Focused on the Future

We had a great Christmas Eve service and Morning Worship on Sunday. I preached the final message in our "Finding Our Focus" series entitled "Focused on the Future". It is posted on the main church website. As we finish out 2009 and look forward to a new year and a new decade, I am excited to see what our God has in store for us! See you in 2010!

Have a Wonderful Christmas!

We had a great time at our annual Christmas party last Saturday. We filled the room to overflowing and truly enjoyed celebrating God's Wonderful Gift! Our sermons on Sunday focused on reaching out to those around us with the incredible news of God's provision through Jesus Christ!

We will be having a Candlelight service on Christmas Eve at 6:00 PM and our annual Watchnight service on New Year's Eve begining at 7:00 PM! Hope to see you there!

It's not too late to sign up for FPU!

We have had a very good response to our upcoming Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University classes beginning on January 8, 2010 at 6:30 PM. Although the preview classes are over you can still register and attend! Visit www.daveramsey.com and click on the "classes" option in the menu bar, e-mail me at pastor@gateway-baptist.org or call!

Technology is wonderful!

Technology is wonderful... when it works! We are progressing with our new sound person and have sermons ready to post but the host for our sermon player is down. I will get the sermons for this week posted as soon as possible.

Problems fixed - sermons are posted at the main website!

A White December!

We had a great Sunday with Jerry Abbott of Manna Ministries. Jerry shared his burden for the millions around the world who go without the basic necessities of life while we live in plently. We are still working with our new sound man so the audio for Sunday's sermons is not available.

December started off white! We had a few inches of snow last night (and it is still coming down as I type). Schools are closed and children are delighted!

Wonderful Worship!

We had a great Sunday! In the morning service we "Focused on Worship" and were reminded how wonderful our God is and how worthy He is of our worship! In the evening we had our annual Thanksgiving dinner and the food and fellowship was great! Thanks to all who made it possible and thanks to our God!

The morning sermon is posted on the main website. Please excuse the echo in the recording - we are training a new sound man. While I am on the subject, I want to thank Robert Egan for his faithful service in the sound room. We will be praying for you as you head for Korea!

Focused on Fishing

When Jesus called His Disciples they had many important responsiblities, but none greater than becoming Fishers of Men! This priviledge is now ours! Listen to our Sunday Sermon on our main webpage!

Thanking our Veterans and Focused on Fellowship

We had a great day of services on Sunday as we recognized the sacrifice our Service Men and Women have made for our Country. We are constantly mindful of the brave people who have served and continue to serve to secure our freedom.

We also continued our "Finding our Focus" series with a focus on Fellowship. Fellowship is much more than sharing social time together, it is about partnering together as the Body of Christ. The sermon can be heard on the main website sermon page.

Financial Peace University

We will be hosting a Financial Peace University by Dave Ramsey. Classes will begin on Friday, January 8th! We will have preview sessions after our Sunday services on December 6 and 13.

Are You Completely Committed?

This is our third week of our "Finding Our Focus" series and the messages from this week may be the most penetrating. Please listen to the AM and PM sermons from this week as they work together to point out our need for committment as well as some instruction on how to keep committed to God. Our sermons are on the main site at: http://www.gateway-baptist.org/listen.html

In the morning sermon I challenged our people to read six passages of Scipture every day for the remainder of our series. They show the level of commitment Jesus Christ expected of His followers in different areas. The passages on the handout are: Matthew 22:37-39, Matthew 13:44-46, Matthew 15:8-9, Matthew 21:28-31, Luke 18:21-23 and Luke 14:25-35.

Focused on The Word

We had a great second Sunday in our "Finding our Focus" series as we looked at the importance of God's Word in our lives. The sermon from Sunday is now posted on our main site: http://www.gateway-baptist.org/listen.html

We also did a test run of our "Focus on Fellowship Night" on Sunday. We dedicated the evening service time to strengthening our bonds through fellowship and everyone had a great time!

Moving Forward

We have begun our Fall sermon series entitled "Finding Our Focus". The first message, "Focused on Our Foundation", is available at our main website sermon page. http://www.gateway-baptist.org/listen.html I belive this is the most important series of sermons I have ever preached and strongly encourage all of our members (and certianly anyone else interested) to not miss a single installment!

Finding Our Focus

The Fall is here and things are busy! Our sound man had weekend duty the last two weeks and as a result we were not able to get all the sermons recorded. I did post last Sunday's sermon entitled "Seeing Nothing" on our main web site today.

I will be in New Jersey to attend a family wedding this weekend (October 11) and Pastor Love will be filling in for me. When I return we will begin a series of messages entitled "Finding Our Focus". I am excited to see how God is going to use His Word to transform our Church!

Where has the time gone?

