BaptistLIFE Online

First Church, Essex pastor John Smith looks and sounds like a young Jimmy Stewart or Nicholas Cage, depending on one’s generational perception. The 34-year old pastor paces from one side of the podium to the other, waving his hands expressively as he preaches about stepping out of comfort zones and unleashing caged Christians. God is blessing that contagious enthusiasm.

Gunpowder Church’s Knit Wits knitting group is so popular spin-off groups are forming including a prayer shawl ministry, a group that meets in a senior adult complex and one that meets at a coffee house.

Hollywood came to Tabernacle Church, Essex, to help promote the church’s annual Vacation Bible School. One of the co-stars of the new move “Get Low,’ starring Robert Duvall and Bill Murray, Amazing Grace, showed up to entertain the community. Of course Amazing Grace is as mule.

First Church, Beltsville, had a video game tournament to honor the memory of one of their young adults and to encourage others to be bold for Jesus.

A local Christian band with ties to the Baptist Convention of Maryland/Delaware and First Church, Laurel, played its first national tour this summer.

The Iditerod could provide a pastor with an unlimited number of winter sermon ideas—the “last great race” over 1,100 miles across tundra, frozen rivers, forests and mountain ranges to the finish line; the mushers’ endurance and the history and legends that surround the race. There’s mysteriousness to Alaska, romanticism. The reality is that Alaska is a ripe mission field. It leads the nation in incest, rape and suicide. The darkness that covers the region for most of the day in the winter is ravaging the souls of many in that state; but God has a presence in Alaska and His light is shining in spiritual darkness.