Vetrean Pastor, Life time Learner, Problem Solver, Servant-Leader and Motivational Speaker.

COOL VIDEO!!!ELMA REPORT.......I WILL NOT BE DISCOURAGED!!!!EVEN THOUGH NOBODY RESPONDS TO MY ALTAR CALL FOUR WEEKS..... IN A ROW!!!!Check this video out!!!WOW!!!!!!!! Opera duo Charlotte and Jonathan....Especially if you struggle with your weight!!!!!!

 

1. This video GOT SOME DUST OF MY EYES and made me have a "black baptiscostal moment" rejoicing at the power of God despite the negative "voices" of the enemy. Christ will build His church despite the pull of Satan. 
2. Just before watching this movie, I was lamenting in my office in Elma that nobody responding to my call for salavation in the past four SUNDAYS!!!!
3. I was discouraged tONIGHT when I saw young men  selling drugs right in front of my apartment (in Elma, WA) directly across the street from our church. (Satan, seriously????Our God is greater.He will kick your .....!!!)
4. My heart sank!!! I could not believe that Satan will engineer people to destroy lives right between two churches. GOD  have MERCY!!! HEAL ELMA!!!!Elma for Jesus!!!!! Pastor James needs prayer support......
5. BUT WAIT!!!!!! THAT IS NOT THE END OF THE STORY!!!!
6. God has gifted numerous people in our church to accomplish His work as we obey HIS WORD!!!!!
7. What we are doing is more important that "Britain Got Talent".WAIT A MINUTE!!!!!!! CHRIST HAS PROMISED TO BUILD HIS CHURCH!!!!
8. God is bringing people to Himself. All kinds of people to Himself.....
9. After church TODAY!!!! numerous people told me they have invited people for Easter. People hugged me and told me God is rocking their MINDS WITH JOHN 3:16!!!!!!!!!!
10. We are praying that God will send us 80 people on Easter Sunday.
11. We believe that God is totally in-charge  and can do great things through us. We are excited that God will do amazing things for us!!!!!!YEAH GOD!!!!!!!!
12. We are riding a wave, a wave of the grace and amazing goodness of GOOD God great God of Isreal. 

Amazing NEWS!!!!

1. Over 55 people in Church today....we will celebrate and give God the glory.
2. We will not listen to the naysayers about this "being the honey moon" or "it will wear out in 1 year".
3. A young solider and his wife attended our services....we honored He and his wife for serving our country. Thank God for men and women who are willing to fight for our freedom. Freedom is not free baby!!!!!!
4. We will party hard and rejoice in the goodness of the Lord.Grays harbor county will continue to see what God is doing throught First Baptist Church Elma.
5. We will join the lord in His work in and around Gray's Harbor County...
6. Jesus is Alive!!!!THE TOMB IS EMPTY!!!!!WE WILL proclaim His word in our lives. God is good!!! Our anthem forever will be!!!!!!!!!!!

ELMA FOR JESUS 2012..

Grace and Peace

Pastor James Owolabi

3/25/2012

Elma Update Pictures and video: Prayers needed this Easter Sunday......at First Baptist Church Elma, WA. Check out this video.

1. This morning I read Isaiah 38, and wow!!!....God is super amazing  AND SO......really Gracious. He sees our tears, He knows our pain and He can change our destiny...God is so gracious and kind....check this out.

Isaiah 38 ---In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, “This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover.”( God sees us when we hurt)

 ² Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, ³ “Remember, LORD, how I have walked before you faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your eyes.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly. ( God knows when and where it hurts)

 ⁴ Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah: ⁵ “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life. ⁶And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of Assyria. I will defend this city ( God can change your destiny). AWESOMENESS!!!!!!! Our God is greater......

 

1. Hey Church!!!!!Thank you all for your praying and investing in our community and church!!!.
2. Continue to pray for Easter Sunday 2012 at First Baptist Church Elma. ( I love this Church)!!!!!

