Somebody is Watching! .

Many of you know a couple of weeks ago I had the privilege of going back to First Baptist Taylor to be part of a deacon ordination service in which my brother-in-law was ordained as a deacon. We had a very quick trip to Taylor Sunday afternoon after our worship services here in Grandview. We were able to spend some time with the family and go to the service at 6:00 pm. Everything was great as we prepared to begin the journey home. It was around 8:30 or so when we left Taylor, and I figured Cameron and Easton would fall asleep a few minutes into the trip. As I was driving a few miles outside of Taylor, Shelly and I were visiting and I passed a policeman. I looked down at the speedometer and guess what? That’s right . . . you guessed it. I was going too fast!!!!! In the blink of an eye there were flashing lights in my rearview mirror. As I pulled off to the side of the road, Cameron asked why we were stopping. I told him that Daddy was going too fast and was probably going to get a ticket for disobeying the law. (breaking a rule in four year old terms). It was a great teaching opportunity that there are consequences to being disobedient. After a few miles back on the road (and lots of silence from the passenger seat) Cameron continued to talk about the policeman. He finally had enough discussion and in the silence went to sleep.

About a month has passed and still to this day Cameron will pipe up from his car seat behind me and ask me if I am going too fast. I am now able to honestly answer him, “NO, I AM NOT!” It is now a regular question he asks and I know he is watching.

I tell you this story, not to be proud of my gift I received from my officer friend, but to remind you that there is always someone watching you. As a person who professes Jesus Christ as Savior, there should be a difference in your lifestyle compared to someone who does not have a relationship with Christ. You may not realize it or even know who that person may be, but there is someone behind you watching to see how you will react to a difficult situation or tragedy. What will they see?

As the Easter season approaches, this is a great time for you to make a bold stand in your faith, and I encourage you to do so, but remember there is always someone watching!

On another note, isn’t is great to know that when it came time to close out the final note on the renovation cost of the Sanctuary, rather than signing a note, we signed the final check to pay off the amount we would have owed. God has blessed us in His timing with faithful giving from our people and a true blessing from the Pallmeyers. Let’s not boast in what “we” have done, but make sure to give God all the glory for the things HE has done! I am proud to call myself a part of the FBC Grandview family and look forward to what God has in store for us in the days ahead!



  ¶ 6:20 AM 0 comments

  What A Month! .

What a fantastic month we have had to kick off 2008! It is hard to believe that we are already saying goodbye to the month of January but we are. I love the saying, “Time flies when you are having fun!” That is exactly how I would explain the month of January! During the month of January I have been laying out some short term goals for the next four months. They consist of:



1) Adding ten new families to our church family

2) Seeing ten people saved

3) Adding three new teachers in some area of our church

4) Having ten families or individuals begin tithing or become more consistent in that area.



We have added one new family already and I see several more on the horizon. I have had two people tell me they are ready to begin teaching a new class. We have been above budget in our giving every week so far this year. I believe we will see salvations come this weekend through our Disciple Now weekend. We are off to a great start! Now is not the time to slow down. Let’s keep the pedal to the metal! We have a huge task in front of us to reach this community for Christ and we are on our way, but we must continue to be diligent in prayer and active in inviting people to be a part of what God is doing in our midst.

Speaking of great. Our new service format is working out very well, if not great. We have seen an average attendance increase of close to 100 people in worship over last year’s attendance in worship. Much of that can be attributed to your willingness to invite new people to be a part of our new worship format. Keep it up! I am so proud of the way we have all adjusted to the changes and I believe God is going to honor this decision!

The month of February has a couple of “new” opportunities for us as a church. The first one is the newly organized Men’s Prayer Breakfast. We have combined our breakfast with other churches and are now calling it the Grandview Christian Men’s Breakfast. We will be meeting at the Community Center at 7:30 the first Saturday of the month to enjoy a time of fellowship and pray for our community leaders, our schools, churches, and businesses. Following the breakfast we will head out into the community to do some service projects to be able to minister to those in need in our community. I hope all of you men will make an effort to attend this event!

This year rather than hosting a Single Senior’s Valentine dinner, the deacons are hosting a Senior’s Valentine Dinner. The Zebra Strings will be playing and I know the food will be great. I want to invite all of you seniors to come and enjoy this meal in your honor. Please RSVP to the office if you would like to attend.

