Spurgeon Sabbatical 09

Hello Church,

One of the things of love most about WBC is the passion and commitment to be generous towards the Kingdom of God, all around the world, locally and globally. Not just when it’s convenient but whenever God calls and enables us to.

Well, I want to thank you ahead of time for being generous to God’s people, specifically a group of pastors  that I will be serving at the Spurgeon Sabbatical, June 22-July 1. Your generosity in sending me to serve these pastors who come from all over the States and even around the world has been recieved with thankfulness by them in the past and I know will once again this year. They realize that it is a loving sacrifice for your pastor to serve you  “from a distance,” catching up with emails and phone calls in the afternoon and coming back just for the weekend.

This will be my 3rd time leading the gathered worship aspects of the Sabbatical–each day will begin and end with a time worshipping God together in song, Scripture reading and prayer. These times are meant to bookend our rigorous study and lively fellowship. This year’s topic is “Romans 1-5 Judgement and Justification: Keeping the Main Thing in Ministry, the Main Thing.”

My time at the Spurgeon Sabbatical is more like a short-term mission trip than a vacation or simply attending or even leading a conference.  It will be exhausting. I will be away from my family. The days will be long. There will be intense soul-surgery. So…I humbly ask you to pray:

• Pray that God would encourage Heidi in my absence.
• Pray that I would serve with the strength that God supplies.
• Pray that God would free me from the tempation of self-importance.
• Pray that the 15 pastors would be personally renewed in their faith by our study of the gospel in Romans.
• Pray that these men would return with their eyes fixed firmly on the Lord Jesus Christ as their only hope and goal for their families and ministries.