It has been a few weeks since I last updated the blog. School is back in session which means our Awana Clubs have resumed for a new year!

I am looking forward to a series of messages entitled "Finding Our Focus" which will begin on October 18th. We are going to evaluate the Biblical form and function of the Church and begin to make some changes to allow us to better meet those goals! It is going to be an exciting time!

The sermon page has been updated. You can listen online or download the messages on our sermon page! http://www.gateway-baptist.org/listen.html

Summer is over - looking forward to the Fall!

Our family was on vacation for the last couple of weeks and we had a wonderful time. I want to thank Dr. Love for filling in for me in my absence.

My oldest son and his wife (Ryan and Amanda King) were with us last Sunday. Ryan in working on his Masters degrees at Baptist Bible College. We were delighted to hear his first sermon on Sunday night.

You can hear all of these messages on our main website. http://www.gateway-baptist.org/listen.html

What a Wonderful 4th!

Thank God for His goodness! We had a great 4th of July weekend with our picnic on Saturday and services on Sunday. God allowed the waters to part! We had heavy rains on Friday and Sunday, but Saturday was beautiful.


Our annual picnic at Alameda park was a hit thanks to God's blessings! We had a good turnout of our people and were thrilled to have the Southern Gospel group Shiloh and their wonderful families with us! You can see the guys playing volleyball below! I want to extend a special thanks to Jim Kennedy for working countless hours to prepare most of the food.


We are eternally grateful to our God for the freedoms we have in this great Country! We also thank our military men and women and their families for fighting to keep those freedoms alive!

Busy Weekend!

We had an interesting but certainly entertaining weekend here at Gateway.

Jim Kennedy, one of our members, hosted the 3rd annual Alamogordo Music Festival at the Teys Special Events Center. The opening acts ranged from our own Randy Flowers to a German choir from Holloman AFB and all of them did a great job.

The acappella group Legacy made their first appearance in Alamogordo and were very impressive. They have an incredible gift and seem determined to use it for the glory of our Lord and Savior! You can find more about them at: http://www.legacymusic.net/legacy/Home.html

Southern Gospel group Shiloh made their third appearance in Alamogordo and were a real blessing. We are looking forward to spending the 4th of July with them at our annual picnic. You can find more about them at: http://www.shilohnet.com/about/

The weekend ended with a flash-flood warning in the area. There was lots of rain and we lost power twice during the evening service! My preaching was focused on God's presence through the storm in the AM and PM Services - I guess God wanted to make things a little more real to us!

The sermons are posted at our main site: http://www.gateway-baptist.org/listen.html

I can't wait to see what God has in store for us next weekend!

Chris Kurth: Aug 9 1985 - June 4 2009

Chris Kurth was an outstanding young man. We had the priviledge of having him as a church member during his high school years. Chris was always willing to help where he could and had a passion to serve his Country. He was involved in the Air Force Jr. ROTC program at his school and entered the U.S. Army after graduation.

Chris went to be with the Lord last Thursday. Here is the Associated Press article:

The Pentagon has identified a U.S. soldier killed in a grenade attack near Kirkuk, Iraq, as from Fort Hood. A Defense Department statement says 23-year-old Army Spc. Christopher M. Kurth of Alamogordo, N.M., died Thursday in Kirkuk of wounds suffered when an anti-tank grenade hit his vehicle.

He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood.

I want to thank Chris and his family for his service and sacrifice. Please pray for the family during this difficult time.

Thank you!

It is an incredible priviledge to live in our great Nation. This weekend we were reminded of those who have sacrificed so much to allow us that priviledge. You have our deepest gratitude.

Awana Awards Night!

We had a fantastic time celebrating the achievements of our Awana Clubbers Sunday night! Here are a couple of pictures from the event!

Awana Year-End Celebration!

It has been a while since I have posted on the blog. Mother's day went wonderfully - thanks Moms! We also had our final Awana Club for the year. I will post pictures from our Awards Night (this Sunday) next week, but here are a few shots of last night's club!

Praise the Lord He is Risen!

It was a wonderful priviledge to be able to spend the last week remembering the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

I want to thank Randy Flowers and my wife Laura King for sharing their voices to praise our Lord!

You can listen to our Resurrection Sunday Messages at our sermon page!

http://www.gateway-baptist.org/listen.html

On that note, I think we have finally nailed down the sound quality of our sermons. Please e-mail me if you have any problems with the quality of the sermons!

pastor@gateway-baptist.org

Thanks for being so patient!

I thought we had our sound issues fixed until our camera decided to die on us. We are working on recording our audio directly to the computer and have sermons from last Sunday posted. The audio quality is not perfect - please forgive us as we get things tweaked!

