Ministry Overview

Missions

Do we take our responsibility to support missions seriously? This story has a message for us all. A church in America was celebrating a special occasion with a reunion between past and present members. One man was a millionaire and he told the assembled congregation of an incident in his childhood. He had earned his first dollar from some small job and was considering all the different ways he might use it. Then he heard a missionary speaker who talked about the urgent need for money to support work in the mission field. The boy had to decide whether to give up his precious dollar or not. "The Lord won" said the man proudly "and I am convinced that the reason God has blessed me so much is that when I was a boy I gave him, that day, everything I had." Everybody was most impressed by his story until a little old lady in the front row piped up. "And I dare you to do it again!"

Missions Report
Karl Heuer

We at BBC, as the family of God, should have one objective and one purpose in life and that is to be used by God to win souls for our Lord Jesus Christ. We do this in love, obedience and in gratitude for what He did for us on the cross. It is our prayer that we will all truly appreciate Christ’s sacrifice for us so that we can share His burden for the lost (… not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. 2 Peter 3:9) and take on His desire for us to fulfill the great commission given in Matthew 28:19 “go therefore and make disciples of all nations”.

We can do this in three ways:

Prayer.
The most important support we can give our missions and missionaries is prayer. In Psalm 127:1 God tells us that “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain… ).
The Bible also tells us that “… our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against … the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)
Every Sunday, in the weekly bulletin, a request is made for prayer for a particular mission or missionary. Please make a point of reading the bulletin and be diligent in prayer.

Involvement.
Members of our congregation are involved in many different missions and the opportunity to serve the Lord in any one these missions is open to all who desire. Information on each mission may be found on the information boards inside the Church. Such missions include:
· Operation Mobilization, Christian Counseling Centre, Gideons International, EE3, Christ in the work place, Hands of Mercy, Prison Fellowship, Adventures Unlimited, Hands of Hope, The Jesus Film, Zimbabwe for Jesus.


· An exciting new mission field has been identified in the Goromonzi district. The Ward III area has 22 villages of over 10,000 people. Their needs are great. 85% of the females are HIV positive and there are a large number of orphans. We are happy to let you know needs and opportunities if you want to be involved.



Financial Assistance.
10% of the Sunday church offering is shared amongst the below listed missions/missionaries on a monthly basis.
Ian Wilsher (Christian Counseling Centre), Victor Chimbela (Mabvuku Life Centre), Barry Wannell and Mike Van Vuuren (Operation Mobilization), Edith Perreira , Baptist Union of Zimbabwe, Petro Rabvu, Harare Theological College, Hands of Mercy, Scripture Union, Prison Fellowship.

In March 2009 we held a “Missions Week” in order to increase awareness of the Missions that BBC support and to provide members with an opportunity to ‘get involved’. We learned of the selfless sacrifices made by men and women in the mission field who have dedicated their lives to serving the Lord in conditions that can best be described as atrocious. For instance, Vicky Graham works alone in the Siabuwa area providing medical and spiritual care for people in one of the most remote places in Zimbabwe.

Next year we would like to organize an event in honour of our missionaries to show our appreciation for their dedication to our Lord. We would like to encourage everyone to attend and support this event.
Details will be given at a later date.

There can be no greater joy than to one day stand in front of our Lord and hear Him say “well done! good and faithful servant!”. Mt. 25:21

Children's Church

Children’s Church Report

Colin Beattie

May the Lord be glorified - in His name we have continued to be blessed with an abundance of people willing to participate in this Children’s ministry. We have welcomed into the fold Leighanne Katsimberis, Keith Duvenage, Sarah Macmillan, Vimbai Chinyadza and Michelle Oftebro (back!) - may the Lord enrich your ministry. Next term, Sue Williams and Cheryl Heath will also be joining the team, what an awesome blessing! Peta Beattie has continued to oversee teacher "training" with positive results so far.

We have adopted the theme "Making Children's Church the best hour of every kid's week". Although "a tall order", nothing must be too much to ask for the Lord. The aim is to make Children's Church really a place the kids want to attend and make it an experience they enjoy enough to invite their friends. We will strive to achieve this goal by never letting "any difficult circumstances dictate compromise" and, most importantly, to teach as creatively as possible in a fun way.

New material called Bubbles (by Scripture Union) was introduced in the pre-school class to good effect, we just felt the material was more age-appropriate for the toddlers than the corresponding Scripture Union SSALT material. This has now been also introduced into crèche, where Tarryn Hall has moved to continue her amazing service to the Lord. The Teens Turf class has wonderfully grown out of all proportion so had to be moved from Pastor Chris' Office, this has meant though that the smaller class of Grade One's have been relocated to the wooden "shack" - may the potential building/re-development plans soon come to fruition! Although this “classroom” is not ideal, it is a good 'problem' to have and we trust the building extensions to the Lord.

