First Baptist Church of Gallatin (Presented 12-31-23)
Pastor’s Report (Ministry Year End Report 2023):
#1 The Word was Preached:
2 Timothy 4:1-2 I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingdom: 2 preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.
· Sunday Morning Worship Service:
o Understanding Ordinances & Membership (Impromptu Series Continued & Finished?): Two new sermons to maybe close the series - Benefiting from Preaching & Benefiting from the Discipleship Commission.
o Matthew 8-18 Kingdom Power: Continued and finished the final 15 sermons in our second series through the book of Matthew covering chapters 8-18 began in 2022 exploring the amazing miracle working power and authority that King Jesus displayed in his earthly ministry!
o BF&M 2000 Teaching Series Concluded: The 18th article of faith on the Family was preached in the morning on Mother’s Day to conclude a series exploring our church doctrine mostly preached during our members meetings on Sunday nights the last several years.
o The Christian’s Armor: A 4-part sermon series preached on Ephesians 6:10-20 and the important but oftentimes ignored aspect of the unseen battle of spiritual warfare. This series coincided with our VBS Keepers of the Kingdom theme going on at the time.
o Jonah: Unexpected Mercy: A 7-part sermon series preaching through the book of Jonah where we explored the unexpected grace and mercy of God; not only to a wicked city, but also to a backsliding fleeing prophet.
o 1 Timothy: Healthy Church – We began a new series at the end of the year on Paul’s first letter to Timothy as he mentors his pastoral delegate about how he should conduct his ministry and establish church rules and church health in Ephesus.
o Advent Series: A 4-part series of Christmas sermons preached by 4 different preachers (Daniel, Kyle, Micah, Wood) during the Christmas season to prepare us for the Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love displayed in Jesus’ birth leading up to Christmas!
o Individual Sermons - Multiple one-off single sermons were preached from different passages by various preachers on Sunday morning (Pastor Wood, Scott Earnst, Eric Corwin’s Testimony Message, Micah Sidebottom, Kyle Taft, & Pastor Daniel). Sermon texts ranged from Micah’s intermittent Joshua series, Woods intermittent Malachi series, multiple sermons on evangelism, 2 Corinthians, Easter, a testimony of God’s working, Romans on the problem of sin & evil, Luke on Jesus saving the Demoniac, Daniel 1 on resisting assimilation, a sermon on the book of Ruth, Exodus 14, and a sermon on Acts 27.
· Sunday Evening Sermons (& the congregation responded in prayer):
o In 2023, various shorter sermons were preached during our evening prayers service by pastor Daniel, pastor Wood, & Kyle Taft.
o Sermon texts chosen based on our daily Bible Reading from Robert Murray M’Cheyne with sermons ranging from Acts, 1 Corinthians, Hebrews, Luke, Numbers, 2 Timothy, Romans, Titus, & Philippians.
· Members Meetings:
o Understanding our Church Doctrine – Pastor Daniel continued and taught the final 5 short sermons through the Baptist Faith and Message where we explored our key doctrinal beliefs on important topics about what we affirm together as a church.
o New Schedule Update: Due to the congregational vote changing members meetings from 12 evening monthly meetings to 5 total meetings with more meetings in the morning, and due to the fact that both the Church Covenant (5 sermons) and Church Doctrine (19 sermons) series’ have both been completed, we no longer have the teaching time during our members meetings due to most of them being after morning service where preaching has already occurred.
· Reach Youth Group:
o Talk sheets: Church/Christian life topics (SS).
o Life of Christ: Sermon on the Mount (SS) .
o The Gospel Project: Going through the Bible (Leviticus-1 Samuel) while gleaning and applying doctrine.
o Topical Lessons: current events, religions/cults, biblically accurate Christmas.
#2 People were Discipled:
Matthew 28:18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
· OG Discipleship Table Talks: 7 additional final meetings in 2023 looking to wrap up a total of 57 intentional discipleship table talk meetings that we started in 2020 at the start of the pandemic and continued through June of 2023 which came to well over 100 hours of discipleship discussions on theology, the Christian life, and Christian ministry.
