Sermon Tone Analysis

01-22-2023

Welcome to Maranatha Baptist Fellowship, I know I have said this in the past and I probably say this every year but this has to be one of my favorite Sermons.

See this particular Sermon is a chance for us to look back at the year and see how we did as a church, and then to see how we can do better, we can always do better.

When we say that it sounds cliche right, just do better, but this morning should be an honest assessment of how things went

Which is why we set goals and monitor them so we see how we are doing

Most of you know how the State of the Church Address works

For those of you who are new or this is your first time

We will share how we did last year in some areas of ministry, and then we will look to 2023 and begin to share some goals and share our verse for 2023

If you will recall last year we shared our years verse for Maranatha Baptist Fellowship was

For most of you, you know this to be the Great Commission

For us last year we focused on this being our verse, it gave us direction

Our focus last year was on the Gospel and Discipleship, so much that last year we focused our sermons what Jesus taught

If we are to supposed to share with people what Jesus taught then we had better know what Jesus taught

So we went through the Parables of Jesus

As we go through last year let me highlight for you some numbers

Yes numbers are important

So important it is a book in the Bible

So Last Year our average attendance for Sunday School was 66 which slightly up

Our average attendance for Big Church was 90 which was slightly down

During Big Church we sang 335 songs!!!

That is awesome church, might I just add that there is room for more people in Sunday School and Big Church

We have Sunday School classes for all ages

You may think the nursery doesn’t do anything, even in the nursery church they are studying the Bible

Then we have 3 grade classes that are in the Answers in Genesis curriculum which takes 4 years to get through

Then we have a Youth Sunday School class that goes through different books of the Bible

We have a young adults Sunday School class, we have a career adults Sunday School class and then our Seasoned Citizens

Sunday School is a great opportunity to grow

We had some amazing times last year

Vacation Bible School saw an average attendance of

Children - 47

Adults - 36

Youth - 18

Average Each night - 102

During VBS we saw 10 Decisions

7 - Salvations

1 Rededication

1 Vocational Service

1 Other

Well done church

Prior to VBS Maranatha Baptist Fellowship spent a bunch of Sunday Afternoons in the Montara Neighborhood

We spent 6 weeks prayer walking through the neighborhoods, for the first 3 weeks it was strictly prayer walking, we even had to tell some people that it was just prayer walking because they were ready to talk to people about Jesus and invite them to church.

The last 3 weeks were devoted to prayer walking and sharing the Gospel with anyone we could, and handing out a number of invitations to Vacation Bible School and our Block Party

We had our Block Party on one of the hottest days of the year

During the Block Party we saw about 40 from the community come out and we were able to talk with and invite to VBS

Church we were seen in the community, some areas to do better are on follow up

Some of you ask what that looks like, it looks like when we get information about people interested in or visiting or people who have made decisions of faith to go back the next week or the week after and meeting with them

It is time for us to do some follow up church

Our Youth Group has been busy busy busy

They had the opportunity to memorized 17 verses last year

They took 12 and served at Camp Barnabas

They took 29 to Super Summer

The Youth Group as a whole went through 3 Books of the Bible

They served with Puppets a number of times at VBS, Christmas Vacation

Jess and Darlene have created a puppet ministry through our students who I think enjoy serving in that capacity

The Youth raised 11,098.64 in total donations to send those kids and leaders to the different camps.

Our AWANA Program that runs on Wednesday Night at 6pm is off and running

We average about 30-35 kids each Wednesday Night, and I know they are memorizing verse.

What is cool is during counsel time, these kids are learning to share the Gospel, so much they are taking the wordless book they learn about in Sparks to school so they can share it their friends and class mates.

We have implanted a heart for the Gospel that TNT has memorized the Roman Road verses, and a few weeks ago those same TNTers are asking God to give them the courage to share the Gospel

We tried something new in 2022

Maranatha Christmas Vacation a vision of Darlene Bluvan, she prayed about and spoke with other people and began to run with it.

It was 3 nights in December, we had 67 night 1, 56 night 2, and 62 night 3.

Well done church that is so exciting to see the church stepping out in faith and trying something new

Church we even sent a mission team to Colombia to work with Mike and Tisha Jones.

They were able to meet with the ladies of the community and encourage them.

They were even able to prayer walk a piece of land that will someday have a church building on it!

A church who would have thought a small church in little Topeka, KS would have a hand in planting a church in a whole other country

Our Men’s Ministry has continued to meet on Thursday Nights and to do Bible Study

Our Women’s Ministry has also been meeting on Thursday Night to do Bible Study, they also had their Women’s Christmas Dinner

And they scheduled some get together’s to fellowship with each other.

In Total we brought in 243,965.46

Dollars and we spent 218,701.96

Dollars

That means we brought in 26,263.50

dollars more than we spent

We brought in 3500 for Annie Armstrong which is for those doing ministry in the North America

We brought in 4090 for the Lottie Moon Christmas offering which is for those doing ministry outside of North America

Praise the Lord Church!!

We saw 21 Total Salvations

We saw 20 new members join this local Body of Believers

Last year I set a goal to have 20 baptisms for the church

We did not meet that goal, we had 16 Baptisms

But church we had 16 baptisms!!!!

How cool is that

Please don’t hang your head that we only had 16 baptisms, but Praise the Lord we had 16 baptisms

Our goal for 2023 will be 20 baptisms, and to do that church it will require more and better follow up as we continue to share the Gospel

Those are the numbers

Lets just say it, obviously we can do better

Those are the numbers, and they are just that

Numbers

Just like a book in the Bible

We do not live and die by the numbers

We have seen more than number growth

We have seen people join the church

We have seen people get saved and get baptized

We have seen other people boldly sharing the Gospel with those in their personal lives and during praise time they are able to share with us how they prayed to receive Christ

We have seen soul growth here at Maranatha Baptist Fellowship

Most of us have gone through some extreme difficulties

And because of that I have seen you grow in your own personal walks with Christ

I pray you continue your own growth in Christ

I know that God will continue use Maranatha Baptist Fellowship to be a light in this dark world