Highlights from the April 28 Quarterly Strategy Meeting include …

• Membership Report (Bethlehem had 3,304 members at end of the April meeting)
• Treasurer’s Report from the First Quarter of 2013
• Update on TCT Church Planting Resident Weyland Leach and Hayden Heights Baptist Church Restart
• Antioch Moment Relational Update
• Update from Pastor Jason
• Report from Kurt Elting-Ballard (member of elder subcommittee working on relational
  

Bethlehem’s pastors and wives will be away for a couple days at an annual retreat at Ironwood Springs where this year they will dive into the subject of marriage and break into discussion groups with pertinent questions prepared on the subject.

It won’t be all work and no play. There will be times for personal reflection, some combined recreation, some Brad Nelson crowd-breaking mixers, and informal meals in the dining hall.

Ask God to increase, deepen, and sweeten our marital love, and our love for each other as staff couples.

(Pastor John delivered the following on Tuesday, March 26, at his final Staff Lunch gathering as a pastor at Bethlehem.)

Having grown up at Bethlehem and married at Bethlehem, Keith Anderson now serves as Coordinator for Senior Adult Ministries.

Highlights from the January 27 Quarterly Strategy Meeting include …

• Elder News
• a Membership Report
• a Treasurer’s Report and Financial Update from 2012
• Campus and Department Reports
• approval of the proposed 2013 Church & Missions Budget
• discussion and adoption of new job descriptions for Pastors Sam Crabtree and Ken Currie
• an Update on the South Campus
• a motion for the elders to draft a statement, regarding church membership and elder oversight

Elder News

What do pastors do at their twice annual “Pray & Plan” retreats?  For one thing, they pray. We share two hours each morning, fasting through breakfast, singing together, hearing from the Word, and praying together. In addition we regularly stop our discussion of any given agenda item to pray over it. Further, we invested about 40 minutes at the last meeting praying over Bethlehem’s 10 Dimensions.

We just marked the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday. One of Bethlehem’s “Ten Dimensions” is racial harmony.
 
A legitimate question has been, “When John Piper steps down as senior leader at Bethlehem, what will happen to the value placed upon racial harmony?”
 

The following post is by Todd Rasmuson, Minister for Global Outreach.

*********

Rejoice always,pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you—1Thes. 5:16-18

I want to interact about the gospel with believers and non-believers alike, but I tend to get “intense” if the conversation takes a turn that I don’t agree with. I often feel like I need to defend God or something. Do you have any counsel for me?

This question was answered by Pastor Jason French.

Pastor Bud Burk recently went on a short term ministry trip to Myanmar with a handful of others from Bethlehem. Since these short term trips can be really helpful in encouraging both those who are called to go to the nations and those who are called to send to the nations, I asked Pastor Bud to share his thoughts on a couple of questions concerning the trip.

**********************