 

 

 

 

1. Pray that God will move in power and save lives through the preaching of His word.
2. Pray for those getting baptised this Easter Sunday.
3. Pray for those who have been invited!!!!!!
4. Our average attendance for the month of March is over 65.
5. Attendance my third Sunday in December of 2011 Sunday was 39 people.
6. Keep praying....the negative forces in my life  say: "it just the honey moon"....My spirit says " Celebrate what God is doing".. Guess what!!! I will celebrate what God is doing......
7. We are praying for over 80 people for Easter. I am planning on showing this movie this Sunday as a teaser for Easter.
8. Pray for God to use this service  this Sunday to hook people to Jesus Christ for the rest of their lives...
9. Pray that God will use these service to assist us in embracing the greatness of the cross and reality that the tomb is empty.....
10. Take some 20 minutes to watch this video and pray that as I show it this Sunday as part of my 40 minute sermon God will use it to ignite in people a passion for God.

 

 

 

Grace and Peace 
Pastor James Owolabi  3-19-2012.

Why You Should Raise Your Kids in the City | This Is Our City | Christianity Today

The darkness of the city is easy to see. In the first few years we lived here my sons saw, from the vantage point of the back of our van where they were waiting for us to come out of the evening service, a robbery suspect chased down the sidewalk, caught, and spread-eagled, handcuffed, and Mirandized on the hood of the car parked behind us. We drove past hookers in silver lamé bikinis and stilettos, watched over by their pimp, on our way home. We watched one man knock another one out in a fistfight at a street fair; and, memorably, a well-dressed man in the financial district drunkenly fall to his knees, vomit all over himself, and then stagger off.

Naturally, these incidents were the subject of lengthy family conversation and discussion. That sin should be so visible, and appear in its true, ugly colors, is of inestimable value in a culture that glamorizes depraved behavior, laughing off drunkenness and promiscuity as "partying," and mocking those who don't participate. I never had to give one lecture on the evils of drunkenness to boys who had seen them live, in living color, for themselves.

But in the city, your kids see sin and its consequences while you are still with them and can help them process it. Eventually they're going to encounter it for themselves, usually when they leave the protected environment of home for the big wide world—just when you are no longer around to discuss things.

I have had parents counter this suggestion by saying that, as valuable as processing the ugliness of this broken world with your children might be, there is such a thing as seeing too much, too soon. Possibly so, but my daughter-in-law (with degrees in education from Vanderbilt and Harvard in primary and secondary education, and with experience in teaching both) pointed something out to me: If children are really that young, too young for some sights, they simply won't see them, or understand what they're seeing. Children find a great deal of the world inexplicable, so the very young are not usually in danger of being damaged by fleeting glimpses of the sordid world. By the time they are old enough to notice what they're seeing, it's time for parents to be talking to them about it, anyway. And it's usually way younger than you thought!

via www.christianitytoday.com

Sonja Sohn: Changing Baltimore Long After 'The Wire' : NPR

Interview Highlights

On acting

"My journey to becoming an actress is not your typical one. I didn't strive to become an actress all my life. It's not some goal that I had. This career essentially chased me down while I was on the spoken-word scene in New York. I kept hearing that my delivery of my poetry — which was very personal and cathartic at the time — was very moving to folks. People thought that I was an actress because of my delivery, when I was just dropping into the work and really pouring out my soul. At any rate, one thing led to another, and it seems like I couldn't escape this career chasing me, so I decided to stop, turn around and face it. I realized that there was something internal that I could gain from pursuing this career as an actor. However, once I got into the business I just really abhorred what this career can drum up inside of a person."

On her purpose in the world

"[Acting] really plays on your ego, and I had a really tough time with battling that and trying to balance that out. Beyond that, my main drive in life has always been to discover my purpose for being here, for living. ... And I knew it had something to do with helping people. ... And the entire time I was acting, I couldn't figure out what this had to do with my purpose."

On wanting to quit The Wire

"By the time I'd gotten The Wire, I was experienced. ... And I was ready. But I found myself, after hours of preparation, blanking out on my lines. Just completely spacing out. And I saw the reaction of my co-workers and the tension as the takes are clapping away and the time is ticking and the money is being spent. And I started feeling very humiliated and going, 'What is going on?' And I got very disheartened. And I would study for hours and I would know my material, and some days, it just wasn't there."

