Happy New Year to the BCC Family!

One of the passions which God has put on my heart is to help Christians to truly live out the reality of their Christian faith in day-to-day life. We have too many Christians who talk well, but don't walk well. Many times their intentions are quite good; they want to honor God with their life, but the fact is that they often find themselves unable to live what it really means to be a Christian. 

One of those areas of challenge is in the realm of stewardship. Stewardship is Lordship. What do I mean by that? Many have noted that when a person's faith and salvation begins to affect the way they spend their money, then they are truly on their way to experience the Lordship of Christ in every area of life. Someone else has said that if you want to find out what a man's gods are, just take a look at their calendar and their checkbook. (Or in today's terminology, we would say his Outlook program and his Quicken report.)

That's why we are focusing on Stewardship this month of January. If we can help everyone to understand God's will in this key area of life, it will help to transform their life. How we spend our time, energy, and money can glorify God, or it can get us into all kinds of trouble. Much better that we figure out what is God's will in each of these three areas and then obey Him. We will end up living more productive lives and being more joyful.

So here are the opportunities to learn and grow in the area of stewardship this month at BCC:

WORSHIP SERVICES 

Pastor Max will be addressing stewardship of life issues, giving God our best, in a couple of the Malachi sermons this month. (And of course you can put this into practice through your financial giving as an act of worship each week.)

TESTIMONIES 

We heard an awesome testimony from Taylor Pack this past Sunday about how the issue of Christ's Lordship in his life truly impacted Taylor and his family, not only financially, but in every positive way possible. We will be hearing a couple more testimonies this month as well in services.

SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASSES 

Our adult Sunday School classes at 9:30 and 11:00 will go through four key stewardship topics: Ownership, Budgeting, Dumping Debt, Giving.  They will be taught by Mike Passig, Taylor Pack, Randy Watermiller, and myself. Just learned this week that the 11am class will be the first to use the new worship center!

SMALL GROUPS 

Many of our small groups are going through some teaching prepared by Dr. Oliver Blosser related to the Old and New Testament Biblical teaching on tithing. Our Young Marrieds 2 group, which just started, is going through this as well.

FINANCIAL PEACE UNIVERSITY

Starting in February, there will be a 13-week small group, based on Dave Ramsey's teachings, which will give anyone who attends a complete course on how to manage their money and be financially successful. You will be able to sign up for that during the adult sunday school courses this month.

That is what is happening this month at BCC. Hope you can come along for the ride!

In Christ's Service,

Pastor Bill