If you remember, back in January, we launched a new vision for the church. Our mission statement is that Fee Fee Baptist Church exists to make disciples who build their lives on Jesus and pursue the good of our community for the glory of God. We boil down that mission statement to the simple phrase, “Build and Pursue.”
Since that whole series took place pre-pandemic, I thought it would be helpful for us to evaluate how we are doing as a church in aligning with that mission during these last few months. I think it is incredibly humbling to see how our church has been so flexible and creative in our mission to build and pursue during these last few months.
When it comes to building our lives on Jesus, we had to really go digital. I am thankful that Fee Fee was more prepared than most churches. We already had the capability to stream services, so we were ahead of the curve among the majority of Evangelical churches. Additionally, I was so thankful for how our different Bible study leaders were incredibly flexible in switching to meet over Zoom, Facebook, or even email! We even had a digital choir! Also, I have really enjoyed our times of prayer each day, Monday through Thursday, on Facebook. Digital discipleship hasn’t always been ideal, but it has been such a blessing to see our church body adapt and respond. We are truly building our lives on Jesus in a number of ways.
However, we didn’t just look inward and only focus on our church body and growing internally. We have taken on major initiatives to make sure that we are pursuing the good of our community. Here are just a few of the ways that our church has been meeting needs in our community:
- We had 23 people sign up to volunteer to serve our community through our website to meet various needs that have arisen.
- We partnered with the St. Louis Area Food Bank and have had nearly 80 volunteers work so far. Also, we have had 682 cars come through our mobile food pantry, which represented 2,717 people!
- We have had over 20 students and volunteers serve on “Mission Mondays,” where our youth go around and help in our community doing yard work and meeting other needs.
- We partnered with the American Red Cross and had volunteers donate blood; with another opportunity to do so July 22-23!
- We have our Meals on Wheels crew that have been faithfully preparing meals and delivering them week in and week out.
- We served a meal to one of the COVID-19 floors at DePaul Hospital.
Not only that, but our church has also been exceedingly generous as we talk about missions. Your contributions to the benevolence fund have been so helpful in our efforts to provide for different people in need, including paying someone’s rent and providing work clothes for another person.
Additionally, I was blown away that we exceeded our goal for the Annie Armstrong offering and have received $12,050 at the time of this writing.
Now, I am not saying all of these things so we can rest on our laurels. We all know how much need there still is in our city, our nation, and our world. Instead, I want to encourage and inspire each of us. If you haven’t volunteered yet to serve, there are going to be other opportunities.
One big change we are making is that we are moving our Impact Week to August 2-8. We gave 455 volunteer hours to our community last fall. Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could do something similar this summer, even in the midst of a pandemic?!
I can’t wait to see how God works in and through our church in the days ahead. It is a joy serving alongside you as we get to proclaim the truth of the gospel through word and deed! Let’s continue to “Build and Pursue” for the glory of God!
In Him,
Pastor Zach