Bethany ARP Church in 2025
Howdy in the Name of Our Great God and Savior Jesus Christ!
We are at a time in the history of the world where much of the Christian West has forgotten her first love, much like the Ephesian church that Christ advised in Revelation 2. We who once burned hot for the gospel of grace have become complacent, and due to that we are being overwhelmed by false religions and their false gospel of materialism, fleshly desire, and spiritual boredom. In order to help the Bethany ARP Church advance forward in the midst of this newest attack on the bride of Christ our worship and praise times in 2025 are going to focus on building us up in faith and love as we renew our covenantal promises in the hope granted by our Lord above when we first believed.
In Sabbath Morning Worship we will be bouncing around the Bible from Genesis-Revelation as God opens up to us the basic building blocks of Christian faith. As we go from who our God is to why Jesus had to die on the cross, and why we worship Him, we will practically see application made from what the Scriptures have to teach us about these grand themes of truth for our day-to-day lives. The more we understand the foundations of our hope the more our ability to fight against the schemes of darkness shall be victorious by the power of the Holy Spirit. While there are going to be times where our minds are going to be stretched as we explore these blessings it is important for us to become better acquainted with the doctrines our forefathers in some cases died defending. Being ARP matters, and how we understand these things is shaped by where we have been, so that we can know where we are going as a people. You will find attached to this letter the weekly 52-Sunday sermon plan for 2025. (See link here. ).
In Sabbath Evening Worship we are going to start out the year in a series expanding on each and every part of our order of service on the Lord’s Day morning and evening. We’ll learn why we have a Call to Worship, what a pastoral prayer is, how sermons are meant to function, etc. . . This will build off of some of what we have been doing on Thursday’s in our devotionals. Closing out Sunday with Christian fellowship, prayer, and teaching is a key way to organize our lives around being fed with God’s word. It is a helpful way for our families to spend more time together in love and grace, seeing the needs of our fellow believers, and building up community. Sunday evenings are a little less “formal” than Sunday mornings so don’t worry about it being just another thing you got to get dressed up for. It’s worth the effort, I promise. The time we spend in instruction on Sunday nights are also more interactive.
As we continue our regularly scheduled Sabbath School lessons, and as our adults receive weekly bible lessons from our ARP Quarterly focus on books of the Bible I also want to encourage you to come out a little earlier at 10am for this time of fellowship. Learning more of one another, and graciously being given the opportunity to visit, etc. . . can only help us grow closer as a congregation. Our young adults are also meeting at 10am up in the library and as they’ve gotten back together to learn about the organization of the church and are now moving on to other subjects it has provided more grace and time together. No time at the house of the Lord is ever wasted. I want to encourage you to make this a regular part of your diet.
Lastly, as we think about the times the elders have set aside for the betterment of the Congregation I want to talk a little bit about our Wednesday Night Adult Prayer Meeting and Devotion time and our Youth Groups on Wednesday night. First of all, I want to thank Susan Gordon, Jan Putman, Katlyn Long, and Jeanne Seay for all the hard work they put in every week. They do an awesome job with the kids. For the adult time we’ve been spending the Fall of 2024 talking about the problems facing the church, the culture, and our nation as a whole and some of how we got here. Starting on January 8th when we come back from break we are going to begin looking at specific subjects on everything from abortion, the way people act towards one another, and other subjects. We are looking for more as to what you want to learn about and discuss as the adults work together to figure out the Biblical response to some of these issues.
In closing, I want to gently encourage those of you who have not been attending these worship opportunities outside the 11am service to consider in 2025 making plans to join with your brothers and sisters in Christ as we continue to make Bethany ARP Church a place where others see the light of the gospel of grace and as a warm place where they might find a home to be at rest. A house of prayer and worship where all feel welcome to be fed by the word of life, and where meat is on the menu. I thank you as always for your prayers and ask for them as we look forward to the year to come in God’s mercy.
By His Strength,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church