Pastoral Notes for Sunday, February 27, 2022

Dear Cornerstone Family,

Midweek at Cornerstone is back in action this Wednesday! To help us get ready for it, I’ve asked Meredith Suits and Ben Griffith to tell us about the opportunities for children and youth on Wednesday nights.

Children’s Ministry on Wednesdays

We’re starting some exciting new programs for our preschool and elementary-aged children! Our preschool through 3rd graders will be doing Kids' Quest Catechism Clubs. In these programs, the children will practice 13 questions and answers from the First Catechism,which will help our covenant kids learn several important theological truths. We are grateful to have Casey Taggart, Joanie Pittman, Ronda Laventure, and Jolee Kretsinger join the children’s ministry volunteer team to help lead these classes.

Our 4th-6th graders will continue learning the books of the Bible and practice finding, reading, and discussing passages of Scripture in the Bible Skills and Drills class. This class will be led by Meredith Suits and Danielle Raymond.

Finally, all of our children will have choir each week with Jessica Michaud and Jennifer Westerbeek. All of these groups will participate in a special Palm Sunday performance on Sunday, April 10. Please register your child for Wednesday nights on the website, or app. And please join with us in prayer for the volunteers as they teach, lead, and love our Cornerstone kids on Wednesdays during Lent.

~Meredith Suits

Youth Ministry on Wednesdays

Our junior and senior high youth (7th to 12th grade) will enjoy some great fellowship together while exploring the book of Ecclesiastes! Ecclesiastes offers timely wisdom right where the lives of junior and senior high students need it most. We’re excited to see how the Lord will use this book. After large group teaching time, we end the night in small groups, which allow our students to process both the lesson and their lives in a smaller context with their peers and volunteer leaders. Youth, come and join us!

~Ben Griffith

In addition to children and youth ministries, nursery will be available per usual. So, bring those babies! And finally, so you can plan your night accordingly, the schedule for Wednesday nights is below.

5:15-6:00pm - Fellowship Meal (Catered) on the Patio at Biscuit Love (register online by noon on Mondays)

5:50-7:05pm - Preschool-3rd Grade, Kids Quest Catechism Club (basement—check-in & out in the rear foyer)

5:50-7:10pm - 4th-6th Grade, Bible Skills and Drills Class (Room 301)

6:00-7:15pm - Youth Group (Room 302-303)

6:15-7:00pm - Lenten Vespers Service, “Longing for God” (Chapel)

7:15-8:30pm - Lenten Choir (Chapel)

I look forward to seeing you next week at Midweek at Cornerstone!

Your servant,

 

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, February 20, 2022

Dear Cornerstone Family,

Before you know it, the Lenten season will be here! We’re less than two weeks away from Ash Wednesday (March 2), the official beginning of the season. For those of you who are new to Cornerstone or at least to the notion of a church calendar, you may be saying to yourself, “Lent? What is that?” If that’s you, you’re among friends.

There are seasons of the church calendar we know like the back of our hand––Christmas and Easter for instance. Protestants and Catholics of all stripes celebrate those high holy days, and even the world at large acknowledges them. But Lent? Not so much. Many of us don’t have a reference point for Lent. Others of us have reference points that have left us confused or even concerned about keeping Lent. So, as we prepare to enter this season together, it’s appropriate to ask the question, “What is Lent?”

The word Lent comes from the Anglo-Saxon term for “length.” It’s a word used with reference to springtime; the time of year when the shorter days of winter “lengthen” toward spring. Lent begins during the cold and dreary days of winter, but by the end of the forty days of Lent, the obvious signs of spring and new life are evident all around us. The dark, empty, deadness of winter giving way to the light, fullness, and life of spring is the story Lent tells. Lent plunges us into the cross-to-empty-tomb gospel. It personally invites us to keep pace with Jesus, walking the wintery path of the cross into the spring of resurrection hope.

