For the first time in the history of this congregation, we have a plan to move forward with expansion at North Second Street. We are only four days removed from receiving a variance from the City of Clarksville that clears the way for a new auditorium. More on this later in the article. As always, we start with the numbers.
Year Attendance Giving (budget)
Jan-June 2020 46 $2397 (2450)
Jan-June 2021 47 $2891 (2450)
Jan-June 2022 65 $2831 (2625)
Jan-June 2023 80 $3650 (2625)
Jan-June 2024 85 $4061 (2846)
Wow! As impressive as those two numbers north of the seventies are (This congregation reached 73 in 2012 and 2014), the giving is enough to take your breath away. Since January of 2023, your love for Christ has overflowed in giving that is $70,000 over budget for the same period. In other words. We made budget over 18-months, and added another half a year’s budget on top! Praise God! I am humbled by my Lord and his saints. That kind of giving would give us a healthy ability to pay the mortgage on a new building.
Speaking of building. The property lines of our neighbor up the hill and for highway 41A in front of our auditorium would not allow us room to construct an auditorium suitable to a growing congregation. That was before Wednesday. Our elders and an engineer from Weakly Brothers, sought and received a variance allowing us to build 25-feet closer to the road! It is only a first step but it is an essential hurdle. Please pray for our work, elders, deacons, teachers and all the saints at North Second Street as we plan to build a larger sheep-fold. Thank you, Lord. Glorify your name!
Our reputation as the “World Center of Newborns” continues to be well earned. Lyndsey Scott gave birth to Mailynn Elizabeth just two days before Jazmine Babb delivered Henry Callan into this world. We also added new-born Christians in Sam Lavacot and Colton Miller. We added three new members to our number. Bryan Barnett, Geri Baze, and Bob Gentry joined us this year. This spring marked two years as a church with overseers. In March Tom Cunningham joined Scott Ford and Jim Lahue to give us three deacons.
Our Spring Meeting and our recent VBS were big successes. In fact, our highest attendance figure of the year came during Wiley Deason’s series of lessons (111 on April 14). Bubba Garner will hold a meeting for us in the fall.
In the midst of all this sunny news, I sense a little spiritual rain is trying to drag us apart and then down. May God gives us spiritual discernment to see the evil behind this world. Here is a paragraph from 2023’s Mid-Year report written during a 23-percent increase in attendance:
“In ten or twenty years, will we have used those gifts to: build on the foundation of Jesus Christ, survive a storm we do not yet see, or will Satan have turned us against each other and a pile of smoldering embers be the only evidence of our joy at this glorious harvest. May God guide us to meet this moment with sobriety, faith, and love.”
Lord strengthen us to take up your armor and fight, “against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.”-Ephesians 6:12. To the work fellow Christians (Nehemiah 4:17), with trowel and sword in hand!
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