Connecting

How does a growing church remain connected and intimate? 

1. Lots of time around tables eating together.  Conversations meeting new people.  Join us on Wednesday nights for Wonderful Wednesday Super. 5:30 - 6:30 PM. Home cooked meals! THIS COMING WEEK: Italian Chicken, Parmesan roasted baby potatoes, green beans, bread, and Italian Ricotta cake.
2. Attend a MeetUp: Sunday School fellowship groups meet every Sunday at 9:15 am. Several to try out. Several meet once a month: Movie Nights, Wisdom Circle, and Girlfriends in God. We occasionally have other. Great way to make friends.
3. Serve on a Team with others. FirstKids ministries on Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights. Good Samaritan Food Pantry once a month (fourth Monday), greeting at the doors on Sunday mornings, and the Nursing Home traveling worship team go out 3 Sundays each month.  These are great ways to help others and make friends.

Try these connections as you feel ready.  What makes our church great are its people; that's you! 

See you Sunday! 

Pastor Myles

State of the Church

Snapshots don't tell the whole story. But they do provide a brief picture where certain things are seen from a particular angle. God is blessing our church and using our church for His Kingdom work. Here are few snapshots pictures of just the month of August this year. 

We saw a 20 % increase in the number of people we had participated in worship compared to last August.

Financially through the tithes and offerings our church we are nearly $26,000 ahead of where we were through August last year. That is an 18% increase.

We have seen our Creekside apartments and nursing home ministries grow. We had 4 baptisms at Creekside in the month of August and new families coming to our worship service. 

God is entrusting us with more. He is inviting us to keep trusting Him. When when please Him doing His ministry, His way, He blesses us in return.

What is ahead? Church planting partnership. Marking room for more in our worship services. More disciple making groups. More fellowship groups so that we are taking care of one another's needs. 

Forward to what is next! There will be challenges. There will be the continual need for evaluation and reprioritizing as we get sharper at what we do. There will be mistakes along the way as we try new creative things. And there will certainly be surprised that we could not have anticipated. 

Praise the Lord for the open door of ministry God is giving to FBC Oakwood!

It is a joy to lead the incredible team. I love working with each of you. Great days ahead together.

--

Myles Brown

Better Questions

Here are a few questions that are worth continual examination as a church in order to reach creative solutions:

• What does a disciple of Jesus look like? What do they know? What actions can be expected? What priorities are evident in their life?
• How do we make more of these disciples?
• What pleases God in worship gatherings of the whole church?
• How do we attract new people?
• How do we extend our influence into the community and world?
• How can we organize ourselves to take care of one another rightly?

Missional Living

Great article here on missional living.

http://www.vergenetwork.org/2011/06/08/8-easy-ways-to-easily-be-missional/

--

Myles Brown

Home Inspector

Are you in the market for a home in Northeast GA? Do you want a trusted professional to take a good look at your home during the due diligence period? Make sure you don't have any surprises.  Give this veteran a call. Andrew Davenport. Website here

Life Hacks I'm Learning

1. Email yourself what you want to remember. Even text message yourself.
2. Set alarms for everything. Google calendar alerts. Reminders.
3. Always pay at the pump.  
4. Combine meals and meetings.
5. One calendar. Google for me.
6. Carry a book at all times. You will find yourself waiting sometimes.
7. Leave the phone on silent always.
8. Take pictures of everything you are taking apart or changing.
9. Using public access and borrowing things for limited use is far better than owning and storing things.
10. Stretch. Muscles. Mind. Heart.

Training

Training has enormous dividend value.  I enjoy and benefit greatly from training. Spiritual, professional, and physical training all require time, money, and effort.  Most of the time it will require time and treasure from your discretionary accounts. Some employers may see the value of training high enough to provide some for their employees, but most of the time people have to choose to invest in training on their own dime and time. It will be money and time well spent.  It will greatly increase your productivity and quality of life. You will need to be selective in what training you choose if it is not provided or required by your employer. Here are some that recommendations and and thoughts:

Spiritual Training:

• The daily morning time with God (as little as 7 minutes but more would be best). Include talking to God, reading a passage from the Bible, simple journal entries, and reflection/listening.
• Personal and corporate worship experiences. Singing, listening and reflecting on solid and practical teaching 
• Volunteering. Helping other people each week in a way that you receive no pay and sometimes no thanks. Just help.
• Occasional retreats. A few hours. A day. A weekend. Rest. Talk little and listen to wise teachers. Escape to nature. It can be a simple as eating lunch outside or as complex as a hiking and backpacking excursion.

Professional Training:

• Challenging training that stretches your mind and skills.
• Training should stimulate your creativity and tap into skills and abilities that have been lying dormant.
• Practical in application in order to make us sharper, wiser, and more efficient in work life.

Physical Training:

• Constantly varied functional movements performed at high intensity. Workouts need to be based on functional movements, and these movements reflect the best aspects of gymnastics, weightlifting, running, rowing and more. These are the core movements of life. They move the largest loads the longest distances, so they are ideal for maximizing the amount of work done in the shortest time. Intensity is essential for results and is measurable as work divided by time—or power. The more work you do in less time, or the higher the power output, the more intense the effort. By employing a constantly varied approach to training, functional movements and intensity lead to dramatic gains in fitness. OK this definition is taken from the CrossFit website. I completely agree, however.  

• Physical training should be a challenge every single time.  Include goals and track progress.