The only ongoing gripe is the lack of willingness by the general congregation to supervise Holiday Club on a purely ad-hoc basis (one Sunday a year!) - it does not have to be a "calling", you do not have to be a "qualified teacher" etc, etc, you just have to want to help.....just a little bit....and there is the added benefit of not having the services during the holidays disrupted by kids!!

More attention is being paid to Kids Worship in an effort to appeal to the slightly older kids and all those boys who have reached the age where they think singing is "uncool"! Our existing team of worship leaders (Karl, Danni and Peta) provide invaluable leadership week in week out, and we have benefited tremendously from the additional input and assistance of Jean Miller and Becky Fowlds (whose will, passion and love of the Lord through music are both so clearly evident in main worship).

Sincere thanks must also go to our ever faithful Family Service storytellers Sas Kirk, Barbara Rowley and Wendy Wheeler (who continue to delight us all!) as well as all our relief teachers (who diligently serve in the background).

Youth

Kids United For Christ (Grades 4-7)

Sheryl Lange-Smith

Karl and Tessa Heuer, Sheryl and Trevor Lange-Smith, Mark and Brenda Cohen, Laurie and Hugh Thompson and Guy and Chantelle Croxford have worked together for all and some for part of the year in this ministry. Karl and Tessa have now stepped down due to commitments with the Gideons.

Our time on a Friday is spent playing games, hearing a devotional, and sometimes sharing prayer needs in small groups and praying together. Term two devotionals were done in small discussion groups focusing on sticky situations in which children might find themselves and appropriate biblical responses. The theme for term three has been ‘Awesome is our God’

The size of the youth group has varied from 20 to 40 children depending on the activity and other factors. We went on a youth camp to Juliasdale at the end of the second term and Pastor Chris joined us as the speaker. A fantastic time was had by children and leaders.

We would like prayer that our team will continue to work well together and that many young lives would be committed to the Lord and that they will grow in Christ through our ministry.

R.I.O.T—Senior Youth

Dave and Sue Carroll

Another year has gone and the ministry keeps on keeping on by God’s grace. We have seen a change in our youth leadership with the teenage girls being in charge for this year after Jason left at the end of the second term last year. Amelia was particularly effective for the first 8 months this year as she had a gap year from school prior to leaving for England and tertiary education (with her horse of course!).

Even with us being away for 6 weeks for Jeremy and Sarah’s wedding, the work continued which is a great testament for the teenagers and their attention and love for the youth. A special mention has to be made of our “adult helpers”, Paul Hone and Doug Pope, who have been a great help in all our programmes throughout the evenings.

We continue to have anywhere from 50 to 110 (1^st term) teenagers on a Friday night although on average the numbers are around 80.

This ministry covets your continued support specifically in prayer as we seek to be an example and witness to this impressionable age group.

Saturday night Youth Bible Study

Linda Bailey

Venue: 35 Dandaro!! Good place for the youth to meet!

We have had a most exciting start to our year.

We have had quite a few new members and only had Keri Kirk leave to start at UCT. Please pray for Keri and all of our University students as they face a world that is totally different from what they have grown up with. Here they have a large support group of friends and a social life that revolves around church and church friends. They do see differences at school with others who live a different life style but they have a large enough crowd who are like minded and who are fun.

We have had Sean Doyle do a series on Nahum (do YOU know anything about the minor prophets?) and started our year with our annual camp at the cottage of Tim and Di Tanser in the beautiful setting of the Nyanga mountains and with John Bell teaching us on Proverbs, and Jason Heuer starting a series on Titus so we are already well up on great teaching.

I am sure most of you know our story of having some thefts at camp and feeling that we should go to the people in the area to tell them that sin has consequences and to present the gospel to them. Doing this we discovered that the area has no church and then felt led to go back with the specific goal of going to the people in the area with the message of salvation.

We did this at the end of February with 10 youth, Karl and Tess Heuer and myself. This was a memorable time as the teams walked in the area, some for over 3 hours and between them spoke to about 100 people with about 25 asking Jesus to be their Saviour and confirming to us the need to plant a church in the area.

