Greetings Morningside Church Family!

This month we reached an important milestone together. You might have missed it with everything else going on. After all, our Freely In-home Worship Gatherings have been going all summer. Over 50 leaders are working with nearly 100 kids at VBS this week. Almost every Sunday we’re welcoming newcomers. This week alone I signed four letters to families who attended Morningside for the first time! So, I can understand if you missed this milestone.

When I arrived in May of 2019, it was me, Kathy Powell, and Carol Gallups in the office each week. Pastor Brandon had just left Morningside to lead a church in Tennessee. We were seriously understaffed! Chris Trammell and Zach Walsh were serving as interim staff. Two years, countless prayers, and numerous searches later, our staff team is full. Some members of our team were already here. Some we needed the Lord to bring here. Since June of 2020, God has added:

With Zach Walsh, Chris Trammel, Vern Waldrop, Gwen Pigg, and Christina Baptiste, God has given us a terrific staff team! I am amazed and grateful at how he has blessed his church. When you see these folks, thank them for answering the call to serve!

God brought each one of these fantastic servant leaders at just the right time. I hope you’re excited, as I am, to see all he does in and through them. At the same time, I encourage you to remember that God calls all of us to be equipping all of you (Eph 4:11-13)! As the body of Christ, we are on mission to make disciples of Jesus by Knowing Christ and Making Him Known.

Let’s get to work for Jesus!

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The deacons have been busy with family ministry. They have worked with church staff, Bible Fellowship Group leaders, and the bereavement teams to minister to several families during the loss of loved ones and illnesses in the past quarter. Always feel free to contact your deacon with any questions, concerns, or prayer requests.

Our second quarter giving has been less stellar than what we witnessed throughout 2020 and into the first quarter of 2021. As we’ve been getting back to “normal” life—taking vacations we missed in 2020 and enjoying eating out again—giving to God’s work at Morningside has slipped a bit. Our ministry staff have all been disciplined in their spending this quarter. But we have incurred some additional unexpected expenses when several ancient cooling units needed replacing. During any season of uncertainty, one thing that does not change is our focus on the Heavenly Father and His leadership in our lives both individually and corporately. I am confident that our shared faith in God has brought us to this point. As we maintain our focus on Him, we can all be confident He will encourage us to renew our shared commitment to his work.

In Psalm 78, the psalmist implores the people of God to “tell the coming generation” of the “glorious deeds” and “wonders” of the Lord. This psalm is a beautiful declaration of our purpose as a ministry to the Next Generation as we commit to “not hide” the wonders of the Lord from the coming generation, but we will “arise and tell” our children about the wonders of God so that our children will “set their hope in God.” We have certainly witnessed the wonders of God throughout the summer, and we are diligently preparing to “arise and tell” the future generation about the beauty of following Christ.

One of my favorite highlights of the summer was observing God work in the hearts of our middle and high school students at summer camp at Camp Anderson on the Blue Spring in Marianna, Florida. One of our guest students received Christ and committed to be baptized at her home church, and multiple students expressed a calling to ministry while at camp. The week was a wonderful balance between fun adventure and extraordinary biblical teaching.

A few of our elementary boys and dads recently returned from Camp McCall, which is a phenomenal adventure camp in the mountains of South Carolina that focuses on missions education and foundational biblical teaching.

The elementary kids recently completed their Gospel Project unit in Bible Fellowship on the Spirit’s role in the growth of the early church, and they are currently learning about “All Things New,” which is a study about our growth in becoming more like Christ (sanctification).

One of the most exciting new developments in our ministry area is the recent addition of Jennifer Seiler, our new children’s ministry director, who joined our Next Gen Ministry team on July 6. We are thrilled to welcome Jennifer and her husband Phil to our church family.

The next stages of summer will prove to be exciting as we host Vacation Bible School, eagerly await the start of construction on the Student and Young Adult area of the Family Ministry Center, prepare to launch a new student ministry vision in the fall semester, and prepare for an exciting new semester of kids’ ministry in Breakout on Wednesday nights.

The Personnel Committee would like to welcome our new Children’s Ministry Director, Jennifer Seiler, to the church staff.  Jennifer began her employment in early July and is already busy with VBS and other activities. Garrison Hampton has joined the staff for a short time as a ministry resident. Garrison is a student at Columbus State and is pursuing a degree in English with a track in Professional Writing.  Welcome to Jennifer and Garrison.
 
We also want to recognize Pastor Zach Masdon on his one-year anniversary as NextGen/Family Ministry Pastor as of July 6th.
 
The Personnel Committee is also looking forward to the ordination of Chris Trammell, our Worship Leader, in August.

Second quarter activities:

• We collected food for Brown Bag.
• Morningside Cares food distribution has slowed due to decreased need, however, relationships have continued to be built with families.
• We provided muffins and gift cards for teacher appreciation week for BRMS.

Third quarter planned activities include:

• Host blood drive 7/27
• Support VBS in July
• Outreach to MBC preschool through welcome packets in August
• Support BRMS needs
• Provide meal for SafeHouse in August

• Host Missions luncheon, September 26, encouraging the church members to get involved with  “Choose One” missions activity

Members of the team installed Easter banners on our campus. Several items of general cleanup and maintenance were completed including adding a shelf to new golf cart storage, disposing of dried concrete bags and hay scraps, rearranging items in storage for optimum space for security golf cart, cutting final concrete pavers with concrete saw to fit flush with the sidewalk, and repairing squirrel damage at bottom of doors and windows in the gathering room.

Our bereavement ministry teams were blessed to serve six MBC families during their time of grief, after the loss of their loved one. We have some wonderful teams and would love to have more people join us in this ministry. If interested, please contact Cathy Gilson #706-577-9384.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, 
who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. 
~2 Corinthians 1:3-4