Category: A Word From… Forerunner Front Page News

Church Family,

As I am writing this, it is the first day of summer for my three kids. I can’t believe the school year is already over…time has flown by! With summer now here, I wanted to share with you some exciting things happening in the life of our church.

First, we are going to spend the summer diving into different parables that Jesus taught. What is the main reason behind Jesus telling parables? I can distinctly remember being taught that parables were stories about how we should live. That we are supposed to be good, moral people.

However, we make a mistake when we equate parables with fables, stories that are just giving us a good moral lesson. Jared Wilson, in Storytelling God, writes, “The parables function in Jesus’s ministry as representative stories about Kingdom of God.” He later adds that they are “postcards from heaven” and that the stories “contained the mystery of eternal life.”

I love parables being described that way. Stories that give us a glimpse of how God’s Kingdom is supposed to operate. It’s time for us to move past our preconceived ideas of the parables just being good stories, and instead, seeing them as stories about the Kingdom of God.

Our summer sermon series will be all about the parables. It’s going to be called “True Fiction,” because these are fictional stories that Jesus shared in order to communicate deep biblical truth. It is my prayer that it will help shed new light on this stories that we all have heard before.

These parables were told by Jesus not to direct us to be good and moral, but to drive us to worship him as he exposes how his will should be done on earth as it is in heaven.

When it comes to knowing his will, we all know of God’s desire for all people and all nations to come to know Him. Missions really is God’s heartbeat! Throughout the summer, you are going to get the chance to pray for and to participate in local, national, and international mission opportunities.

Internationally, we are going to be taking a team back to the Dominican Republic in July. To help this team, we are going to be collecting different colors of sharpies (not just black!) and flip flops to take with us as we go and serve in San Pedro de Macoris. Please pray for this team, and also bring some supplies as we go to bless this community that we have partnered with for 5 years now!

Nationally, our youth are heading out to Washington, D.C. in June. Please be praying for them as they go to share the Gospel and serve in our nation’s capital.

Locally, we have the most important outreach opportunity of the year coming up in July. It is the most effective local missions event that we do every year. Do you know what it is? Vacation Bible School! More decisions are made for Christ at VBS than any other outreach event. We can change lives for eternity at VBS! Please be praying for our VBS, and pray about how you can serve that week!

I can’t wait to see how God moves over the next few months. Please join me in praying that our church continues to build our lives on Jesus and pursues the good of our community for God’s glory this summer!

In Him,

Pastor Zach Crook

Church Family,

I have spent the past few days reflecting on Dr. Ross’s message to our church body last weekend. For our Family Connection Sunday, Dr. Ross come up from Southwestern Seminary in Ft. Worth and he gave a challenging message about how to best raise the next generation to follow Christ.

What I found both encouraging and challenging was his simple exhortation. He pointed out that the best way to make sure the next generation is following Jesus is to search our own hearts and make sure we want to live for God’s glory above our own. He challenged us to all make sure we were disciples of Jesus, not converts. In Dr. Ross’s words, converts are people who attend church and follow God for their benefit, not His. Disciples, on the other hand, live for God and care about bringing Him glory over their own comfort.

It was a pretty simple message, but I know it was convicting to me. So often, we worry about our kids and grandkids following the Lord. However, Dr. Ross made sure that we all understood that it starts with our own hearts! We need to passionately live for Jesus and make sure that we share that truth with the next generation! I wanted to challenge you with a couple of different ways to passionately live for Jesus and serve the church in the days ahead.

First, you can volunteer with our First Impressions team. With Andrew leaving to go and serve at the Food Bank, we are bringing on Logan Mills as our Interim Director of College and Outreach. Logan is in need of some volunteers to serve on our First Impressions team and greet guests and members as they come on campus each Sunday.

Second, we need volunteers to help pick up donations from St. Louis Bread Co. on Saturday evenings. Every Saturday evening, we have volunteers that pick up bread from Bread Co. that we distribute through Meals on Wheels and also give away on Sunday mornings. If you would be willing to pick up this bread on Saturday evenings, please reach out to Donna Potts. We love serving our community through Meals on Wheels and this weekly donation from St. Louis Bread Co. really helps!

Finally, when it comes to instilling the truth in our next generation, we need more volunteers for our youth and children’s ministries! From serving in the nursery to listening to kids share their verses during AWANA, there are a lot of ways that you can volunteer and help disciple the next generation. Please talk with Kathy or Kyle to learn more about ways you can volunteer and serve the next generation!

I hope you were challenged and encouraged by Dr. Ross. Please join me in praying that we will be a church that lives out our faith!

In Him,

Pastor Zach Crook

Church Family,

This has been a pretty busy April! We started with DNOW, then we had our Widow and Widowers Banquet. Now, at the time of my writing, we are gearing up for both Easter and our Family Connection Sunday! I can’t wait to see how God moves and works in our church through the remainder of this month!

It is great to use this space to write about events that are happening in the life of our church (which I often do). However, I wanted this article to be more devotional in nature. In fact, at the time of me writing this, today is the 250^th anniversary of one of my favorite hymns, “There is a Fountain.”