We are praying about where exactly to plant a church and I am hoping to meet with people from the Forestry Commission to ask if they have somewhere we could use as a church and a place to house a pastor. I have spoken to a man who is at HTC and is very keen to be our man out there. He will have to go through the system of interviews with people better qualified than I am to place a pastor. I have been approaching past members of the Bible study to ask them to help fund this new venture and the responses I have had have been most exciting.

The best part of all of this is the impact it has had on the youth we took, those who couldn't come but want to on the next trip and those who have moved on to work in the world. So again I ask for your prayers that our youth would hear God's call to serve Him, those who are with us now and those who have moved on.

Service Ministry

Library

Marilyn Delorie and Carol Gey van Pittius

As many of you will know, when Audrey Cruickshank and her parents left for Borrowdaile Trust, Marondera, we not only lost a dear member but also our "church librarian." I never met anyone who could read and vet books in so short a time. Now we can only trust the Lord for discernment about the books we receive or are already in the library. After she left, I had to go to the Lord and ask Him to provide some one to help me. One day I just happened to ask Carol Gey van Pittius if she could help me do something.

The next thing I knew, that this was the lady the Lord had sent to me to

help with the library. I am pleased to say that Carol is a Godsend. A lot of work has been done in the labelling and making out cards for the new books and at this point I would also like to thank Pam Alegria for all her help with labelling as well.

Chris had the carpenter put up shelves, and we were able to move books to new places and free up over crowded shelves in the lockable cupboards.

With the donations we receive, so far we have been able to buy books in South Africa and especially the series novels - Bodie Thoene, that everyone is so keen to read. We would appreciate your continued donations so that we can get new books in.

We would like your suggestions as to what books to buy. I do know that we need to get a book on the history of the Church as people have asked if we had anything in that line.

Door Duty

Dave and Judy Dick

We thank God that we have been blessed with a great band of helpers for welcoming all to the House of God on a Sunday morning. It's not just a matter of handing out the weekly or monthly bulletin but it is encouraging fellowship with one another and meeting new people.

Judy and I were most grateful to Sandy and Yvonne Bisset who ensured that all functioned smoothly while we were away on holiday at the end of last year. It makes life so much easier knowing that there are always others to give back up.

Currently we have not had to use our standby helpers, but please don't think that you have been forgotten, as more members of the Church are moving away we will be needing you in the near future. Although we would still like to see a more diverse cross section of the congregation volunteering for this ministry we are so glad that those who do this duty feel it is a worthwhile commitment. We are delighted to see that even some of our Deacons have found the time to join their wives in this Ministry.

To all our helpers, we thank you for contributing to this Ministry and pray that you will find joy from your duty and consequently we can count on your continued and valued support.

Door Duty

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Music

Baptist Bible Church is blessed indeed with many musicians who are both passionate about worship and about glorifying Christ. We face challenges typical of most healthy and vibrant Churches: questions of style, genre, volume and quantity. We do encourage all our leaders to choose a variety of music so that everyone can find something that enables them to enter into worship. Praise and worship is more a choice of the heart than a question of style, but we do try to keep a balance, leaning toward contemporary, if that can still be called balance!

As I look back over the past years I can see that we have achieved many of our goals in the ministry:

1. To teach and train many new musicians from within our own ranks

2. To enable people to move into worship and away from activity

3. To somehow be a blessing and encouragement to our community, nation and world

Special thanks must go to our regular worship leaders and coordinators: Cheryl Heath, Tarryn Hall, Jean Miller, Barry and Beks Fowlds, Vanessa Gunning and a few other part timers! We sure love the variety that each leader brings and the passion with which they desire to serve Christ and His body.

The sound guys have had many challenges this past year and often receive the most criticism! TOO LOUD, TOO SOFT, CAN'T HEAR, CAN'T THINK, TOO MUCH BASS, BASS, TOO SOFT, DRUMS ... well let's stop there before I get you all started again! Suffice to say that Bobby Miller, Paul Hone and Rory McWade have put many hours and in some cases, many green backs into the ministry. Sound people have to get to meetings long before musicians and they stay long after the last note is played, so thank you and well done!

We are always seeking to expand, include more people, train and learn. Because of the nature of worship and its pivotal role in glorifying God, Satan often seeks to bring disunity and conflict in this area, so please continue to pray for us.

Heartsong continues to represent the Church and we covet your prayers as we seek the Lord's will in the new year.

Musicians often laugh about the statement made to calm and disperse the crowds after a concert one night in Memphis: "Elvis has left the building!" Well, our desire is that during praise and worship, the Holy Spirit would be pleased to announce in our hearts: "Jesus has entered the building." God inhabits the praises of His people and it's all about Him!

Love in Christ
Pastor Chris