· Co-ed Intentional Discipleship Table Talks: Two additional co-ed table talks semesters (Spring, Fall 2023), 15 new 2-hour meetings on the topics of “Evangelism” And “The Kingdom of the Cults” where we heard a testimony of someone coming out of a cult and then discussed cult outreach and evangelism to reach our friends in a cult, and also dealing with doctrinal discussions and also discipleship topics such as Grace When Things are Hard, Anger Mismanagement, Depression, Anxiety, Fear, and becoming a church that cares well for the abused. Over 30 hours of discipleship ministry.
· Sunday School Bible Studies: 4 adult co-ed classes (taught by Jim Ruse, Darryl Wilkinson, Jeremy Ripple, & Rick Willet, *down to 3 classes at the end of the year after Darryl moved), 2 children’s classes (taught by Scott Earnst & Mandi Ripple), and one youth class (taught by Wood Marshall) with great teaching, discussion, prayer and fellowship in all of them!
· Weekly staff devotions: with (Daniel, Wood, Bobbi, & Ashley).
· Wednesday Pioneer Clubs: With great teaching, discipleship, and evangelism with the Word of God!
· Wednesday Reach Youth Group: Weekly meetings splitting the Jr. High and Highschoolers for teaching, discipleship, evangelism (Wood, Ashley, & Chris).
· 4 new baptism and 5 new members were added after going through the membership process and were affirmatively voted into our membership by our congregation and agreed to both our church covenant and doctrine as well as the collective goal for all of us to help one another grow in our discipleship as we follow Jesus together.
· Dr. Samuel Parkison June Round Table Q&A sharing about his ministry at Gulf Theological Seminary in Abu Dhabi.
· Vacation Bible School theme on the spiritual warfare titled Keepers of the Kingdom where we learned about the armor of God and this coincided with a sermon series on the topic on Sunday mornings over the summer as well…
· Some church members attended and many were invited to the 9Marks conference at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in February 2023 on the topic of biblical evangelism which then led nicely into some sermons on the topic as well as our table talk spring semester theme going over a book by Mack Stiles who was the keynote speaker…
· Daniel attended the Bethlehem Pastors Conference in Minnesota for personal pastoral growth and edification as well as going to the Men’s Encounter with Eric Corwin for additional encouragement, blessing, and growth.
· Wood & Daniel went to the 9marks Weekender at Capitol Hill Baptist Church in DC for a pastors’ conference and received great resources and teaching promoting healthy church ministry coinciding well with the conferences we’ve gone to with church members annually the last 4 years at Midwestern.
· Deacons Meeting – Micah & then Rick taught edifying monthly devotions at the start of our meetings.
· Keenagers – Monthly edifying teaching and discussion led by Doug & Shirley Laney on a variety of very encouraging and helpful topics.
· Pastor Daniel & Wood had a weekly pastor’s meeting for service review, service planning, pastoral leadership discussion, and prayer for our church.
· Pastor Wood had a regular phone meeting with another pastor he has been encouraging in his ministry.
· Pastor Wood had a Sabbatical to rest, refresh, and grow…
· Pastor Daniel & Wood - Practical Shepherding Bi-Monthly Level-2 Cohort Meeting with other pastors and a pastor mentor led by Brian Croft in 2023 (about 20 online zoom-call meetings).