Just as Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before him (Hebrews 12:2), the Lenten season calls us to consider in a concentrated way what it means for us to take up the cross daily and follow Jesus Christ (Matthew 16:24-26). In keeping with the pattern of Jesus’s forty days in the wilderness, Lent is a forty-day season marked by fasting, prayer, and spiritual preparation. In other words, Lent provides us an opportunity, liturgically speaking, to do a spiritual spring cleaning. To purge the closets of our heart and reorder our lives according to the gospel.

I’m particularly excited this year about a particular tool towards reordering our lives with a special edition Cornerstone Lenten devotional entitled, Earnestly I Seek You. This beautifully designed devotional offers daily prayer services with unique devotional reflections written by Cornerstone members. I can’t wait to get my hands on one! The devotional is at the printer now. It will be available next week, Lord willing. Be on the lookout for it next Sunday!

Finally, Midweek at Cornerstone is back on March 2! I’m looking forward to our evening fellowship meals, children’s and youth programs, and a brand-new Vespers teaching series. This year’s Vespers series, Longing for God, centers on key spiritual topics from some of church history’s most influential thinkers. Please make plans now to join us all six weeks!

Longing for God

  • March 2—Bernard of Clairvaux: The Desire for God

  • March 9—John Calvin: Knowing God and Yourself

  • March 16—Henry Scougal: The Life of God in the Soul of Man

  • March 23—Thomas a Kempis: The Imitation of Jesus Christ

  • March 30—Martin Luther: The Freedom of the Christian

  • April 6—John Bunyan: The Pilgrim Path

Your servant,

 

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, February 13, 2022

Dear Cornerstone Family,

“So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory” —I Peter 5:1-4

One of the joys of serving as a pastor at Cornerstone is having a strong group of leaders to work beside in ministry. At Cornerstone we believe the Bible teaches that there are two primary offices for leadership in the church—elders and deacons. Based on the qualifications for the offices found in I Timothy 3 and Titus 1, we regularly nominate, train, and elect men for these two offices, so that spiritual and physical oversight is given to the body of Christ.

Toward this end, I’m very pleased to announce that at our February session meeting the elders once again voted to begin a new officer nomination, training, and election cycle at Cornerstone. Nominations for the office of elder and deacon will open two weeks from today on Sunday, February 26th and close two weeks later on Sunday, March 13th.

Following nomination, the pastors and elders will evaluate nominees for fitness and qualification for office. After initial evaluation, a certain number of nominees will be invited to officer training. Upon accepting the invitation to officer training, the nominee becomes a candidate for officership. Candidates will be trained in the areas of personal character, family management, knowledge of the Bible, the Westminster Confession of Faith, history and constitution of the PCA, and the duties of the office of Elder and Deacon. After successfully completing the training process, candidates will be examined by the elders in the aforementioned areas. Upon successful completion of examination, the elders will recommend candidates to the congregation for election.

Between now and February 26th, we urge all members of Cornerstone to begin prayerfully identifying qualified men in our congregation for the office of either elder or deacon. As you undertake this important responsibility, please remember that only official members of Cornerstone are eligible to nominate for office, and only men who have been official members of Cornerstone for at least one year are eligible to stand for office.

In the next couple of weeks, we will republish and review the unique job descriptions of elders and deacons. In addition, we will explain in detail the process for submitting an official officer nomination. Please pay close attention to any and all communication from the church regarding the upcoming officer nomination season.

Grace & Peace,

 

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, February 6, 2022

Today I asked Ben Griffith to introduce the book study opportunities this spring for the men:

This spring, on Tuesday and Thursday mornings, beginning the week of February 13th, the Cornerstone Men’s Ministry team is hosting two groups that will read and dialogue through J.I. Packer’s Knowing God. This will be a rich time, and we hope you will consider joining one of these groups! The Tuesday morning group will meet at Biscuit Love at 7 a.m. (under the patio if the weather is nice and inside the church if it’s not), and the Thursday morning group will meet at the Franklin Mercantile Deli at 7 a.m. Good coffee, fellowship, and discussion will be on the menu; registration for both groups is live on the church website or app.

