OBC Singles Ministry - Vital and Ongoing
May 11th, 2007Last week I shared the 2020 Vision Report with the church. You can read more about it on the church website at www.olivebaptist.org. In that report, I spoke about the University of West Florida and the need for ministry on the campus. Our church teams up with other churches as well as Baptist Campus Ministries to reach out to UWF students. It is essential that we make an impact on the generation that will soon make an impact on Pensacola. Pray for this work and volunteer as you sense the need.
The role of ministry to singles also surfaced in our discussion time last Sunday evening. A few questions have come my way about the future of the singles ministry at Olive. One person called to say they understood I was doing away with this ministry. While I am not always the best communicator in the world, one would have needed to be smoking something mighty strong to believe I implied that our singles ministry was going away at Olive. Our guest records indicate that 40-50% of our visitors are single adults.
I want to make it clear our ministry to singles is not going away. In fact, if we reach into the apartments as I have called for, we will find a high number of single adults in these dwellings. Therefore, the singles ministry will need to expand if we do our job. My word was that there is more than one way to reach single adults. They are not all excited about going into a singles-only environment. Some like to be with other adults both married and single. We will need great creativity to make an impact on our local single population with the Gospel.
As we head into the weekend Mother’s Day is coming. On Sunday evening, I will be headed to Kazakhstan to speak in a Pastor’s Conference and to dedicate a church built by one of our missions teams months ago. Pray for Dennis Wilson and me as we travel and minister to new friends in a distant land. I will endeavor to e-mail a report to you next week.
Pastor Ted Traylor