· Daniel – Completed the required CEU (Continued Education Units) required by ACBC (Association of Certified Biblical Counselors) to maintain ACBC certification and continue to develop in personal discipleship and counseling care…
#3 People were Counseled:
Acts 20:20 how I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable, and teaching you in public and from house to house,
· Pastors are not only called to the public ministry of the Word, but also the personal ministry of the Word to particular issues and problems of people’s lives…
· In 2020 (for reference), Pastor Daniel counseled 7 different individual or family units (either individual, married couple, or married couple with children), 10 people, 48 formal counseling meetings (ranging anywhere from 1 to 2 hours… Well over 60 hours of biblical counseling ministry…
· In 2021 (for reference), Pastor Daniel counseled 14 different individual or family units (either individual, married couple, or married couple with children), 25 people, 75 formal counseling meetings (ranging from 1 - 2 hours… Well over 90 hours of biblical counseling ministry… 40 of these counseling meetings were supervised by a more seasoned mentor pastor…
· In 2022 (for reference), Pastor Daniel Counseled 31 different individual or family units (either individual, married, couple, or married couple with children), 43 people, ~110 formal counseling meetings (ranging from 1 - 2 hours… Well over 150 hours of biblical counseling ministry…10 of these counseling meetings were supervised by a more seasoned mentor pastor in completion of ACBC certification…
· In 2023, Pastor Daniel Counseled 26 different individual or family units (either individual, married, couple, or married couple with children for at least one but usually multiple meetings), 35 people, ~ 101 counseling meetings (ranging from 1 – 2+ hours… Well over 150 hours of biblical counseling ministry…
· In 2020-2021 (for reference), Pastor Wood counseled 2 different couples for premarital counseling, total of 4 people, 15 formal counseling meetings for about 20 hours of counseling care.
· In 2022 (for reference), Pastor Wood counseled 6 different individual or family units, and then several youth informal counseling conversations topics from school pressures, family dynamics and conflict, aftermath and prevention of suicide, handling bullies, peer pressure, crisis situations and more for countless hours of counsel and care.
· In 2023, Pastor Wood counseled 9 different individual or family units, and then several youth informal counseling conversations topics from school pressures, family dynamics and conflict, aftermath and prevention of suicide, handling bullies, peer pressure, crisis situations, other religions/cults and more for countless hours of counsel and care. In addition to those, he also held 5 formal counseling meetings for 2 family units. In the year he also mentored/discipled 2 younger men. One seeking wisdom in a current ministry context and another pursuing ministry. Each one met or called weekly for 1-3 hours.
#4 Music Ministry Led Us in Worship Through Song:
Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.
· Led us in weekly God glorifying music!
· Celebration choir potlucks and training.
· Many God glorifying rehearsals!
· 2 Cantatas (Easter & Christmas).
· Good Friday & Thanksgiving Community Choir Services.
· Community Choir Christmas Concert!
#5 Pastors Led:
Acts 20:28 Pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock, in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood.
· The pastors led preaching/teaching, discipleship, and counseling care ministry.
· Weekly pastors’ meetings to pray for the congregation, encourage one another, discuss discipleship ministry in the church, review the previous service & sermons, and plan new future services and ministry, and pray for our church.
· The pastors planned and led the worship services as God has called them to do.
· The pastors led the monthly prayer service.
· Pastors led our members meetings.
· In 2023, Daniel led our third annual childcare workers children's safety training and awareness meeting.
· The pastors led us in our church mission and centered commitments (Expository Preaching, Intentional Discipleship, & the Great Commission).
· Pastors led us to continue to support and consider Great Commission Gospel Motivated partnerships, missionary opportunities, and partnerships (IMB, NAMB, MBC, the Hills, the Parkinsons)
· Pastors led administratively with website content, YouTube sermon channel, podcast, audio sermon website, social media, countless hours of training and work to get our new church sign up and running, various meetings, church activities, and other initiatives scheduled, planned, and oversaw them with the help of many others also involved like our church secretary, committee members, and overall church membership involvement.
· Pastors also led in SBC association involvement attending and being involved in our NGRBA annual meeting and other meetings, watching the National Convention annual meeting online to take notes and be aware of action items relating to our church, resources, and initiatives in our denomination, and also going to our State Convention meeting in Springfield to participate and also keep our church updated about our denominational local state initiatives as well.
#6 Deacons Served:
1 Timothy 3:13 For those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.
· Deacons served as they became aware of needs through the contact and care lists.
· Deacons discussed and implemented various benevolence initiatives in 2023 as they came up.
· Intercessory Prayer & Gospel Motivated Giving weekly prayers.
· Monthly Deacons Meetings to care for practical service needs in the church.
· Served by greeting, ushering, and passing along and responding to prayer needs as they were made aware.
· Served by planning the Naomi Banquet planning to honor our widows.
