VBS Starts Today!

This morning we boarded the Boomerang Express for a trip downunder to learn what it means to know and walk with Jesus.  Please be praying for our many workers/volunteers as well as the children who will be here all week.  This is an amazing opportunity for our church to impact the lives of children around the community.

We will post updates and pictures during the week.  Please be in prayer for this vital outreach…

J

 

Power of Prayer and Fasting…

I came across this in my reading today and thought I would share it with you as we prepare to focus our hearts on God in March through prayer and fasting.

In more recent times the evangelical church in South Korea has taught the rest of the world a lesson in prayer and fasting. The first Protestant church was planted in Korea in 1884. One hundred years later there were 30,000 churches. That’s an average of 300 new churches a year for 100 years.  Today evangelicals comprise about 30% of the population. God has used many means to do this great work. One of them is a recovery not just of dynamic prayer, but of fasting-prayer. In the OMS (Overseas Missionary Society) churches alone more than 20,000 people have completed a forty day fast – usually at one of their “prayer houses” in the mountains.

(Wesley Duewel, Mighty Prevailing Prayer, [Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press, 1990], p. 192).

j

 

Prayer and Fasting

Now, therefore, says the Lord, turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning. Joel 2:12

On March 1,(Sunday a.m.), I will preach a message on prayer and fasting. On March 4, (Wed.) we will observe as a church the Day of Prayer and Fasting for Revival and Spiritual Awakening. I probably shouldn’t have given you advance warning; you may already be planning your excuses to stay home! I hope not. Fasting is not a topic we want to hear, much less practice. But it is the need of the hour and as your pastor I am calling you to do it for God’s glory.

There will be several levels of participation. You can fast your breakfast, lunch, dinner or all three. Make sure you spend time in prayer that you would normally spend eating or preparing food. It can be a fast, not just from food but also a call to us to do what is right (Isaiah 58:6-7). You may need to fast from TV, Internet, the news and newspapers, your own plans, your own “fun”.

How will it work? On Wednesday, March 4, the church auditorium will be open all day if you choose to come to pray in the morning or afternoon. We will have a special service Wednesday evening at 6:30 p.m. All other activities (choir practice, pastor’s Bible study/prayer, Youth and children’s) will be combined to seek the Lord’s face and call on Him for revival and awakening.

We need to be revived, our hearts need to be made tender again for the things of God. We need a renewed hunger for the word of God. There are so many things competing for our time and loyalty. I hope you will choose to participate at some level. Let God show you; be open to His leading. Invite others to come who have a burden to see God pour out His Spirit again!

Consecrate a fast, call a sacred assembly; gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry out to the Lord. Joel 1:14

Gordon

 

Faith Week Unplugged…

Eastwood’s student ministry started this year with a bang at Faith Week Unplugged. Starting Friday evening on January sixteenth, five student ministries from the surrounding area gathered in Eastwood’s sanctuary for worship and exhortation. Kyle Spencer and Eastwood’s worship team led students into a time of praise. Then speaker Brad Fogarty brought a message from John, and artist Megan Schmitt painted pictures that illustrated the Bible passage.

The theme for the weekend was “Fruit Happens,” and as Brad took the students through John fifteen, they learned that fully remaining in Christ was essential to becoming a healthy, fruit-bearing Christian. Friday evening ended with pizza and fellowship while a total of twenty three
students and youth leaders from as far away as Missouri stayed in the Family Life Center overnight to get ready for Saturday’s activities.

Faith Week Unplugged continued into Saturday with a “fishing trip” to Woodland Hills mall. At the mall, students put their faith into practice by handing out
tracts and witnessing. That evening there was another round of great worship and teaching from Kyle Spencer and Brad Fogarty. Then, students enjoyed a small worship concert from Phil Blount and his praise band, “The Class.” Students shouted and jumped as they worshiped the King.

Sunday morning was the final day of Faithweek Unplugged. Kyle Spencer led worship, Megan Schmitt painted, and Brad Fogarty brought the entire congregation a message from Isaiah chapter eleven. It was clear that God’s presence was in the room, as people made decisions ranging from first-time salvation, to recommitments, to church membership.

Eastwood’s student ministry is now looking straight ahead into this summer’s Faith Week camp. As the students return to school and finish out their academic year, pray that the Lord will keep them strong and firmly attached to Jesus.

Julia Small

 

What a great night!

 

Faith Week Unplugged is almost here!