We are off to a great start to 2008. Let’s not slow down. We must press forward to finish the race.  ¶ 7:53 AM 0 comments

  Out of Control .

As I sit down to write this, I am in the process of recovering from surgery. The surgery was not that big of a deal but I must admit the recovery process has been a bit of a hassle. What is the problem you might ask? The problem I am having is not being in control. Ever since Shelly drove me home I have not been able to do much on my own. I have to rely on her to bring me something to eat, to help me get out of bed, to make sure I am alright. Now I face another five weeks of not being able to pick anything up that weighs over 15 pounds. IF you haven’t noticed, anything that moves at my house is over 15 pounds!!!!! I could not drive for a week. The list goes on and on of things I am not able to do that I take for granted every day. It has been a real struggle for me to not be in control. However, it has made me very thankful for many things.

The most obvious person I am thankful for is Shelly. She has been fantastic. We were able to have our open house for the holidays because of her hard work. Not to mention her taking care of the kids and me while I have been down. She is truly a blessing to me. I am also thankful for so many wonderful friends who have called to check on me, sent me get well cards, and who have taken care of Cameron and Easton when we needed help. In times like this you realize how blessed we are to have the staff we have at First Baptist. Everyone on staff has picked up the slack for me over the past week and I so appreciate them. Not for a minute have I worried about things being taken care of. It is still difficult for me to not be around to make sure everything is done the way it needs to be. Thanks to all of you for being in control, when I cannot!

But speaking of being out of control, I was reminded that is exactly the way God wants us to be. We are so guilty of wanting to be in control of everything in our lives. This has been a good reminder to me that when we give our lives to Christ it is precisely what we are to do. GIVE OUR LIVES TO HIM! Translated that means we should no longer be in control! Just as my surgery has been an inconvenience at times, when we are obedient to Christ it means there will be times of inconvenience and lack of understanding in the things God will call us to do. The rubber meets the road as we decide how we will respond when God calls us out of our comfort zone. Will we whine and complain or will we willing be obedient to His call with an attitude of thanksgiving? I do know this…I would much rather put my life in the hands of the Creator of the world than in the hands of any doctor. We put our lives in the hands of human physicians on a daily basis. Why not put our lives in the hands of the Creator daily as well?

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year! Don’t forget . . . in January we will begin our new service format with our traditional service at 8:30 am and the contemporary service at 11:00 am. Hope to see you then!  ¶ 7:53 PM 0 comments

  "Mary, Did You Know?" .


One of my favorite Christmas songs is "Mary, Did You Know?" sung by the group 4Him. I love the words to the song. They ask the question to Mary, "Did you know that you son would walk on water? Did you know that your baby boy would one day heal that blind man? Did you know that your baby boy was Heaven's perfect plan?" I love those questions, because we do not know if Mary knew. What we do know is that Mary was faithful to what God had called her to do!

As a church we are on the threshold of another year to serve our Lord. I shared with the congregation this past Sunday our vision for 2008 and beyond. It is a vision filled with a lot of questions for which God has the answers. For over a year now we have been discussing and praying about the question of whether or not now is the time for us to go to two different worship services. After much discussion the staff and deacon body feel it is. As we continue to seek to make Christ famous in our community as well as maturing believers, I am excited about the opportunity that awaits us in 2008.

Beginning the first Sunday of January we will be having two services on Sunday morning. At 8:30 we will have our traditional service (what we have been doing at 10:50) and at 11:00 we will be led in worship by Ryan Hurt, Rainey Penix, Brody White, Shawna Ringling, and Nic Morphew. This is going to be a great opportunity for us to reach out to our community in a whole new way. Please know I also realize change is something we all do not handle well. Someone once said that the only people who like change are babies. What a true statement in many cases. With change comes opportunities to be stretched and with stretch comes growth. I hope you will be in prayer for our church as we begin this new venture with the goal being to reach new people.

One of the concerns I have going to two services is what I call the "get to know you factor". There will be new people joining in both services and it will be difficult to get to know everyone without a little effort. We will make sure to keep the new member board up to date, but to me this makes our Sunday School time even more important. If you are not plugged into a Sunday School class, you need to be. This is one area where you get to know people and find out who is who.

