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Pastor Jay's Mid-Week Memo – August 17, 2022

Dear Church Family,

We are grateful for your prayers and encouragement as we moved Molly in at Ole Miss this week! (Here's a photo from her signing day last fall.) We are proud of her and all of our FHBC college students that are beginning or continuing their college careers this month. Pray for them and their families! And, we are excited to welcome back all of our students returning to Belmont, Vanderbilt, Lipscomb and other Nashville-area schools. It’s an exciting time in the lives of these students, their families and our church family! 

We are celebrating an outstanding Fall Kickoff carnival last Wednesday with hundreds attending, including many new faces, in spite of the weather challenges. I’m proud of our team doing a great job to move everything indoors and especially appreciate you being there and bringing friends. Every week is someone’s first week at Forest Hills, so always be on the lookout for opportunities to give a warm welcome, and keep inviting your friends as everyone gets into new routines for the fall.

TONIGHT is the launch of Wednesday nights at Forest Hills! I hope you and your family will join us for a delicious meal followed by our midweek opportunities for kids, students and adults. There are still spaces available in our Equip classes for adults – I highly recommend you taking a step to engage with others in studying the Bible together this fall. Tonight will be an exciting kickoff for kids and students as well. Students will be in the ELEVATE Worship Center with a special guest they will not want to miss! It’s a great time to jump in – I hope you will be here!

This Sunday, August 21, we dive back into the book of Acts! I can’t wait, as we will literally see the gospel spread to the ends of the earth as we journey through the second half of Acts this fall. In preparation, I encourage you to read Acts 13-14, which I will be preaching and teaching through on Sunday. I will focus the sermon on a couple of key passages, but I want you to see the full context of what's going on in these critical chapters. Can’t wait to dive back in – be here and be ready to go!

Can’t wait to see you tonight!

Until All Hear,

Jay

Pastor Jay's Mid-Week Memo

Dear Church Family, 

I hope you are surviving this insane heat we are experiencing! Maybe this is God’s way of getting me back for giving y’all so much grief over the cold and icy winters we have had in Nashville since we moved here.

Three things I want to share with you this week:

1. We are celebrating thousands of people reached and impacted by our student missions teams that served last week in Los Angeles and Memphis! It’s exciting hearing the reports from David Reed and Keiron Miles of how God worked in and through our students. Thank you for praying for them and supporting them as they served. We are praying God will continue to use experiences like this to help the next generation to know how to live on mission every day.
   
   
   

   
2. This week, we are gearing up for Engage The City this Saturday, June 25. We will be focusing on two areas – Tusculum Hills and 12^th South – with neighborhood outreach and block parties. Our hope is to partner with our friends at Tusculum Hills as they continue to reach their diverse area. We also want to make more meaningful connections in the 12^th South area, which we were able to engage leading up to and on Easter. If you haven’t already, you can sign up to serve by visiting fhbc.org/engage. Our family is looking forward to joining with you as we serve our community on Saturday.
   
   
3. As we look ahead, I want to ask you be praying for the kids that made decisions for Christ at VBS. We are working to follow up with all of them and their families and will start celebrating baptisms very soon. Baptisms are so exciting to celebrate and we can’t wait to celebrate with these 24 kids and their families in the weeks ahead. We also have many others who are making decisions to be baptized. Pray for them as well and if baptism is your next step, please reach out and let us know!

This Sunday we continue our Summer in the Psalms series with our friend, Michael Kelley preaching from Psalm 23. Michael is a familiar face and was so encouraging in the interim season. He is now serving in a new role as Executive Director of the Nashville Baptist Association. I wanted you to be able to hear from him again while we support him moving into this new, critical ministry area. I’m looking forward to hearing from Michael and worshipping with you on Sunday!

Love you, Church!

Until All Hear,
Pastor Jay