Holding Fast for God & Country…by Pastor Jared Deckerfor God & Country

I just thought that I would start the updates off with a little bit of background leading us to the present blessings at Grandview Pines Baptist Church. When God brought me and my family here in January of 2007, thing were…well, they were very different than they are now. Our first service at GPBC consisted of 12 people, which included my 5. In the early days, it was nothing unusual for us to have 8 or 9 on Wednesday night and be excited for 25 on Sunday morning. I still remember the burst of energy I felt when we hit 30 for the first time.

[ Let me pause for a moment and clarify one thing. MINISTRY IS NOT ABOUT NUMBERS! It is about the people in those numbers...however large or small those numbers are. I am consistently disturbed by the prevailing attitude that a ministry is successful if it is running over 300 "in Sunday School" and struggling if it is running only 40 "in Church". Most of our Bible Colleges are failing our Pastoral students by not preparingthem to work with small number and see God's blessing in that. Come on guys...don't you remember what it was like to be a young pastor who got excited when you had 1 visitor in the last three weeks? Pass on the knowledge, not the numbers! ]

During those first couple of years, God brought us through struggles as well as triumphs. We lost a couple of good families over differences of organization and ministry goals. (It never pays to compromise on your vision of what God can do.) We lost a couple of good families due to doctrinal issues. (It never pays to compromise on the Bible…even with those we count as friends.) But God has brought along mutliplied numbers of good, doctrinally sound families to replace them. We have seen God change lives in the most miraculous ways. We have seen answers to prayer that you think you’ll only read about in the Scriptures. We have seen some of our “original” church folks get the victory over sin in their lives that they have been struggling with for 10 or 15 years. God is working in people.
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The Lord has blessed us over the last couple of years to be able to undertake some much needed renovations of our facility. This is just a little rundown of the progress that we have made on our building since early 2007.

The first project we undertook in 2007 was to upgrade the lighting in our fellowship hall and repair some wood and siding on the exterior of that part of the building. Our fellowship hall lighting up to that point has consisted of two 60w bulbs. So, needless to say, when we installed 8 fluorescent fixtures, it changed the entire look and usability of the fellowship hall. We also took the time to clean out a bunch of junk that had accumulated over the years and was taking up valuable Sunday School space.

In the spring of 2008, the Lord allowed us to remodel the nursery, bathrooms, and prophet’s chamber. We were able to expand the nursery into two sections, splitting the toddlers and the babies into two connected rooms. Our bathrooms were in a major state of disrepair and neglect, so we had to strip everything down and start from scratch. It is wonderful to have nice, clean bathrooms for our members, but especially for our visitors. We also renovated the prophet’s chamber to be more of a nice hotel room. The Lord provided a new queen bed and futon/bunk-bed, so we can now accommodate up to 5 adults. It has made for a much more welcoming atmosphere to parents putting their children in our care, and it has been more refreshing for our missionaries as they stay with us.
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