Devote Ourselves to God Part 1: Pray

The first goal for our mission is to devote ourselves to God. Revelations 3:20 states: "Behold I..." It does not say him, her, us, or them. It says I. I am the one who is called to do the work for God. Before doing anything else, we must make sure that we are ready to serve by giving ourselves first to God. I have broken this goal down into four parts:

1. Pray
2. Priority Time
3. Train
4. Prepare

This week we will focus on the first and most important part of this goal: prayer. We must be strong in our prayer time to God. If we are strong in our personal prayer time, we should carry it over into our classrooms on Sunday. When I started this goal, I had trouble with consistently praying to God. Since devoting that week to strengthening my prayer time, I now consistently pray to God every day in the morning and at night.
My assignment for you this week is to:

1. Find one thing you can do to improve your personal prayer time
2. Find something you can do to make prayer a priority in the classroom.

Prayer must be a priority and we must show our classes that it is important by how important you make it in the classroom. Think about what you can do or are already doing besides just opening and closing with prayer. Be willing to report and share your ideas and plans. You can also comment below.
We will be following the class time line this Sunday. These meetings will be models for the classroom, which means I will be enlisting people for jobs to assist me with. Here are the positions so far:

Teaching Coordinator: Mike Knowles
Discipleship Coordinator: Dee Culpepper
Administrative Coordinator: Troy Bartlett
Fellowship Leader: Mike Bixler
Evangelism Coordinator: Janet Zayas

There will be more positions to come. Please pray for us as we develop these positions for the future.
I have one other report of note:

College and Career: 2 New Members
Drew Allen
Melanie Cox

This puts our Sunday School enrollment at 124.
I look forward to Sunday when we turn back the clock and discuss the results of the fall festival.

Return of the Sunday School Leadership Meeting

The Sunday School leadership meetings are back, and better than ever. The meetings will be Sundays from 9:15 until 9:30 beginning this Sunday October 25 in the library. During this meeting, many things will be discussed, such as the Sunday School D.R.I.V.E., the purpose and order of the meetings, a survey, and some announcements.
I would like to present an updated mission for the Sunday School. It is called the Sunday School D.R.I.V.E. One of the purposes of the meetings is to begin to implement and focus on our mission for the Sunday School. This mission was created to simplify our goals and mission and still cover all the major areas needed for Sunday School growth. The mission verse is Revelations 3:20 "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice and open the door, I will come into him and will sup with him, and he with me." The five goals of the Sunday School Drive are:

Devote ourselves to God

Reach out and openly enroll
Instruct others to serve and create new classes through Bible-based teaching
Victory! Save souls and baptize
Enjoy Christian fellowships and minister to the members

We will discuss the first goal during the month of November.

The Sunday School meetings will have another purpose: It will be used as a model for teachers to observe how things can be done in a classroom. The order of these short 15 minute meetings will be much like a Sunday School class setup.

Fellowship 9:10
Opening Prayer/Announcements 9:15
Mission Focus/ Leadership Reports 9:20
Pastor's Words 9:25
Prayer 9:29
End 9:30

Note that the meetings will start at 9:15 and end at 9:30. This first meeting will not follow this outline, but future meetings will. Everything in the meetings can be used in the classroom, but are not required.
The need to find leaders is vital to church growth. I will give out a Sunday School survey for the leaders to fill out in order for me to find your greatest strengths which can help me establish roles for our meetings on Sunday. The surveys will not take long as there are only 35 questions.
Finally, it is important for me to give out information to you. It is best and easiest to provide the information in person in these meetings to add valuable discussion when needed. Janet Zayas wants us to start thinking about when we receive all those names from the Fall Festival
next Saturday. If you have any announcements you wish to report, please let me know before Sunday so I can announce it. It is important with our limited time that we do not go off point or get caught up in lengthy discussions. For my last announcement, please watch this video about the Georgia Baptist Convention's Annual Meeting on November 8-10. Let me know what you think.

Georgia Baptist Convention - About GBC - LoveLoud Promo Videos