The following was written by a friend of mine. With his permission, I offer it to you all. 

​"I do know that if there is ever a point in which a teacher recognizes that these students are their mission field, a transformation within the teacher happens and their approach totally changes. When we treat teaching just as a job, we will not treat it as we should.”

When we view it as a ministry—as serving the Lord, which all aspects of our lives should be--then we will think more about missing unnecessarily, skipping a step here or there, not giving our best, or losing our patience with students, etc. It changes everything when we truly realize that beyond academics are these precious lives. When we do all things as unto the Lord then it changes our daily approach to the very same activities and routines.

When we recognize that these students are our mission field, they are the beloved treasures of God placed in our watch, our stewardship—ours to disciple, love, and by the grace of God ours to help them find Him, love Him, desire Him then it will change things in us. 

In our lives they should discover truth, wisdom, care, redemption, discipline, excellence, honor, love, and the all the other attributes of Christ that can flow into their lives from us.

Each day we have to remember what a joy we have to serve the Lord and these students whom He deeply loves and has entrusted us with. 

Thanks to each of you for your faithful service to the Lord.

Looking back over our last weekend at the church, I am amazed at the goodness of God. We had a great set of meetings, culminated by a sweet move of the Spirit in our services Sunday night. I cannot imagine a better way to celebrate our churches anniversary.

These occasions do cause me to pause and examine what it is that we are here in our community for. There is value in examining our activities and practices to ascertain whether they are in accordance with the will of God. We are challenged in the Word of God to “remove not the ancient landmarks” but what does that look like? In context, the Bible is referring to physical landmarks, boundaries of physical property, etc. In the spiritual realm, are there boundaries that we must hold to in our coming years at Rose Hill Baptist Church? I believe that there are and hope to use the coming weeks to dive into a number of those “landmark” issues. Included will be issues of practice, issues of tradition, issues of doctrine, issues of standards (both corporate and personal), and so forth. Please feel free to join in the discussion. I welcome any input as to subjects that need to be written about. I hope that you will commit to growing with me in these areas, as we seek to honor and please God in all that we do!

Here’s to another 78 years of …

​Loving God & Serving Others!