“CELEBRATE!” (cue up Rare Earth from the 60s or if you prefer Kool and the Gang)

I normally don’t post on Friday, or the weekend for that matter. But this is big! Huge in fact! I know you are waiting with baited breath to hear what is so important that Bill would break protocol to post on a Friday.

OVCF, the church I have had the honor and pleasure of pastoring for 19 years (I start #20 next month) is celebrating its 20th anniversary this Sunday. 20 YEARS!!! No matter how you look at it that is quite an accomplishment. From starting out with a meeting in a hardware-type building with just a few folks and meeting at several different places in its beginning, the church found a “home” at the Owen Valley Sports Complex, where it was meeting when Jo and I moved here in November of 2005. We temporarily moved to the middle school for a few months until someone got a wild hair to get us out so we went back to the complex. We went back to the middle school when the flood of 2008 displaced us from the complex for about 4 months. In 2010 we bought an unused Mormon church building. We had our first worship in the new facility in September and were excited about the future. In January of 2011 it came to light that over $200k had been embezzled from us. But God was good. I missed one paycheck during that time and it was made up at the next pay period. In 2012 we remodeled our building to accommodate our growth. We knew when we bought the building it was too small and would require an expansion.  In 2014 we hired Ryan East to be our youth pastor. He had been working at IU Credit Union and teaching our youth group. It was a perfect fit! In 2018 we sacrificed expanding the adult worship area for a youth wing. It was a very wise decision. Along with that we became debt free thanks to someone’s inheritance. When COVID hit the generosity of the people never quit. We didn’t miss a beat. In fact, we expanded to offer live stream during that time! We also increased our mission giving.  After finishing the youth addition, we began saving for an expansion on our adult worship area. We have been in two services since 2013 and there is a strong desire for a unified body in one service. Holidays like Christmas and Resurrection Sunday will often find us at the Abram Event Venue to hold all of us at once. But that comes with a ton of inconvenience and limited ministry to the kids (like none).  We have continued saving to be able to build debt free. Along the way we have taken our Easter offering and given it away to missions, giving all of  away unless designated otherwise. We have taken our anniversary offering and put it in the building fund or given away all or part of it to missions as well. God has been more than faithful to us.

So we celebrate Him this Sunday. We celebrate His faithfulness and goodness to us this Sunday. And yes, we celebrate the people of OVCF. They are, after all, the church. Not the building. People have come and gone-some through death, some through moving, and yes, some through discontent. But along the way, God has also brought some exciting people that I’m proud to call friends and ministry colleagues. One of them reads and comments on this blog almost daily-Ryan and his wife, Amanda. Jo and I still see them and go out to eat with them (Chili’s here we come!). People like Ryan have impacted my life in ways they do not know and words fail when I try to express them. Over my 19 years I have seen a lot happen at OVCF and in Spencer. My prayer is that the influence and legacy has been a positive one.

I’ll close this post for now and give an update on our celebration on Monday (Lord willing, of course). Until then, may I ask you to pray for us for Sunday? My deepest prayer, my most fervent prayer, is that in our celebration we will never lose sight of Who is behind it all and to Whom we give all the praise. One of the songs we will be singing, along with Good  Good Father and No Longer Slaves is  Firm Foundation (I prefer the Disciple/Honor and Glory version): “Christ is my firm foundation/The Rock on which I stand/when everything around me is shaken/I’ve never been more glad/I put my faith in Jesus/Cause He’s never let down.”

Amen!

{Note : if you so desire, we are unable to live stream from AEV due to a lack of good internet connection. My message has been prerecorded and downloaded and will be shown at 10:00 Sunday morning on our YouTube channel. It is a shortened version of the live experience but will give you a little bit of a taste of being there}.

One more thing: I did this from home on my iPhone so if you find typing mistakes, blame the phone. 😂