VBS Registration Open!

VBS Registration for Night Sky VBS is now open! The dates are June 18-22 and the times are 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM. VBS is a high energy week for the kids that encourages them in their walk with Jesus Christ and introduces families to the Gospel for the very first time. You can click here to get registered today! Also, check out our first promo video below!

Never Will I Leave You (Part 1)

Nathan Stam
Children/Communications Pastor

The following is adapted from a sermon by Dennis Johnson on Hebrews 13:5-14 that deals with change and I thought it would be appropriate for us to consider as we transition from Phil (who was with us for 28 years) to a new Lead Pastor.

Change is difficult. It takes us out of our comfort zone and ushers in the unknown. Even for the self-professed "change lovers" (like me!) there is still stress involved whether the change is pleasant or painful.

In fact, psychologists have assigned numeric value to the stress caused by different kinds of change. It doesn't matter whether it's getting married, losing a loved one, buying a new home, having a new baby or going through a divorce--all change involves some sort of stress. And if we rack up enough of those "stress points" we start to go into melt-down.

The book of Hebrews was written to a congregation of Jewish Christians who were going into melt-down because of change. They were experiencing change in two different ways:

1. They had grown up in Judaism with its temple centered worship and now they were Christians with Jesus centered worship. (They could no longer touch and feel and see the sacrifices. They were now being fed by the Word of God as their pastors proclaimed the Good News into their lives.) Because of this change, or conversion, they were also experiencing persecution from their family and friends. They were shunned because they believed Jesus was the Messiah.
2. This Hebrew congregation was also experiencing a change in leadership. There was a shift happening from one generation of leaders to the next. And evidently, this new generation of leadership was not receiving the respect of the congregation, which their office deserved. Perhaps the people were saying things like, "We like how Pastor so-and-so used to do things back in the day." Or, "These new guys don't do things like we've always done them." Whatever the reason, there was conflict in the midst of a change of leadership.

So, in the book of Hebrews the Holy Spirit tells us how we should respond to change and how we should not respond to change as a fellowship or a local church.

We should not respond to change in two ways based on the text:

1. Retreat from change by clinging to the past.
2. Try to insulate ourselves from change through money.

We should respond to change in the following way: Focus our thoughts and rest our hearts on Jesus, our ever-living, never-leaving leader.

(In the next installment we'll take a deeper look at the two wrong ways to respond to change based on Hebrews.)

Haiti Missions Update

Hey folks! Just wanted to give you a quick update on the Haiti Missions Team that traveled to Haiti at the beginning of April. Check out the video below and also click here for our Missions Blog that has lots of reflections from mission team members, photos and updates.

Haiti 2012 Update from Apex Baptist Church on Vimeo.

C.S. Lewis on Worship

This is a great quote from C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory) on worship being the preview of all the things that our hearts long for:

The sense that in this universe we are treated as strangers, the longing to be acknowledged, to meet with some response, to bridge some chasm that yawns between us and reality, is part of our inconsolable secret. And surely from this point of view the promise of glory becomes highly relevant to our deepest desire. For glory means good [rapport] with God, acceptance by God, response, acknowledgment, and welcome into the heart of things. The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last. . . . then our lifelong nostalgia, our longing to be reunited with something in the universe from which we now feel cut off, to be on the inside of some door which we have always seen from the outside, is no mere neurotic fancy but the truest index of our real situation. . . . At present we are on the outside of the world, the wrong side of the door. . . . but all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling with the rumor that it will not always be so. Some day, God willing, we shall get in.