Weekly Announcements

Thursday Morning Prayer Meeting: Beginning on Thursday, February 12, Pastor Charlie will lead an early morning prayer meeting at the church office. The meeting will be from 6:00-7:00 a.m., and all are welcome to attend. Women should bring at least one other person with them so that we can honor the Lord and maintain appropriate boundaries. If you are unable to stop by the church office, feel free to join in this hour of intercession from wherever you are. For more information, contact Pastor Charlie at charlie@gcfmn.org.

“Be Filled” Women’s Retreat: all ladies 12 and older are invited to participate in our conference on March 20-21st at the beautiful Koinonia Retreat Center in South Haven near Annandale. We will explore together what it means to be filled with the knowledge of the will of God. Registration forms are available on the information table. Contact Cheryl Perry with questions.

Quarterly Meeting Dates: At the last Quarterly Business Meeting, several of you requested that we change our meeting times to Sunday after church, on Agape Meal Sundays. Therefore, the new Quarterly Meeting dates are as follows: May 3, 2015, August 2, 2015, November 1, 2015, and January 3, 2016. Please note these dates in your calendars.

Lunch with the Handrens. Beginning in February, the Handrens will be hosting a lunch at their home on first and third Sundays. Please see the information table for more information and a sign-up sheet.

Stay Connected: All of our announcements are posted on our blog at our church website (gcfmn.org). If you would like to receive our weekly electronic newsletter please contact Traci Veek (traci@gcfmn.org).

Community Groups: Please visit our website to access more information about community groups at GCF or see the bi-monthly electronic newsletter.

Next Week’s Fighter Verse:

“The LORD will keep you from all evil; he will keep your life. The LORD will keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and forevermore.”

Psalm 121:7-8

Comments

The Secret of all Failure is our Failure in Secret Prayer

“We may be assured of this—the secret of all failure is our failure in secret prayer” (12). So writes the anonymous author of the classic little book on prayer entitled, The Kneeling Christian (Zondervan Publishing House, Grand Rapids: 1971). He means that the reason we so often fall into sin or live in discouragement or fail to bear fruit is because we do not cling to God in Christ above all things. We do not diligently seek him or lean on him or plead with him or draw on his strength. We give ourselves to busyness over communion with God and in this way we seek to accomplish in our flesh what can only be accomplished in the power of the Spirit. Giving first place to what our dear author calls “secret prayer” is indeed a key to the Spirit-filled life but let’s be clear: prayer is not magic, rather, it’s a relationship. It’s not as if we simply have to file requests with God, being careful to use just the right words so that we can get him to respond as we wish. God is not a vending m

Deacons - How They Serve and Strengthen the Church (Part 1)

One of the next important priorities for GCF is to establish deacons in the life of the church. On March 14, 2021 we were able to establish an elder team. Currently, we have a team of four elders overseeing the congregation of GCF. However, there is more work to be done. I have come to see that establishing an elder team was the bare minimum that needed to happen for GCF to survive. I believe GCF now needs to turn our attention to raising up a team of qualified and willing deacons to serve the congregation so that it will not only survive but thrive. I would like to begin a series of blogs on deacons to help us understand who they are and what they do in the life of the church. In this blog let me provide three reasons why I think deacons should be near our top priority. Number 1: It is Biblical. Paul instructs Timothy to install elders who will help him pastor the church. For whatever reason, it seems the churches in our circles treat the installment of elders as non-negotiable

Does the Doctrine Divide? by Patience Griswold

“Oh, I try not to talk about doctrine. It’s so divisive.” This is a sentiment that I’ve heard expressed, as well as implied, on many occasions, and one that raises the question, does doctrine divide? In answering this question, we must keep in mind a very important truth and that is that everyone holds to some sort of doctrine . “Doctrine” is defined as “a belief or set of beliefs held and taught by a church, political party, or other group.” Regardless of whether or not someone publicly holds to a statement of beliefs from a particular church, every Christian, by definition, holds to a particular set of beliefs. As Carl Trueman observes in his book The Creedal Imperative , [W]hile Christianity cannot be reduced to doctrine, to mere teaching, it cannot be meaningfully separated from it, either. Even the most basic claims, such as “Jesus is Lord,” carry clear doctrinal content that needs to be explicated in a world where, as we have noted before, every heretic has his text and n

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