The church's Annual Meeting was held Sunday, May 1, 2016. The Department heads gave their reports, then Pastor Garry gave his, instead of a sermon per se. Afterward he served Communion, reading from 1 Corinthians 11:23-26. His report follows:
My dear brothers and sisters,
One year ago we were on two different sides of this great country and we had little thought of what was going on in each other’s lives or that God was already putting the necessary pieces in place that would set our two worlds on a holy collision course that would challenge and strengthen our faith.
About this time last year, I was sitting in the Central California District Assembly and God began to release me from youth ministry. Over the next few months, God made it evident through several people that it was time for me to pursue my call as a senior pastor. God miraculously put all of the pieces together so that we could be here this morning to deliverour first annual pastor’s report.
My goal for this first year was to do my best to love on everybody here at Hope Community Church of the Nazarene, to work on smaller, obtainable projects such as Bundles of Hope, to hone my preaching skills and to get used to preaching every week, to disciple at least two people, and to strengthen the spiritual foundation of our church. My objective was not to come in and completely change everything right away, but to honor the traditions in this congregation and to direct our sight forward with God’s leading.
Eight months ago we started with thirteen people, and my prayer was that we would have a weekly average of 23 people by August 2016. For the last few months we have been averaging 19-20 people in our Sunday morning worship service. God is answering our prayers! We began our Tuesday morning prayer encounter which gives us the opportunity to come together corporately to pray for God to lead our church in the direction that He desires for us to go and for spiritual and physical healing for our families and our community. We also have developed a worship team that meets weekly to grow closer together as a team and to plan the music for our worship services. Through our Thursday morning worship practice, God has given me the opportunity to not just work with two amazing people but to disciple them as well. It is
through this discipleship that we were able to bring in one of our newest members last week.
In looking ahead for our 2016-2017 year, God has placed it on my heart that we start to focus on four areas that will help us in many ways. The first area is CONNECT. We currently CONNECT very well with anybody who walks through
our front doors. When I interviewed for this position, one of the things that I was told was that we are a loving church.
This is an understatement. We are going to continue to CONNECT with love towards anyone who walks in our doors, but we will also be looking for opportunities to find ways to CONNECT with our community. The second area that we are going to focus on is GROW. This isn’t a grow in numbers type of focus. This is a focus on spiritual growth. We are going to start to develop more opportunities for spiritual growth in our church. This summer we are looking to start a few home Bible studies, focused on spiritual growth. This will also give us an opportunity to CONNECT with our neighbors and co-workers. The next area is SERVE. Through our connections and spiritual growth, we will be looking for more opportunities to SERVE our neighbors and our community. Our opportunities to SERVE will include our local community and our district community, as well as address national needs and global needs. This will complement the work that we do through Nazarene Missions International. Our last focus will be on GO. This means that we will be creating more outreach opportunities to help CONNECT, GROW, and SERVE. Our focus this year will be mainly on how we CONNECT and how we GROW so that we can SERVE and GO.
Last year my prayer was that God would turn the 1 in 13 to a 2, and my prayer is that this year, God would turn that 2 into a 4.
Finally, I am beyond blessed that I answered the call to come to Culpeper, Virginia to be your pastor. I am honored to work with some of the greatest people in Virginia on my church board. I look forward to connecting with you, growing with you, serving with you, and going with you wherever God may lead us.
Respectfully submitted,
Reverend Garry D. McGlinchy, Jr.
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