TomMesser.com

Presidential Transition

Dr. Charles Shoemaker has served faithfully as the President of Trinity Baptist College for the past 15 years. His leadership brought about many accomplishments for our school, including: the relocation of the college campus, the granting of accreditation, the launching of our graduate school, reaffirmation of accreditation and the establishment of many recruiting and enrollment records.
 
After much prayer and prayerful consideration, he has determined that the time has come to seek a new direction in his life and ministry. He will conclude his time in his position in May of 2010. My friendship with Dr. Shoemaker and his family is something that I treasure greatly, and I so much appreciate what he has done for our college.
 
As we move forward, I am confident in God's plans for our school. Over the last several months, I have sought from the Lord renewed vision and focus for the direction of Trinity Baptist College. My vision is to prepare Christian young people to enter the world prepared to make a difference and an impact for God. Guided by a deep conviction for biblical authority, we must teach a doctrine that revitalizes a Great Commission focus, seeks to impact culture, re-energizes the church and fosters the development of new methods and innovation. This vision will require us to embrace both the heritage of our school and also new strategies for growth and education in the days ahead. 
 
The Board of Trustees is beginning the search process for a new president to continue Trinity's growth and to lead it to carry out this vision in the coming years. We will post updates on this process online as they become available.

Dr. Shoemaker has made a recent update on his blog about this decision.

Have We Arrived?

I am really looking forward to Sunday, and have just shut down administrative work, including e-mails, to finish my prep for Sunday morning and Sunday night. I look forward to spending the next day and a half really focusing on the word of God and preparing what the Lord wants me to say on Sunday.

 

As I have started to prepare for Sunday morning's focus on the elder brother from the story of the prodigal son, I have been pondering two questions.

• Why are we so critical (judgmental) of those around us? I think we find that the sin of the prodigal son is easy to point out and condemn. It is the anger and self-righteousness of the elder brother that we dismiss and minimize. I think this mentality has negatively impacted our churches and the work of Christ for years.
• Do we think we have "arrived" when we really have missed it altogether? There are many things that the elder brother did that are not unlike what many Christians do. He stayed in the Father's house, worked for him and even demonstrated long term commitment. However at the end of the story only one of the brothers was enjoying a relationship with the Father, and it wasn't the elder.

Be ready and expectant in your attitude to see God work on Sunday. I'm excited about what God has for our church and for churches all across our country.

 

I would like to remind our church members to make sure that you turn in your deacon nomination forms this Sunday. I am thankful for the deacons who are serving, as well as for those that the Lord is raising up for service in our church this year.

Extravagant Grace

I am always amazed, grateful and humbled by services where it is evident that the Holy Spirit is at work in powerful ways. I was surprised when I was told that Sunday morning's message had been viewed over 1,200 times online in just 48 hours. I am still trying to figure out if it is because the content of the sermon was on target, or if people wanted to just get a view of my bare legs!

The response that I have received through conversation, e-mails and text messages encouraged me to put some thoughts together for you about last Sunday.

• People both enjoy hearing about and need to know the grace of the Father in their lives.

• The contrast of the younger son and the elder son is convicting. We easily judge other people when their sin is different than ours and so easily justify or dismiss the sin that is just like our own sin.

• It is important to talk with others about what God is doing and how He is working in our lives. When I am preaching on a subject, I am amazed at the number of people who are having similar thoughts. I had dinner with Pastors Steve Roberson and George Grace last week and they both mentioned reading the same book, which is about the story of the Prodigal Son. Their discussion really encouraged me to dig deeper.

• You should read the book, Prodigal God, by Tim Keller. It is a great book with some of the clearest and most thought provoking insights into the story of the Prodigal. For our church members, this will be available in our bookstore on Sunday.

• Real spiritual growth is not just a good thing, it is necessary. So many people talked with me about growth in their lives this week, many of them in relation to the sermon on Sunday.  Growth that translates into life change (moving away from conformity to the world and being transformed into the image of Christ) is the most rewarding thing for a pastor to see in the lives of his people.