Should Christians be planners? … or does that show a lack of faith? Should we just let the Holy Spirit guide each step? … and how does this work with the guidance in scripture to be good stewards or managers of what God has entrusted to us? What is God’s part? What is our part? How do we balance them? Pastor James E. Godley was the founding pastor of Faith Baptist Palm Bay. In a sermon from over 30 years ago, he challenged us from Romans 14, where Paul wrote “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God”. Well, I think in 1986 as well as the rest of our life we are going to have to give account to God for the time that we have. Whether you have a day or ten years or twenty years, you are going to have to answer to God for the way you use God’s time. (Pastor James E. Godley) Commenting on Pastor Godley’s sermon, current pastor, Caleb Phelps encourages us to take heed. It’s good for us to consider our history. It is good for you to be familiar with Pastor Godley and his heart because it helps you to understand why we are what we are. The value of time. We can waste years and even days. Just to be intentional going into the year like Pastor Godley was admonishing us to do is a good thing for us going into 2020. (Caleb Phelps) Welcome to Echoes of Faith, a podcast about God working in our lives today and how His Word impacts our future. In this episode Caleb Phelps and Matthew Decker begin a two-part podcast about planning the church calendar for a new year. Right off the heels of celebrating our 40th anniversary, we take a listen to a new year’s sermon from our founding pastor and discuss our church plans for this new year, 2020. It you’d like to hear more recordings of our 40th anniversary celebration, you can find the at www.faithpb.com\40th, that’s faithpb.com\40th. Now according to Caleb, good planning helps us make the right investment in the right ministry at the right time. This month is January of 2020 and Caleb and Matthew have been leading our congregation in planning out the year 2020. The early worship services have messages that are designed to inform the congregation of the plans that have been put in place, inviting them to participate in the ministry activities that are offered. So this episode and the February episode are dedicated to talking about new beginnings.