Many new things will be coming our way in the next year. There will be many questions waiting to be answered. The main thing in my opinion is to keep the I's and me's to a minimum and keep the He's and Him's to a maximum. In other words we need to keep our eyes on Jesus!

I want to remind you about a couple of holiday traditions our church has during the month of December. On December 2nd we will have our traditional Hanging of the Greens Service at 6:00pm. On December 9th we will be having our church family holiday meal. This is an opportunity for us as a staff to say thank you for the privilege of getting to serve you and for all the ways you bless us throughout the year. Then on the 16th we will have our churchwide Christmas song service at 6:00pm followed by our annual church Christmas party in the fellowship hall. On December 24th we will have our Candlelight Lord's Supper service at 6:00 pm in the Sanctuary. I hope you make every effort to be a part of these exciting events as we celebrate the birth of our Savior as a church family!

Merry Christmas!  ¶ 6:20 PM 0 comments

  A Time to Give Thanks! .



It is hard to believe it is almost Thanksgiving! Where has the time gone? I am still getting used to writing ’07 on my checks and soon we will be writing ’08 on them. As the calendar turns to November, our minds turn to a time of thanksgiving. Shame on us! We should be thankful year round, but this time of year brings added attention to all the things God has blessed us with. We have so much to be thankful for, so let me encourage you to daily give thanks to our Heavenly Father for all He has done and will do in our lives.

With the holiday season approaching, that means the activities of the church will pick up dramatically. Let me challenge you to be a part of everything going on in the life of First Baptist. God is doing some incredible things in our midst and I hope you will not miss out on any opportunity to worship, be discipled, or to fellowship!

This time of year also brings with it budget time. Enclosed in this publication you will find a copy of the proposed budget for the 2008 church year. Let me first encourage you in the fact that as a church you have been very faithful in giving this year! Remember . . . tithing is not a chore, it is a privilege. I hope those of you who have been faithful in giving will continue and if you are missing out on the blessing of giving back to our Lord, let me challenge you to begin doing so. You will be blessed in so many ways for your faithfulness. I hope you will take a long look at the budget and pray about what your part will be in meeting the budget next year. As our church has grown numerically, so has our staff and the ministries of the church. That means the budget has increased. What a blessing! I do not ever want to be a part of a church sitting still and not moving forward to meet the challenge of the Great Commission.

Many long hours have been put into pulling this budget together by each committee in the church and ultimately by the Budget and Finance committee. I believe it is a manageable budget which will help us reach out to our community and surrounding area. It is a stretch for us financially, but you know how I feel about being stretched (it is good)! There is a schedule of events leading up to a vote at our quarterly church conference on November 11th at 6:00pm. They are located on the back page of this newsletter. Please make note of this information.

Furthermore I want to encourage you to make every effort to come and be a part of our quarterly conferences. As a church we decided to go to a quarterly conference schedule so as many people could be involved in the business of the church as possible. With the activities on Sunday and Wednesday evenings and the need for volunteers to run them, we felt too few voices were making the decisions for many. I hope you will attend our church conferences and let your voice be heard.

I know this article has not been very "entertaining," but I feel my words are very important and I hope you will think through what I have written. Likewise, you need to know that at the top of my blessings list is the privilege of being able to serve alongside such a wonderful group of people at First Baptist Grandview!  ¶ 10:43 AM 0 comments

  An Emotional Swing .

A couple of weeks ago I experienced one of the most incredible emotional swings I think a person could ever encounter. On Saturday, August 18, our community pulled off one of the greatest events this town has ever seen. Our Back to School Fair was unbelievable! It was amazing to watch six of our churches come together to hand out over 500 bags of school supplies to children, allow people to get free haircuts, eat over 2,000 hot dogs plus a ton of nachos and who knows how many drinks . . . not to mention the fun that was had in the dunking booth and bounce houses as well as the informational booths loaded with goodies from organizations in the community. What a wonderful day it was. A huge thank you to everyone who had a part in making it a success. The goal of the day was to meet the physical needs of the community so we could eventually meet their spiritual needs. I believe we took a huge step in that direction!