This hymn was written as part of the Olney Hymnbook by William Cowper (pronounced “Cooper”). Cowper was a trained lawyer and poet who dealt with tragedy throughout his life. He was only the second of seven children who made it to adulthood. His mother passed when he was six. He spent time away at boarding school and was bullied by peers. He dealt with bouts of depression and had a nervous breakdown when he was interviewing for a parliamentary position and attempted suicide on three different occasions and spent time in a mental asylum. However, it was there, in that asylum, that he came to faith in Christ.

While we wish his story was all wonderful from there, he still struggled with mental health for the rest of his life. He ended up moving out to Olney and was befriended and discipled by John Newton, the slave-trader turned priest who penned “Amazing Grace.” Newton encouraged Cowper to write hymns with him for their church.

In a time when he was close to the Lord, he wrote the lyrics to the “There is a Fountain.” This hymn references Zechariah 13:1 and it’s first verse proclaims, “There is a fountain filled with blood/drawn from Immanuel’s veins/And sinners plunged beneath that flood/lose all their guilt and stains.”

Reflecting on the cross, this hymn powerfully communicates the hope that we have because of Christ’s substitutionary atonement. He bled on that cross so that we could be saved! Though Cowper had a difficult life, he clung to Christ as his Savior!

Getting very personal in the fifth verse, Cowper writes of a longing when he won’t have to battle his issues anymore. He writes, “When this poor lisping, stamm’ring tongue/lies silent in the grave/then in a nobler, sweeter song/I’ll sing the power to save.”

That “lisp” that Cowper endured was never fully healed on this side of heaven. However, because he was plunged beneath that flood from Immanuel’s veins, he is now made perfect and whole with his Savior.

Church, in the midst of difficult circumstances in our lives, let us, like Cowper, cling to the promise that we all lose our guilty stains when we are trust in Jesus as our Savior!

In Him,

Pastor Zach Crook

Church Family,

It seems like we just started 2022 and spring is just around the corner! Can you believe that Easter is next month?! In addition to the warmer weather that comes with spring, we also have the encouraging signs of COVID numbers dropping over 90% what they were in our area in January. Let’s definitely pray that those numbers keep dropping, especially with Easter right around the corner!

Speaking of Easter, I recently read an interesting study from Lifeway Research and Evangelism Explosion about how widely receptive Americans are to spiritual conversations. The research found that 51% of Americans say they’re curious as to why some people are devoted to their faith. Of that 51%, 60% of them were people who considered themselves “religiously unaffiliated.” Basically, over half of our country are curious and want to know more about why we are devoted to Christ. Think of the evangelistic implications of that! Half of our country want to know why we love Jesus!

And, while the pandemic has had some devastating effects on our country, there is a bit of a silver lining to the COVID cloud. According to the study, 32% of Americans say that COVID-19 has made them more interested in spiritual matters. Think about that, 1/3 of our fellow Americans are now more interested in spiritual things now than they were two years ago. What an incredible opportunity we have to engage with the lost!

So, the good news is that people are ready to hear about the Gospel. As Jesus says in Matthew 9, the harvest is plentiful! However, the research conducted by Lifeway also shared a troubling statistic. When responders were asked if their Christian friends talk about faith, 60% said that their Christian friends “rarely talk about faith.”

Do you see the issue at hand? People are ready to hear about our faith. The pandemic has made people think about spiritual issues to a greater extent than they did pre-COVID. However, 60% of the individuals surveyed said their Christian friends rarely talked about faith. Scott McConnel, the Executive Director of Lifeway Research said, “There is a quiet chasm between the religiously devoted and those who have no religion in the U.S. The irony is that religious devotion intrigues many people, yet many avid Christians fail to share why faith is so important in their lives.”

Let’s not keep the gospel a secret! Let’s look for opportunities to share about who Jesus is and what he has done in our lives. Easter is a natural time to share your faith and invite people to an Easter service with you. Or, invite them to our Pursue Sunday on March 20 so they can hear how Christians are making an impact in our community.

Let’s pray that we won’t keep the good news to ourselves. Let’s share the hope of Jesus with a world that desperately needs it!

In Him,

Pastor Zach Crook

¹https://research.lifeway.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Evangelism-Explosion-Survey-of-Americans-Report.pdf

Church Family,

Sometimes it’s wise to take a minute and reflect on why we do what we do as a church. Obviously, first and foremost, we do everything that we do to glorify God. He created us, he saved us through his Son, Jesus, and he sustains us. He and he alone is worthy of worship. We should live to worship him.

While we know that we need to glorify him in all that we do, it is always helpful to think about how we can best do that. Here at Fee Fee, our mission statement is as follows:

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 often shorten this mission statement to the phrase “Build and Pursue.” Part of what we want to do is make sure that we are offering opportunities to engage with this idea of building and pursuing. For example, just a couple of weeks ago, on February 13, we had our Mid-Winter Bible Study. This is something that we did that was designed to help us build our lives on Jesus.