This weekend Eastwood will be hosting the second annual Faith Week Unplugged.  We are very excited about having Brad Fogarty with us again this year speaking to our students and challenging them in their walk with God.  In addition this year we will have Megan Schmitt doing art for us during the services.  If you haven’t seen Megan work before, it is incredible!  You can check out some of her work at http://www.meganschmitt.com/Site/Home.html

Our students will be joined by the students from around Tulsa, OKC, and Missouri as we worship our King and look into His word together.  This promises to be an amazing weekend!

The cost for the weekend is $25 and includes pizza and a t-shirt (designed by Megan), and begins on Friday evening at 6pm.

J

p.s.  Brad will also be preaching this Sunday morning and Megan will be doing art during the service, join us for a great day in God’s house!

 

First Thanksgiving…

Today is Thanksgiving Day. When we talk about the first Thanksgiving, we’re referring to an event that happened in 1621 in Plymouth, Massachusetts. But there were actually Thanksgiving ceremonies in the United States much earlier — in 1565, 600 Spanish settlers arrived in what is now St. Augustine, Florida, and had a Mass of Thanksgiving to celebrate their safe arrival, and followed it up with a feast. Other Thanksgiving celebrations occurred in El Paso, Texas, and in the Virginia Colony.

But the most famous is the Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621, when the Plymouth colonists celebrated with the Wampanoag Indians. It was the colonists’ first harvest, so it was a joyful occasion. The Pilgrims had barely survived the last winter and had lost about half their population. But since then, they had built seven houses, a meeting place, and three storehouses for food. Now they actually had food to store.

They invited the Wampanoag Indians to feast with them. The Wampanoag people and their chief, Massasoit, were friendly toward the Pilgrims and helped teach them how to live on different land and with new food sources. A man known as Squanto, a Patuxet living with the Wampanoag tribe, knew English because he had been a slave in England. He taught the settlers how to plant corn, beans, and squash and how to catch eel and shellfish. And he was their interpreter.

So the Pilgrims asked the Native Americans to share in their first harvest. Harvest festivals were nothing new; both the English and the Wampanoag had similar traditions in their culture.

At the first Thanksgiving, they didn’t eat mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie, and they probably didn’t even eat turkey. The only two foods that are actually named in the primary accounts are wild fowl and venison. The meal was mostly meat and seafood, but probably included squash, cabbage, corn, and onions, and spices like cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and pepper.

Unlike our modern Thanksgiving, this event wasn’t just one day. Many of the Wampanoag had to walk two days to get to the Plymouth settlement. There were about 50 English people and 90 Wampanoag, and since there wasn’t enough room in the seven houses for the guests, they went ahead and built themselves temporary shelters. In between eating, they played games and sports, danced and sang.

The most detailed account of the first Thanksgiving comes from one of the Pilgrims, Edward Winslow. He wrote:

Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruits of our labor. […] At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and among the rest their greatest king Massasoit, with some ninety men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted.

Thanksgiving has been celebrated as a national holiday on different dates, in different months, and one year it was even celebrated twice. It wasn’t standardized until 1941, when President Roosevelt signed a bill declaring that the fourth Thursday in November would be Thanksgiving Day.

(HT:  Garrison Keillor)

J

 

Thanksgiving Worship

Just wanted to write a quick post to invite everyone to join us this Wednesday night as our students lead a night of praise and prayer.  We will be focusing on Christ as we enter into the holiday season, and look forward to joining our hearts together in worship.

Although this event will be lead by our students it is open to the entire church and we would love to have you join us.  Come and see what God is doing in the lives of our students here at Eastwood.

J

 

Fall Festival

Friday from 6:30pm-8:30pm Eastwood will host a time of fun for the whole family at the gym. We call it “Fall Festival”. This is an excellent opportunity to meet people and impact the community. There are a couple of opinions about whether we should even have an alternative celebration to Halloween, since Halloween is a day that honors fear and the devil. I believe we should offer something better! We could stay at home and do nothing believing that it is evil to have anything to do with such a “pagan” holiday. We could stay at home and hand out candy when the kids come by our house along with a gospel tract or we could open up our facilities to impact the community! We have chosen to do the latter. Last year we served almost 1,100 people.  Recently I was looking through the cards from last year and ran across a name of one of the attenders. She recently made a decision to follow Christ during a Sunday service! I think it is worth the effort; how about you??

g

 

Scraping Gravy to play at Hispanic Congregation Family Night

This Saturday at 6:00 the Hispanic Congregation “AGAPE” is going to have a family fun time at the EBC gym. Some of the Scraping Gravy group are going to play. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, drop in and support the effort to reach the Hispanic Community of Tulsa for Jesus Christ. g