Strategic Planning for Farmdale Baptist Church

Posted on June 15, 2009 by Steve Weaver
  • Need for rethinking, possibly restructuring some areas of our ministry.
  • As we’ve had to think through the budget, so too the ministries which the budget funds.
  • “Don’t waste a crisis!”  An opportunity for refocusing, not handwringing.
  • The routine can become a rut.  We need to shock ourselves out of the rut.
  • The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.

Everything we do at Farmdale Baptist Church needs to fit into our vision of what we’re supposed to be doing as a church.  My vision and I  believe our churches mission is:

“To glorify God by expositing the Scriptures, exalting the             Savior, equipping the saints, and evangelizing sinners.”

Everything we do needs to fit into that vision.  This needs to drive our ministries.  We should do no activities for activity sake.  Everything we need to do needs to be on purpose for a purpose that is based on our vision of what we as a church are called to do.

So, I ask that all our committees and officers within the church prayerfully consider their preparation and activities in the coming year with the above vision in mind.  If we do so, we will become more united and efficient in the days ahead as we seek to be faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

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“The Robe” by Wes King

Posted on June 10, 2009 by Steve Weaver

I recently came across Wes King on Facebook and remembered this song recorded several years ago.  In 2005 Wes was diagnosed with Lymphoma and underwent many months of extremely difficult treatments and years of side-effects. Wes is now cancer free and is feeling well enough to spend time in his studio again.  He is currently working on recording a couple of new projects.  “The Robe” was inspired by a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon which Wes read while a college student at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, GA.

At the time, King says he was asking himself, “How can I meaningfully close my concerts? What’s a way that I can invite people to become a Christian without playing ‘Just as I Am’ 50,000 times and threatening people that they’re going to go to hell tonight if they don’t?”

The answer came when King returned to his marked-up copy of Charles Spurgeon’s Sovereign Grace sermons, which he’d read the year before.

“I went back and went through some of my highlights,” King recalls. “That’s mostly the way I write songs: I highlight and I go back and I read it, and I go, ‘Now, why did that impact me?’

“At the end of the sermon [‘High Doctrine’], Spurgeon says, ‘Sinner, you say you have no faith. You’re right. You have no faith. Faith is of God. Come as you are, and He will give you the faith that you need. You say you’re guilty. You’re right. You are guilty. Come as you are and God will pardon you. Sinner, you say you’re naked and ashamed. Come as you are, and the robe that He will clothe you in is made of a garment of the grace of His Son. Come as you are.’

“And I said, ‘That is it. That’s the song.’

“There’s a great quote,” King continues. “Someone—I forget who—said that great writing is just stealing with discretion—because there’s nothing new under the sun. That’s really what I did. And all Spurgeon did was steal from the gospel itself, because that’s what the gospel is all about: The robe of righteousness that we wear because we can’t be good, we can’t try hard enough to please God. It’s something that has to come from without.”

From CCM Magazine’s “Story Behind the Song”

Read the lyrics below which Wes wrote, then watch the music video below:

Anyone whose heart is cold and lonely
Anyone who can’t believe
Anyone whose hands are worn and empty

Come as you are

Anyone whose feet are tired of walking
And even lost their will to run
There is a place of rest for your aching soul
Come as you are

Chorus:
For the robe is of God
That will clothe your nakedness
And the robe is His grace
It’s all you need
Come as you are

Anyone who feels that they’re unworthy
Anyone whose just afraid
Come sinner, come and receive His mercy
Come as you are

(repeat chorus)

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Favorite Books of Spring 2009

Posted on June 6, 2009 by Steve Weaver

In January I posted the list of books which I was required to read for the Spring 2009 semester of my PhD studies.  Here is the list of my favorites from that list:

  • The English Reformation by A.G. Dickens
  • Baptist Ways by Bill Leonard
  • Richard Sibbes by Mark Dever
  • The Baptists (vol. 2) by Tom Nettles
  • A Piety Above the Common Standard by Anthony Chute
  • 400 Years of Baptist Theology by James Leo Garrett
  • The King’s Reformation: Henry VIII and the Remaking of the English Church
  • The Puritan Mind by Perry Miller
  • The Stripping of the Altars by Eamon Duffy

Filed under: Books, Church History | Leave a Comment »

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