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Year-End Review 2024 - And What 2025 Holds... · Desoto Hills Baptist Church

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Hey church family.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's Mark Lewis.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: I'm here with Grant.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: This is sort of an unplanned segment, but about a week ago we had sort of a state of the year type thing.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Tell us exactly what happened on a Sunday night.
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: We had a business meeting.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Typically we have guest speakers come in, people that we are supporting, ministries that we are supporting, to come in.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: But I wanted to come in and I joked.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I thought about calling it the State of the Church Address, but really I mean, that's just way too political.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: I wanted to stay with it.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: I called it a year in review, but we did more than just review this past year.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: We talked about this upcoming year and things that we want to do, so maybe year-end report I think that's what I wound up calling it the year-end report and I told Grant at the time.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: I said some of our listeners online might enjoy hearing this if they didn't get a chance to come to church Sunday night.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: So this is basically.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: We're just going to kind of go over some of what you talked about.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: So why don't you hit your high points and we'll go from there?
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, I mean, we celebrated a couple of things.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: We celebrated I'm coming on a year of being the pastor, and that's been exciting.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: It's been challenging, but it's been good.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: I came down to a point where, even through some of the challenges, I'm still convinced, I believe, that this is where God has called me to be.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: I'm excited about it and I'm excited about many years ahead.
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: I asked people to pray for me, to pray for wisdom, for me and for our church staff and for our church.
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: We prayed that we would stay back and let God move, that we wouldn't do anything as a church and pray for me and pray for our church, that we wouldn't do anything that would hinder his movement.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: We celebrated David coming as the minister of discipleship and administration.
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: He is already doing a great work and I'm excited about that, and so we talked about that.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: We did talk about, though, how his transition time is going to be gradual.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: The reason for that is not because he's incapable, it's because he is very capable, but we need him to do another job.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: We're not going to call an interim student minister, and so we really need him to keep focusing on the students while slowly, gradually, picking up some other duties and he's already picking up other duties.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: So we talked about him still focusing on the students while moving into that and we talked about a couple of things that people should see him doing pretty soon.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: He's still looking for a couple of Sunday school teachers for students, so when he can get those positions filled, he's going to stop sticking his head in and saying hey to Sunday school classes.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: And I want to add something for our people who are listening.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: You rarely see Laura or David on Sunday mornings, and it's because they are in the children and students areas pretty much all morning, like that's the reason, so sorry.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: No, that's good, and so they're doing that.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Another thing after the first of the year we're really going to start focusing on outreach.
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: That's going to be one of the first big transitions for him and the transition that people will start seeing is him leading out in outreach Probably won't be in January.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: It's still very cold and Disciple Now is a big event for our students and that happens in January and so we really need to get past that.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: But hopefully, starting around February, beginning of February, we'll start growing that outreach ministry back, so he'll start doing that.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: We did talk about the decision not to do weekly Sunday nights anymore and how that's not a decision we took lightly.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: We prayed about that.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Staff has been I mean, that's been a discussion for years whether we would do that or not and we really just felt like it's coming time.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: It's not going to be necessarily easy any way, but we felt like that was the thing to do.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: But we did take that to the deacons and how we approached the deacons with it on one deacons meeting and then gave them time to think, pray, talk to us, ask us questions, do anything like that, and came back the next month and really just kind of made that decision.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: And then we talked about the change in Wednesday night format.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: Biggest part of that is adding some time.
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: So instead of 6 to 7, it's 6 to 7.15.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: We did that so the children, they could continue scripture memory.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: That was their big thing.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: We did a Juana on Sunday nights for children.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: The big part of a Juana that we really wanted to keep was the scripture memory, and so adding the 15 minutes allowed them to keep doing children's choirs, graded choirs, it allowed them to do missions and it allowed them to do scripture memory.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: And I love that you mentioned that, because we're not bound to the Awana material anymore that everybody's learning the same verses, which means families can help their children all the way.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: Three and up, Absolutely Learn the verses.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: The same verse a week.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: So if you have kids and I don't anymore, but I've been through that, I've walked through that not too long ago and even in the children's ministry, if you had different books, there was a point that I think we were learning four to five different verses.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Each kid had a different verse, and so what this allows you to do is you have one verse for all of your kids and so you can all work through that together and memorize that together, and that can be some family time together.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: So we thought that would be helpful to families and Laura and Bonnie have really done a great job thinking through that.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: They have these little lanyards and have milestones, so when kids hit milestones they get buttons to go on their lanyards.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, keelan loves it.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the kids come in on Wednesday night and I mean the boards are right there in the door, so they're putting those things on and walking around with them.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: And I just encourage our people and if you weren't there Sunday night and you see kids walking around with name badges on, with buttons on them, what that means is they're involved in our Scripture Memory Program and they have memorized certain.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: So take a moment, even if you don't know them, to encourage them and say, hey, great job, I'm so proud of you, and that just can go a long way for them.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: So we encourage them to do that.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: The added time also adds for our student ministry.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: It allows for some deeper small groups.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: For years they've done life groups but kind of been bound again by time and just not had time, but now the 15 minutes allows them to have a deeper discussion about what David has just taught about.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: And then also it just allows good adults that we have that are trying to mentor and disciple these kids.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: It allows them to make some deeper connections, and so that's been good.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: And for adults it just gives you a little bit more time, because sometimes those Bible studies if you're doing a video driven Bible study which we don't have any this semester, I don't think but if you're doing one, I mean those go 45 minutes and then it's time to leave.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: You have no time to discuss.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: And so it just it allows those Bible studies to have a little bit more time to to discuss and do those, and so that has been a great change for us.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: That's we've.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: I've really enjoyed that and that's been good.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: So we took some time just to talk about the year passed, and then you started looking forward to the year ahead yes, which we have some news about that too and starting with Wednesday nights, let's start with that one.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Starting with Wednesday nights.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Typically we take a break in the summer and it's for good cause.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: I mean, we have so many families and their own vacations and so it's just harder to do in the summer.
