Keep sharing good news without ads.
https://laurelbiblechurch.net/
Greetings from Laurel, Montana. This is Pastor Rob, just wanting to say hello from Laurel Bible Church to wish you all a very Merry Christmas as we enjoy this time of year to celebrate the advent of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, wanting to really just say hello to reach out to express my gratitude.
And yeah, what a what a blessing and encouragement it is to me personally, that you are subscribing to the channel. And so yeah, grateful that you're participating in the ministry here at Laurel Bible Church.
Before I came to Montana, the church was not streaming or recording any sermons. So I just wrote down a few notes here on a little post-it. And yeah, since February 5th, 2023, we have 242 subscribers on the Laurel Bible Church YouTube channel.
We have posted 169 videos, which are basically the sermons that we preach every week, whether that's myself or Pastor Justin is now serving here with us. And we have about 40 ,000 views, 39 ,925 views as of today.
So the way the channel is used is really to to push out to a wider audience, the expository preaching ministry of the church. And so I wanted to film this short clip just to express my gratitude that you're following us.
And we do look at the comments. I was encouraged even recently from last week's sermon from John chapter 7 verses 32 through 36 to hear from a fellow believer, even in Australia, saying, hey, we needed to hear this message.
Thank you. Greetings and Christian love from Australia. What an encouragement. So, yeah, just praise God for this and the way that he can allow us to use technology in a fruitful way that benefits the universal church and the body of believers.
I pray that the ministry can can grow in that way. And so, yeah, I just wanted to say hello, say thank you. We do appreciate you following the ministry. I do want to point everybody to our new website has been redesigned.
It's laurelbiblechurch .net. Yeah, we've gone through really an overhaul in our social media. Before I was called to the church in January of 2023, the church wasn't really utilizing anything on social media.
I think they had a Facebook account. But yeah, we've just sort of have updated these things as we live in this in a temporal world. And social media is a big part of our communication nowadays. So the church has an Instagram, a X account.
It has Facebook, of course. It has a YouTube channel. Now we're really wanting to promote the preaching of the church. And then it has a redesigned website. So if you go to laurelbiblechurch .net, please, please take a few moments of your time to go visit that website.
And you can read a little bit about the history of the church, our About Us tab in there. You can find the statement of faith and our leadership and some different areas about the church. We have a sermons tab.
We've recorded every sermon since I have been called to the church in January, we started recording. So you can find the sermons really from the beginning of my ministry here in this local body of believers going back to January, February of 2023.
We have an events tab, of course, a contact tab. And we have a new here tab for folks that are in Montana in the area of Laurel and Billings to kind of let you know what it's like to visit our church.
And we actually also have a giving tab now. So if you'd like to support the work of the ministry here at Laurel, we are a church revitalization. So maybe prayerfully consider about how you would like to support the ministry and giving.
We do have a live giving tab now. So, yeah, I would just encourage you to check out our new website. I do want to give a shout out to my brother in Christ, Anthony Mays from Grace Community Church of Long Beach in California for helping us redesign this really awesome website.
Well, I think that's about it. I just wanted to say hello and say thank you for following the ministry at Laurel Bible Church. And so really this message is for our YouTube subscribers. You are an encouragement to us.
If you'd like to connect with the church, you can go to the website, laurelbiblechurch .net, fill out our contact page there. And it just is something where you can put your information and put a message.
That comes straight to my personal email. So if you'd like to connect with me, I'd love to know how I can be praying for you and various things that you may need. We, of course, are in Laurel, Montana.
But we want to serve you. And so praying for you is something that I would love to do. And I'll give you, I guess, just a little, I always think about it. I filmed a few videos now, I think, in this desk that have been posted on our YouTube.
But the way the layout of this room is, is that the desk here in the middle really fits. So I have a map. Yeah, I have a couple things, but I am a pastor. I promise I have a pastor's library. And so got some goodies there kind of showing you behind the curtain a little bit.
We've even got some more over there. There you see my coats, some pastor's library. So, yeah, I was called to the church in January of 2023 after the teaching pastor resigned after 20 years. And then the lay elder who was serving with him, unfortunately, abandoned the flock here at Laurel Bible in December.
Of 2023. Or actually, no, I'm sorry, December 2022. I wasn't asked to come and preach until the end of January. So the church went without a pastor for about a month and a half. So just a sad situation when you have faithful ministry, but a new pastor is not put in place by the exiting pastor.
And so that was the situation for this body of believers. This is a church revitalization. The church almost closed, as you can imagine. As goes the pastor, so go the people. And in God's providence for my own life, I connected with the local body of believers here back in October of 2022 and came out in January to preach a couple of times.
And they called me to be the pastor. I accepted that call, was able to come out here full time in September of 2023. So I just passed my first year this year in September 2024. And then during that time period, the Lord graciously brought a brother in Christ, Justin Peters.
So some of you may know Pastor Justin. I can call him pastor now because Justin joined the church as a member and went through a season of accountability and inspection and was officially installed as the first co-pastor lay elder of the church.
So God is good. And the church body here went from having no pastors to having one. And then within the first year of ministry, the Lord has graciously brought two men to pastor and shepherd this church.
So I'm grateful in God and in his sovereignty and providence for his preservation and protection of his people, certainly displayed here in this local body of believers by bringing Pastor Justin. So yeah, we have Pastor Justin Peters is serving alongside the ministry here.
And so, yeah, we're just grateful to God that we went from really almost closing the doors, dwindling down to a very small amount of folks here to, yeah, we're going to be going to about 40 formal members in the church and maybe double that or less on a given Sunday.
So just a small congregation faithfully just trucking along. And we are really happy that we have support and people are being encouraged and being fed by the YouTube channel ministry. So praise be to God for all that he's doing in this local community.
And we are just grateful. So thank you for subscribing. Please visit our website, Laurel Bible Church, laurelbiblechurch .net. And please prayerfully consider giving and supporting the ministry even from afar as the Lord would lead you there.
So, yeah, grateful. Please feel free to contact us and we'd love to know how we can pray for you. All right. Well, Merry Christmas to you. And praise God. Please continue to watch and let us know how we can serve you.