serve

Him daily. This temptation to lose our focus off God

during these times is how Satan “seeks whom he

may devour/defeat,” (1 Peter 5:8). God does not

want us to live in defeat, fear, etc. even in the face

of the terrible things that often happens to us all.

So, If we are to maintain our focus on God in all

circumstances and live victorious lives to overcome

all satanic attacks, what are we to do? I run!

Where do you run to?

We will look at answers for the next several

months for our daily victory and refocus, but first

we will start with the most important question: Do

you know for certain that you have accepted Jesus

Christ as your Savior and Lord? You can know for

sure by using your ABCs.

Admit that you are a sinner. “All have sinned

and come short of the glory of God,” (Romans

3:33).

Believe in Jesus alone for your salvation. “For

God so loved the world that He gave His only

begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him shall

not perish, but have everlasting life,” (John 3:16).

Confess your sin to Jesus. “But if you confess

with your mouth Jesus as Lord (1st), and believe in

your hart that God has raised Him from the dead,

you will be saved,” (Romans 10:9).

This is the first step of assured victory-running to

Jesus alone for salvation. Do it now if you have not

done so. Call Pastor Chuck, he will be honored to

help you in any way that he can. God’s arms are

open, run to His embrace!

Think About It Pray About!

Larry the “Chaplain” Guy Hospice Chaplain

Spring Cleaning for the church is scheduled for April

8th from 9AM to Noon. Save the date and let’s

work together to clean the House of the Lord!

PO Box 189 Coolidge, TX 76635

Church Phone: 254-786-2232 Pastor’s Email chuck@fbccool.com

He Came, We Go

FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, COOLIDGE

Web Address is:

www.fbccool.com

M.E.N.’s Prayer Breakfast

February18th

at 8:30 am

The food is great!

Come together as the Christian Men of Coolidge

and Pray for God’s Presence

in our city!

Worshipping God Together

Experiencing God

Reaching Out

Giving Generously

P A G E 6

Winter Bible

Conference

16 At that time those who feared the LORD

spoke to one another. The LORD took notice

and listened. So a book of remembrance was

written before Him for those who feared Yah-

weh and had high regard for His name. 17

“They will be Mine,” says the LORD of Hosts,

“a special possession on the day I am prepar-

ing. I will have compassion on them as a man

has compassion on his son who serves him.

does not serve Him. Malachi 3:16-17HCSB)