There are two main reasons we believe this study will be worth every cent it takes to buy this book (it’s not expensive) and worth every second of your time (7 a.m. isn’t THAT early, come on). We believe the ten or eleven weeks spent together in these groups will help us know God better and know each other better. Just one of those reasons alone is enough, but when both of them come together like we believe they will this spring, it’s a beautiful thing indeed.

First, our time together in J.I. Packer’s classic work will help us know God better. Whether you’ve devoured this book multiple times already or whether the Green Bay Packers sound much more entertaining than this Packer, this book will engage your mind, challenge your assumptions, and stimulate your affections. It is for the seasoned Christian and the new believer alike, and it is just as relevant today as it was when it immediately sold hundreds of thousands of copies upon release in 1973 (it has sold many millions since then). This work is not a theological textbook or a dry, doctrinal treatise - it is a warm, lively, devotional and practical introduction to the Living God who speaks in his Word so that we can know him. Not just know facts about him or learn information about him but know him and be known by him. Packer writes in the preface that the conviction behind this book is that “ignorance of God - ignorance both of his ways and the practice of communion with him - lies at the root of much of the church’s weakness today.” We hope to grow in our knowledge of God so that we can grow in the joy and delight of knowing God, and we believe that digesting this book together will help us do just that.

But secondly, we believe that the pursuit of growing in the knowledge of God is best undertaken together, in community, side-by-side. The time spent digesting and dialoging over cups of coffee helps us to know each other better, which is a rich blessing. Speaking personally, these Tuesday morning groups have helped me to deepen relationships with men I may not have known otherwise simply by giving us a space to be together, to be honest, and to learn together. I’m grateful for that and want to invite you in as well.

So, please join us! You can pick up a copy of the book for sale on our book table (if there are any left at the time you read this), or order the book online. Again, please register on the church website or app, and we hope to see you in a few weeks!

Pastoral Notes for Sunday, January 30, 2022

Dear Cornerstone Family,

The slow walk we’ve taken through Proverbs 3 this month has ministered deeply to my soul. Gauging the steady stream of feedback from you, it appears I’m not alone in that. I praise the Lord for the very obvious ways His Spirit has been speaking through the Word to us, and I hope it’s just the beginning of the work He’ll do in and through us as we submit ourselves to His Word this year.

Beginning next week, we will begin a lengthy sermon series in arguably the most important Old Testament book. Now, let me be careful. In saying that one book of the Scripture is “most important,” I am not suggesting that some parts of Scripture are more God’s Word than others, nor am I suggesting that some sections of the Scripture are unimportant. Paul tells us, “All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Clearly, whether it’s Micah or Matthew, we need every word of God’s Word. Period.

At the same time, we can safely say that some books, sections, or parts of Scripture play a particularly central (important) role in the unfolding of redemptive history. A role other books simply do not play. Again, in saying that, I’m not denigrating one part of Scripture or wrongfully elevating another part; instead I’m recognizing the variety of roles and purposes different books, sections, and parts of Scripture play in the progress of redemptive history.

And if any book can be said to play a central role in redemptive history, it’s the one we’re about to enter together. What book am I speaking of? Well, some of you have already guessed it––Exodus! From a baby in a basket to the burning bush, from plagues to crossing the Red Sea, from pillars of fire to the Ten Commandments, from manna from heaven to water from the rock, from the Ark of the Covenant to the architecture of the tabernacle: Exodus has it all and then some. There are villains and heroes, signs and wonders, plot twists and a breathtaking finale. By the end of it, you’ll understand why Leland Ryken says, “Exodus is the greatest adventure story ever told.”

But more than an amazing story, Exodus introduces us to the paradigm for salvation in redemptive history. Everything that comes after Exodus in the Scripture references it in some way and echoes it, ultimately leading us to the new and better exodus that comes in and through Jesus Christ.

Please, please, please begin praying for God to use this series as yet a further exodus in our community. Pray that more people will be led out of bondage into freedom through this series, and that every one of us will be increasingly readied for the coming final exodus: when the bondage of sin and death is no more, and we cross over the Jordan one last time and make our home in the forever Promised Land, the New Heavens and the New Earth.

I can’t wait to study Exodus with you!

Grace & Peace,