January 25, 2015 WELCOME! WE'RE GLAD YOU'RE HERE We are a group of believers who simply try to follow the Bible as a guide for all we do. Everything done in our worship service is something for which we have a Bible basis. You are welcome to participate as much or as little as you wish. We will sing hymns together and we will observe the Lord's Supper or Communion together. We will also have an opportunity to give to the work of God in this area. This collection is for the members here, and if you are visiting you should not feel and pressure to give. Our lesson time will be divided into two groups. The young children will go to our classroom area in the basement where they will be taught the Bible at a level they can understand. The adults will stay in the auditorium for a lesson at an adult level. We do try to serve the community, and if you have some needs that we can help you with, mention it to one of the members. Thank you for worshipping with us.

POTLUCK NEXT SUNDAY: Next Sunday is February 1, so it is the first Sunday of the month. Our tradition is to have a potluck dinner after services, so please plan to come and stay and eat with us and enjoy time together. If you can bring a dish, that is great — but we want you to come more than we want your dish, so plan to stay.

SPECIAL JOB FOR YOU: Several years ago Marv Whitledge spent $15,000 of his own money to buy the little black Bibles that we have distributed at the fair and to friends and relatives. Marv lost his wife and has been put into a senior living facility in Portage, Mich. He misses Dorothy Lee (his wife) terribly, and is very much alone at Wynwood of Portage. Let me urge you to send him a note or call him. He needs our attention. (If you wish to have his address or phone, e-mail marcusen@michiana.org to receive the information.) He says “It is a nice place to live, but it is nothing compared to being able to drive your own car and live in your own house.” Take a minute to do this.

TODAY'S LESSON

WHAT BAPTISM IS NOT
John Clayton

In Acts 18:24 – 28 we read about a man named Apollos. This was a good man, eloquent in the Bible, diligent in sharing his faith with others, and fervent in his efforts for the Lord. Aquila and Priscilla, Christians in Ephesus, hear Apollos speak and realized that his knowledge was incomplete. Apollos only knew what John the Baptist had taught, and he had been baptized into John's baptism (verse 25). The Bible says that when Aquila and Priscilla realized that Apollos was incomplete in his understanding of the plan of salvation “they invited him to their home and explained to him the way of God more adequately” (verse 26, NIV). This is followed by Paul encountering another group of people who only knew the baptism of John. Paul told them “John's baptism was a baptism of repentance. He told the people to believe in the one coming after him, that is, in Jesus. On hearing this they were baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus” (Acts 19:3 – 5).

This morning we are looking in our sermon at some of the misunderstandings that exist in the world about baptism. It is important that we all be confident that we were baptized “into the name of the Lord Jesus” and that we not allow ourselves to go through our life with the wrong understanding of what baptism is about. It is also important that we as a congregation be sure that what we present to people is what God wants them to hear. We are the Aquila and Priscilla of our age, and like them we need to share the gospel message with the people around us.

We need to know who we are and why we do what we do. No one should ever blindly follow what a preacher or religious leader says. Aquila and Priscilla explained “the way of God” and we have God's Word to help us do that.

Our sign by the street!

Sign saying from www.sayingsforchurchsigns.com