Now, coming up on March 20, we are going to have our first “Pursue Sunday.” This special worship service is going to highlight different partnerships we have in our city to help advance the Gospel and pursue the good of our community. We are going to hear stories about the work that God is doing through different places likes Loaves and Fishes, Room at the Inn, and Joni and Friends. The whole idea behind this Sunday is to raise awareness of organizations that are already pursuing the good of our community and highlight ways for us to get involved.

This special Sunday is also going to be a day where we have only one united worship service. We are going to combine our worship services and have only one service at 11:00 a.m. It is great for us to occasionally join together and rub elbows with one another, regardless of which service you usually attend. We will have our Bible Study time at 9:45 a.m. followed by our united worship service at 11:00 a.m.

I would love for you to join me in praying for this special “Pursue Sunday.” Let’s pray that we continue to pursue the good of our community for the glory of God! It’s going to be a great Sunday, and I can’t wait to worship with you on March 20!

In Him,

Pastor Zach Crook

Church Family,

When I first heard about Fee Fee Baptist, I spent some time researching the church before I came out here. One thing that struck me as interesting is how the church is located right in between both the St. Louis Metro Baptist Association and the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home. I remember jokingly referring to our area as the “Baptist row of St. Louis.” What I found intriguing being so close to both the associational office and the Children’s Home was that it could make partnering with these organizations that much easier.

I know that I have been blessed by the leadership of Darren Casper at the associational office. He has provided great insight and helped facilitate ministry partnerships for our church. In addition, it has been a blessing to have Rev. George Fulgham from the MBCH come and provide training for our youth and children’s volunteers. This is a training that we will be holding again in the spring.

As we continue to examine ways to work together with these neighbors for the sake of the Gospel, I am excited to share that Derald Harris, the Vice President of Public Relations at the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home, will be preaching for our annual Mid-Winter Bible Study on Sunday, February 13.

In keeping with the tradition of this special Sunday, Derald Harris will be preaching a unique message in both services. We want to invite you to be a part of both of them as we get to hear God speak through him.

A key component of the MBCH is that it is a place of “Restoration and Healing.” In the first service, Derald Harris will be preaching on God’s Restoring Grace, and how God restores believers to fellowship with himself and the family of God when we fall away. The second service will be focused on God’s Healing Grace, and how God heals our hurts, emotional scars, and feelings of low self-worth.

It is always a blessing to be reminded that we aren’t trying to reach Bridgeton and St. Louis on our own. We can have great Kingdom-minded partnerships with places like the MBCH and the SLMBA. I want to encourage you to join us for our Mid-Winter Bible Study and join me in praying for the Missouri Baptist Children’s Home and the St. Louis Metro Baptist Association.

In Him,

Pastor Zach Crook

Church Family,

One of the most fascinating individuals to study in church history is Martin Luther. On October 31, 1517, Luther nailed “95 Theses” to the door of the church in Wittenburg. Luther wanted to reform the church and was addressing the concerns he had with how the Roman Catholic Church was selling indulgences for forgiveness of sins. Luther was convinced that the main authority for every Christian should be God’s Word. Further, he was convinced that salvation was by grace through faith, alone. This challenge by Luther to get back to God’s Word and to preach and teach that salvation is by faith only without works was a catalyst for the Protestant Reformation.

Luther wanted to get the truth of the Gospel into the hands of the common German people. He translated the Bible into German and spent the rest of life his teaching and preaching that salvation came by grace through faith.

Luther fought against any and all teachings of the church that he felt like were adding to Scripture. He was a monk who abandoned the idea of celibacy and actually took a former nun as his wife. He was bold in declaring that you should never add anything to the Gospel.

For the next few months, we are going to take time studying one of Luther’s favorite books of the Bible, Galatians. In fact, in talking about the book, Martin Luther once said: “The Epistle to the Galatians is my epistle, to which I have wedded myself. It is my Catherine Von Bora.”

He said he felt like Galatians was as important to him as his wife, Catherine! When the leader of the Protestant Reformation makes a claim like that, it makes me excited to dive into this great book! This book clearly proclaims the Gospel and shows that we are saved by grace, not by works of the law.

We are calling this study of Galatians, “Jesus + Nothing = Everything.” Do you truly believe that? That Jesus is enough? Paul challenges us throughout Galatians to not add anything to the Gospel. All we need is Jesus! Galatians 2:20 reminds us that it isn’t about us. We have been crucified with Christ, and we no live, but Christ lives in us!

Paul wrote Galatians to combat false teachers who were trying to add to the Gospel. They were saying that it wasn’t just trusting in Jesus that led to salvation, but you also had to be circumcised and follow different laws. Paul makes sure that the church in Galatia understands that you can’t add anything to the Gospel. He wants us all to see that Jesus + Nothing = Everything!

Let’s remind ourselves of who Jesus is and what He has done for us as we study this incredible book together! Join me in praying that God speaks to us as we journey through Galatians.

In Him,

Pastor Zach Crook