Comments on "The Shack"

I have not used this blog for general comments before, but after someone recommending "The Shack" by Wm Paul Young I felt compelled to comment.

First let me make some positive observations about the book:

- God's love is seen throughout the pages and is movingly portrayed.
- Jesus is seen as the central figure in redemption and rightfully so.
- Our need to respond to God's love in a personal way is mentioned.
- The way that God's love can be seen in tragedy is moving.
- The concept of evil being the absence of good is interesting if incomplete.

Now a some issues I had listed more by the order I remember them from the book than importance:

- God the Father is displayed as a woman until the end of the book. While God is spirit and beyond our understanding He has always portrayed Himself as Father, not mother. It seems rather presumptuous to think that He would change His appearance to a specific individual for the reasons given in the book. If God presents Himself as Father shouldn't we recognize and worship Him as such?
- "Institutional Religion" is strongly rejected by Jesus Himself in the book. That is a HUGE issue with me, not because I pastor a church but because of what God has revealed about His love for the church. God worked through the Nation of Israel as a people. He organized them, wrote whole books of the Old Testament to give them direction for their religious and social associations, and organized their worship in a very particular way. Jesus organized the Disciples and gave them specific commandments and commissions. The majority of the New Testament aside from the Gospels are written to and for the church. Ephesians 5:25 tells us that Jesus loved the church and gave Himself for it. The church is not a meeting place, it is the people who are called to meet together to worship God. There are many admonitions in Scripture to gather in corporate worship.
- In my estimation, the book does a terrible job of expressing the need for us to come to Christ personally. If you read the last chapters the author points out the fact that God had done His part in restoring our relationships and that man need to do his, but how? The author has Jesus Himself declare that peoples of all faith systems are His, but how does someone come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ without being told of our sin and the need for a Savior? Again, the Bible speaks very clearly on this, but the author overlooks it.
- The book seems to completely overlook the consequence of our sin and the righteousness of God. It seems as if God smiles and completely understands when we willfully sin against Him. Young needs to take another look at the Old Testament as well as the cross to see how our sin impacts God.
- Satan is a non-factor in the book. Evil is only the absence of good and there is no adversary to be seen.
- Hell is never mentioned. When He was on the earth Jesus spoke more about hell than heaven.

I could mention quite a few other things but I will quit here for now.

I was moved on several occasions and reminded again of God's love for me. I thought it necessary to be honest with my concerns about the book because I do believe they matter and dishonor God.

The link below has a 17 page review of the book that expounds on some other areas of concern if you are interested.
http://www.challies.com/archives/book-reviews/a-review-of-the-shack-download-it-here.php

Back on Sound Ground!

After some trial and error we have our sound back where it needs to be. Listening to our new sermon compared to our previous ones it sounds like we have a much better recording level now then in the past. Listen for yourself at: http://gateway-baptist.org/listen.html

Praise God for a great Missions Month!

God blessed us richly in February with four wonderful missionary visits. This past Sunday it was our pleasure to have Beau and Valerie Moore, Missionaries to Portugal in our services. They displayed a great burden for the people of Portugal and a willingness to follow God's call on their lives. Valerie sang and played piano for us and did a great job. Thanks!

I thought we had our sound issues addressed but we have another blank recording from last Sunday. We will get to the bottom of it and have our sermons posted as soon as possible!

The Napper Family to Burkina Faso!

We had a wonderful Sunday (February 15) with the Napper family, Missionaries to Burkina Faso, Africa. They conveyed the incredible spiritual and physical needs of the people of Africa and their vision to bring them the answer to those needs!

Pray for the Napper family as they continue their deputation ministry on the way to the field!

In other news... We had problems with our recording on Sunday and will not be able to post our sermons from this week.

Bob Hines - iMap Ministries

We had a wonderful Sunday with Bob Hines of iMap ministries! It is amazing to see what God is doing through the efforts of iMap. Take a look at http://www.i-map.org to see for yourself!

We had a little audio difficulty with Bro. Hines' sermon but it was so good that I posted it on our church website anyway. The audio is a little muffled but well worth a listen!

Missions Month Begins!

We began our annual Missions Month on Sunday with Ernie and Hilda Harman, Missionaries to Mexico. Bro. Harman presented a powerful message on our need to love God fully as we attempt to reach out to the World for Him! You can hear his message on our sermon page! http://gateway-baptist.org/listen.html

We are excited to hear from Bob Hines with iMap ministries http://i-map.org/ next week!

Sorry for the down time!

I had some health problems that landed me in the hospital for a few days and in bed for a week or so. I will be moving slower for a while and appreciate your patience!

I was also informed that two of our sermons (Better beginnings and Going Gray) did not upload correctly and had no audio. I will restore them and upload last Sunday's sermons soon!