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: But our student ministry really has not.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Our student ministry has continued on and they've grown and have a big group on Wednesday nights, and so we flip programming in the summers to give more game time and activity time because it's so pretty outside, and I'm sure that we'll continue to do that.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: But the students have still met in pretty good numbers.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty good numbers and still have good Bible study and things like that.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: And so we thought, hey, let's do that churchwide, let's kind of follow that model churchwide and let the students lead us as a church.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: And so we're going to continue Wednesday nights in the summer.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: The spring semester will end April the 30th.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: That's the last Wednesday night in April.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Our summer semester, our summer sessions, will start that first Wednesday night in May, which will be May the 2nd.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: We thought about taking a break there, but people are still in school and you're still kind of on your routine, so we'll continue that.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: We will take a break on the 28th of May because that's Memorial Day week and then June the 4th because that's Bible School week.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: So we will take those two weeks off and we'll meet through the rest of June and we'll take July the 2nd off because of July the 4th, but that means we're going to have meals still, we're going to have adult still.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, we're going to have um adult bible studies.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: We may not offer as many like right now.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: I think we have four or five going.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: We might only have two or three, but we'll have some small group bible studies going.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: Students will still have their activities and then laura and bonnie they're, they're the children's, and preschool is going to look more might not have everything, because I don't think we're going to do choir in the summer, but they're still going to continue their missions, activities and things like that through the summer as well.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: So I'm excited about that and just seeing what that can look like and just kind of sometimes I feel like we get in the summer and, yes, we don't have our routine and yes, things are different and we're on vacation one week and things like that.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: But sometimes, for me anyway, I'm looking for at least one thing in the summer that can be scheduled, and I know I have and we can do that, we can provide that, and it's also another.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: It's a night, you don't have to cook a meal, and so we can we can provide that.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: And it's also another it's a night, you don't have to cook a meal, and so we can do that as well.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: So that's kind of a big change that we're looking for this year.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: Another thing that we're looking at is this past year.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: I challenged our people back in January to let's read through the Bible together.
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: Several people have talked to me how they're doing that and how that's been good, and so I want us to continue to do that.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: We're going to do it a little bit differently this year.
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: There's a Bible I'm encouraging people to go through together.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: It's called the Daily Walk Bible.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: You can purchase those on Amazon if you want to want to go do that.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: You can purchase those on Amazon if you want to go do that.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: But on December, the 15th, that Sunday, we're going to have a focus on, especially in the message.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: That day we're going to talk about the importance of Scripture and reading through Scripture together as a church, how that is important as well.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: On that Sunday we'll have some of those Daily Walk Bibles available for people to purchase, but we'll also have like here's the link to the website.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: You can go through and purchase your own if we run out of those, because we're not going to have a whole lot of those, right, um, but we also.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: If you don't want to purchase a bible, um, that's fine.
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: We're going to have some bookmarks available and that have the scripture references that if you get a daily walk bible, it's going to have show you what you can read through on that, and so we can read through that.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: And then also on our website, we're going to have a page on the website that tells you what you can read on that day, so we can all continue to read through that together.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: I'm excited about that.
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: I think that can be good for us as a church.
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I love it and we'll list a link to that Bible in the show notes of this so you can go link to Amazon and buy that, yeah.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: And then the other thing that we talked about is this next year, I mean, we're looking for two new staff positions.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Yes, minister of Music that team has already been approved.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: The search team has already been approved.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: They have met once already.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: Of Music that team has already been approved.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: The search team has already been approved.
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: They have met once already.
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: They have a meeting tomorrow night, and so they're working.
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: We began to get resumes and so they're working on that already.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: And then we're looking for a student minister search team.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: That team has been proposed.
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: We will vote on that team on December the 1st, and then they will get to work as well.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: So be in prayer for both of those teams, for God's discernment for them, that he'll lead them to the person that God has in store for us and we'll move on.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: My prayer and it's I mean, I think I know it can happen, I hope it will happen, I hope it's God's plan.
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: I don't want to be on God's plan, but I hope His plan is, when we're sitting here next year getting ready for Christmas, that those two positions are filled.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: So that's a big prayer request for our church, though.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, so All right.