· Participated and served during the annual Christmas Eve candlelight service.
#7 The Congregation Made Decisions Together (Keys of the Kingdom-Matt 16;18):
Matthew 18:18-20 Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.”
· The congregation heard the profession of faith and got to know 5 new members (4 of them being baptized, the other had already been baptized) to vote to receive them as members and take responsibility of one another’s discipleship, caring for one another and helping each other follow Jesus!
· The congregation met for regular and specially called members meetings to address key areas of church life together to participate in the life and ministry of our church!
· The congregation gathered weekly to hear the Word and also applied it and shared it with others in our church and community to the glory of God! Being built up in the Word to then reach out as our church mission statement puts it!
#8 The Congregation Supported in Gospel Motivated Giving & Practical Service:
2 Corinthians 9:7 Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.
· Our members generously gave to provide for the salaries of 4 staff employees including two pastors, a church secretary, and custodian.
· Our members have continued to regularly, generously, and sacrificially give to maintain and grow ministry at FBC motivated by the Gospel!!!
· Special missions’ offerings MMO, Annie Armstrong, Lottie Moon, a certain percentage of our monthly giving went to the state and national Cooperative Program giving of the SBC, another percentage given to the NGRBA local association, a portion of our giving was sent directly to the Parkison Family in Abu Dhabi including other members giving directly to them on top of that.
· Members participated in our bi-annual Ministerial Alliance giving for local benevolence care in our community.
· Trustees regularly fixed and maintained our church building and parsonage, installed our new ice maker, and even installed our new church sign!!! They have decided to take on additional care of our trash to save money on our budget next year, and also take on the lawn care for the church and parsonage as well to help our budget.
#9 The Congregation Cultivated Fellowship:
1 John1:3 that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
• Potluck meals (Easter Breakfast, Pastor’s Appreciation Dinner, Year End Christmas Dinner coinciding with our annual budget members meeting)
• Lake Viking Potluck Cookout fellowship & concert overlooking the lake.
• Keenagers monthly meal and fellowship and teaching led by the Laney’s!
• Women’s ministry had an online conference and had their second annual Christmas gathering event!
• Bi-monthly Women’s Coffee fellowship.
• Superbowl fellowship gathering and devotion at halftime.
• Trunk or Treat participation at the middle school and handed out tons of candy and hundreds of church information flyers while inviting many to Pioneer Clubs (we won first place price for our trunk!!! Thanks to Brandi for leading that!).
• Multiple Reach Youth Group Outings & Events: Nerf Nights, Funky Basket Easter Egg Hunt, Hide and Clap, Glow in the Dark Capture the Flag, Water Night, Sunday Night Game Night, Girls Event (Popcorn and Plants), Christmas Party, Youth Fantasy Football and we also handed out popsicles and lemonade to youth while fellowshipping from our house on various summer nights.
• Wood and Ashley attended sporting events, band competitions, and miscellaneous school events.
• Pioneer Club meetings cultivating fellowship amongst leaders as well as discipleship and witnessing opportunities with the students.
• VBS provided 6 nights of fellowship amongst students and leaders, end of summer family night, and fellowship and fun at the pool party at the Gallatin pool.
#10 The Congregation Cared for One Another & Served Together
Philippians2:3 Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. 4 Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. 5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus,
· Monthly Congregation al Prayer Service...
· Prayer chain email and text updates for congregational prayer.
· Meals provided during Pioneer club, youth nights, and all week during VBS.
· Meal trains for those in need.
· Members participated in meals on wheels.
· Youth group clothing, food, school supplies given.
· A couple of families very generously provided Christmas gifts for a student from the youth ministry!
· Hospital visitations, home fellowship, & hospitality amongst church members all year!
· Funerals were conducted by pastors, and the hospitality provided by the social committee who prepared meals to care for and show love for grieving families.
· Reach Youth: MS & HS Christmas event delivering baskets to our older church members. Also, clothing, hygiene items, food, school supplies and small amounts of money for transportation for anyone with a need.
· Benevolence help distributed through FBC Gallatin. And also, through our Ministerial Alliance cooperation.
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