All training in various aspects of life will include the following elements.  Consider yourself warned and challenged.

1. Pain and discomfort.  By design training requires stretching and new loads of work.  It will make your sore. Always.
2. Coaches and mentors who are interested in your ongoing development and growth. 
3. There may often be team elements, but in the end it will be personal.  You will choose every step of the way to keep moving forward or quit.
4. The cost will be more than you anticipate whether in effort, time, or money.  No easy buttons or shortcuts.

Here are places I currently train and receive coaching/teaching.

• The Bible
• First Baptist Church Oakwood
• Good Samaritan Food Bank
• Cooking and serving plates on Wednesday nights at my church
• StableLife garage CrossFit facility in Gainesville
• Trail runs at Chicopee trails and the University of North Georgia Oakwood Campus
• Teaching from Hope Church Ft. Worth, TX
• Deer hunting on a land lease.
• Training and coaching from the 17:6 network
• Value Shaping Ministries Conference at Hope Church in Ft. Worth, TX
• Wisdom Conference at Hope Church in Ft. Worth, TX.
• Spiritual and Devotional classics: selected readings from the Renovare group
• Ted Talks: usually stuff way outside of our field of work life.

Partnership

Did you know that our church has several partnership ventures as we do the Kingdom of God work with other churches and organizations.

We partner with the Chattahoochee Baptist Association and the 75 plus congregations in Northeast GA seeking to make disciples of Jesus in our local region of the world. 2% of every dollar given to church budget goes to this partnership. Their website for more information about what they do is here: http://cbamissions.org/

We cooperate with other Baptist organizations such as 6 theological seminaries training missionaries and ministry leaders, 3 Georgia Baptist Colleges, the Georgia Baptist Mission Board, The North American Mission Board, The International Mission Board, the Ethics & Religious Liberties Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.  This year 6.7% of our church budget goes to this ministry partners through the Cooperative Fund. Want to know more about what this partnership accomplished click here:

http://www.sbc.net/cp/

We also have been partnering with other church plants and strategists who are training and developing healthy churches. We have been directly supporting Journey Church in Mississauga, Ontario. You can find our more about this church here:

http://thejourneychurch.ca/

We have also been investing in the ministry of church strategist and consultant Will McRaney, Jr.  Will is a mentor and coach to Pastor Myles.

http://willmcraney.com/

Pastor Myles is also in continues coaching and training from other Value Shaping Ministry churches through the 17:6 network. Acts 17:6 is where the name of this network comes.  You can find out more about this network and the churches and leaders who are part of it here:

http://17sixnetwork.com/

We also partner with other agencies in our local area who are doing Kingdom ministries to help the poor, stand up more life and make disciples. Here are a few: Choices Pregnancy Care Center, the South Hall FoodPantry, The Baptist Collegiate Ministry at the University of North Georgia(Oakwood Campus), the Oakwood Ministerial Alliance (began in 2017), and StableLife Ministries.

In 2018, we look to have many other partnerships. We look to help start a church in South Hall, Multiply Church. We will be partnering with the Greater Hall County FCA,

Partnership is how we work together with other in order to multiply the impact we make for the Kingdom of God.  Linking arms with others we are stronger together.

Pray for partners. Pray that God will provide for needs as they serve the Lord.

Multiply

One of the most natural occurrences in nature is multiplication. Our oak trees have been dropping acorns in my yard. Baby deer have been loosing their spots as they have grown up in the neighborhood.  I was able to hold a new born baby on Sunday who arrived safely into her family. Reproduction, multiplication, and replication is natural. Sustainability includes dropping seedlings for the future.

As a church, First Baptist Church Oakwood is considering the necessity of multiplication as we consider how to really thrive in the present and future.  Our 114 year old church has grown through the years and has helped generations of people know and follow Jesus.  As we grow, it is natural to also reproduce new ministries, churches, and leaders.  Like an oak tree standing steady through the years, it is the acorns carry the future.  This means we keep an eye on what is next and how to reproduce ourselves.

We are in discussions now about being the sending church for a brand new church being planted in South Hall.  Robby Williams, his wife and Amy, family and team of 20 are stepping out in faith to follow God's call to make disciples.  This seedling group is the beginning of a new "oak tree" that will grow and bless the generations to come in South Hall.  Our church has this opportunity to be a blessing to them.  How?

We can be a source of prayer support.  We may provide servant help in projects and events in the life of the new church.  The opportunity is before us to be a help in what God is doing to birth a new church.  Partnering with other like minded churches from all over we can network support and resources for the church to have the most fertile potential to be a great church.

Robby Williams, lead pastor and church planter, has been on staff as student pastor at Montgomery Memorial Baptist Church for 20 years.  He is faithful husband and father who has a reputable reputation among all who know him.  He loves Jesus and the people of Hall County.  That combination along with the specific call of God to plant is a recipe of success.

This new church is going to happen.  It is going to be a vibrant faith community.  Our church has this opportunity to be part of this birthing process. Multiply. Replicate. It is time.

Our staff and deacons have discussed this possibility and are excited to share this opportunity with our church.  We will be hearing from Robby Williams soon on a Sunday morning.  We will have a chance to formalize the relationship at our church conference on October 8.  As we look at plans and ministry budgets for 2018 we will consider how we can help this new church in multiple ways.

Multiply. Fidelity to the Great Commission. Make Disciples everywhere. Planting seeds for the present and the future.