On drugs

"I first smoked pot when I was 11 years old. At first, it was just us experimenting with pot. A lot of us had older brothers who were drug dealers, so we found the weed. ... And so, that's how we became introduced to it. ... By the time I was 13, I was smoking every day. I realize now that that coincided with a time in my life when I had just given up on things being any different at home. I had spent a lot of time during my childhood trying to fix my family and trying to find a way to make this work so that I could be home and be happy. ... All I wanted was to be happy. I wanted some peace."

On her older brother's murder when he was 29

"My brother said something to me when he was in his early 20s. He said he had this deep feeling that he was not going to live to be 30. And it was in his bones. And I had a tendency to see my siblings as being a bit self-pitying at the time. ... He was a gifted athlete, he was an amazing artist and he could sing. And I kept seeing all this talent going to waste. I was this little sister being the big sister, saying, 'You need to get yourself together.' He felt very deeply that he wasn't going to be 30 — and he died when he was 29.

via www.npr.org

Fors Clavigera: An Open Letter to Praise Bands

So let me offer just a few brief axioms with the hope of encouraging new reflection on the practice of "leading worship":

1. If we, the congregation, can't hear ourselves, it's not worship. Christian worship is not a concert. In a concert (a particular "form of performance"), we often expect to be overwhelmed by sound, particularly in certain styles of music. In a concert, we come to expect that weird sort of sensory deprivation that happens from sensory overload, when the pounding of the bass on our chest and the wash of music over the crowd leaves us with the rush of a certain aural vertigo. And there's nothing wrong with concerts! It's just that Christian worship is not a concert. Christian worship is a collective, communal, congregational practice--and the gathered sound and harmony of a congregation singing as one is integral to the practice of worship. It is a way of "performing" the reality that, in Christ, we are one body. But that requires that we actually be able to hear ourselves, and hear our sisters and brothers singing alongside us. When the amped sound of the praise band overwhelms congregational voices, we can't hear ourselves sing--so we lose that communal aspect of the congregation and are encouraged to effectively become "private," passive worshipers.

2. If we, the congregation, can't sing along, it's not worship. In other forms of musical performance, musicians and bands will want to improvise and "be creative," offering new renditions and exhibiting their virtuosity with all sorts of different trills and pauses and improvisations on the received tune. Again, that can be a delightful aspect of a concert, but in Christian worship it just means that we, the congregation, can't sing along. And so your virtuosity gives rise to our passivity; your creativity simply encourages our silence. And while you may be worshiping with your creativity, the same creativity actually shuts down congregational song.

3. If you, the praise band, are the center of attention, it's not worship. I know it's generally not your fault that we've put you at the front of the church. And I know you want to model worship for us to imitate. But because we've encouraged you to basically import forms of performance from the concert venue into the sanctuary, we might not realize that we've also unwittingly encouraged a sense that you are the center of attention. And when your performance becomes a display of your virtuosity--even with the best of intentions--it's difficult to counter the temptation to make the praise band the focus of our attention. When the praise band goes into long riffs that you might intend as "offerings to God," we the congregation become utterly passive, and because we've adopted habits of relating to music from the Grammys and the concert venue, we unwittingly make you the center of attention. I wonder if there might be some intentional reflection on placement (to the side? leading from behind?) and performance that might help us counter these habits we bring with us to worship.

Please consider these points carefully and recognize what I am not saying. This isn't just some plea for "traditional" worship and a critique of "contemporary" worship. Don't mistake this as a defense of pipe organs and a critique of guitars and drums (or banjos and mandolins). My concern isn't with style, but with form: What are we trying to do when we "lead worship?" If we are intentional about worship as a communal, congregational practice that brings us into a dialogical encounter with the living God--that worship is not merely expressive but also formative--then we can do that with cellos or steel guitars, pipe organs or African dr

via forsclavigera.blogspot.com

First two minutes amazing....THE PERFECT ANTIDOTE - Know Your Bible 02