The following Sunday morning was off to a great start. We had parent/baby dedication early in the service. What a special moment it was. Then towards the middle of my sermon, Daniel made his way down the middle isle of the sanctuary with the tragic news that Aaron Fry, son of Buddy Fry—the church of Christ pastor, had been killed in a motorcycle accident. The sanctuary went silent and we stopped for a word of prayer for strength for the Fry family. My heart broke for them. I had gone from one of the greatest feelings in the world to one of the worst in a matter of seconds.

Life works that way sometimes. After a couple of days to soak in all of the weekend events, I found myself being challenged even more by the Back to School experience from Saturday. Colossians 4:5 says, “Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity.” I was preaching this verse during our Sunday service. Boy, did those words take on a more urgent meaning after the circumstances of Sunday unfolded.

We are not promised tomorrow. We must make the most of every opportunity. As believers that is a great challenge for us. We need to be living each day like it might be our last. It means telling the people you love just how much you love them and telling those who don’t know Christ how much He means in your life. We must make the most of every day for the kingdom of God!

During our recent worship survey some of you commented you did not know what a contemporary service was like. After much time and prayer concerning this issue, the staff has decided to designate the evening worship service on the second Sunday of each month as a contemporary service. We will be doing this throughout the months of September, October and November. I hope you will make an effort to come and participate as we try a different worship format on a trial basis. Perhaps there are some friends, family members, or neighbors you would like to invite to these special services. Remember: make the most of every opportunity.

Summer is over and it is time to get back into the routine of school and the activities that accompany it. Remember to continue to pray for our school district and its employees as we committed to on Teacher Appreciation Day. I hope you will also get back into the routine of making Sunday School and worship a part of your weekly schedule.  ¶ 8:16 AM 0 comments

  Take A Breath .

One of the great things about Shelly being a school teacher is her having the summer off. However as summer has gone along, Easton has really become a Mama’s boy. He has gotten into the habit of crying anytime Shelly leaves him anywhere. It doesn’t matter if it is with me, in the nursery at church or anywhere else. One day Claudia Montgomery wanted to hold Easton and he just wailed at the fact that Shelly handed him over to her. Claudia held him for a few moments while he was crying and she frantically said, “Take a breath!” It is that time of the year for us all to take a breath in the life of the church. Things are really busy right now and it is a good time for us to cling to our Heavenly Father and cry out to Him for help and strength. Let me share with you some of the things that are happening and are about to happen in the life of our church.

We have a group of 24 heading to Collins, Missouri. this week to help Coon Creek Baptist Church build their building and to do Backyard Bible Clubs in the community. I will be preaching on Sunday morning and Wednesday night during a special revival emphasis for the community. Please keep these folks in your prayers as we minister to this community. Also keep Brittany and Claudia Montgomery and Tommy Baze in your prayers as they continue to do mission work in Germany. They will return this week.

August will be a great month filled with lots of activities going on for our church family. On August 12th we will be having a Dedication Service during our morning worship time. This is a time to dedicate our Sanctuary but more importantly it will be a time of dedication for our church as a family to commit to reaching our community. We will have a covered dish lunch following the service. On August 19th we will be having a time in our morning service for baby/parent dedication. What a special time it always is for our church as we commit to helping our parents raise their children in a Godly environment. On August 26th we will be honoring our teachers and praying over them and our students for the upcoming school year. How extra special it will be for us this year because we will have our Children’s Day Out teachers to pray for as well. I am so excited about this program and the prospect of the new families who will be bringing their children. We will be having a lunch following that service as well for the teachers and their families.

On August 18th from 9 am – 2 pm we will be having an opportunity to minister to our community at the new city park. The event is called Grandview’s Back to School Fair. It will be an event for all ages. Huguley Medical Clinic will be there to administer vaccines for children, do glucose testing, blood pressure checks and other things. We will be handing out free school supplies to the children, giving free haircuts, and providing musical entertainment, offering free hotdogs, nachos, and drinks, and a whole lot more. We will be having a community wide organizational meeting on August 6th at the high school library that I hope you will make plans to attend. This is an opportunity for all the churches in Grandview to come together to meet the needs of our community and have a great time of fellowship together.

God is doing some great things in our midst and I hope that you are finding your area of ministry to serve Him. I look forward to a new school year and things settling down a bit but in the mean time “Take a Breath” and let’s keep serving Him!  ¶ 6:35 PM 0 comments