Advice From A Super Senior #3

This blog might be the least formal that I’ve written yet, so bear with me if it seems like I am just throwing words onto a page but these are thoughts that I have wrestled with over the past year, and writing them down will do us both well. If you don’t know my background I have been attending First Baptist Tuscaloosa for as long as I remember. My family moved to Tuscaloosa when I was about 3 and I’ve stuck around since. What I am not going to do is sit here and tell you that everything about FBC is perfect because in different seasons of life I struggled to love the church as much as they loved me. What I will do today is hope to highlight the constants that will always be there.

Spend time in any ministry outside of the college ministry and you will feel that the people here are some of the best, no matter the age difference. College Leaders co-leading youth small groups with youth parents lead to the ultimate bromance of Jake McDonald and Stan Turnipseed. When Jake, Jason, and I joined choir last year I expected to sing some great hymns, but I never really expected to love spending time in the back of the tenor section chopping it up with a bunch of guys who easily could be my dad. While we don’t see these people as much as we used to since we moved to the 9:45 service the congregation at FBC is lovingly supporting us and can’t wait for us to get plugged back in fully.
Stemming from the multi-generational support for us from the church are the countless opportunities to serve God in ways that you love. Members of First Baptist are in leadership positions at the Good Samaritan Clinic, The Community Soup Bowl, and countless other places across town where you can serve God doing what you love. All of this to say, First Baptist gives you the chance to do what you are good at secularly, for the glory of God. Bailey Patton began doing yard work for a member in the church sometimes his freshman year and the number of stories he’s come to us with from “The Colonel” is just one of the many benefits he can give you for service.

The main reason why I love my church though is that we shamelessly preach the Word without omitting a single letter. It might be boring some weeks as you trudge on in the 16th month of working through John but there is a method to Gil’s madness here. By preaching expositorily every person in the audience can apply the Word to their lives. If we went series to series, picking verses to justify a sermon there would be weeks where someone could grumble “how does this apply to me?”. By going verse to verse through whole books of the Bible Gil proves to the congregation that “Every word of Scripture is God-Breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work”. Every sermon ends with a few points of application to start your week and for that I am thankful.

So to end, I’ll admit to you that yeah our church has flaws. The piano and drums aren’t always in sync, Gil might ramble off-topic every now and then but after spending time with nearly every staffer here I can tell you that their hearts are pure for the Lord and their ministries. You hear from a lot of people early on in college that you get from a church what you put into it. I’d push back on that statement. At FBC what you put in, you get back exponentially more.