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Pastor Jay's Mid-Week Memo – August 3, 2022

Forest Hills Family,

I trust you are having a great week thus far. I am so grateful for the time we shared together Sunday evening as our worship team and choir led us in a powerful time of worship, reflection and celebration. It was a perfect way to cap off the summer and look forward to the new church year to come.

 As we get ready for a big Sunday and a big month of August, I wanted to share a few things that are on my heart:

• Baptisms! It’s always exciting to celebrate baptism and the bold declarations of new followers of Jesus. By God’s grace, we have celebrated baptisms the last several Sundays and we will celebrate 4 more this Sunday! I know after services on Sunday, numerous people are wrestling with the next step God is calling them to take. We would love to talk with you if you have questions about baptism and what it means to be a follower of Jesus. You can visit the Our Beliefs page on our website or simply text “FHBC” to the number 94000 from your mobile device and we will be in touch!

• Promotion Sunday! This Sunday, all of our age group ministries move into their new Sunday School classes. This is a big, exciting day for all ages, but especially for those moving into new age group ministries. For adults, this is also a great Sunday for you to connect with a class if you have not done so already. We will have teams ready to help you connect with a class this Sunday, August 7 – look for the “GroupLink” station at the Welcome Center in the Atrium and let our staff and volunteers know you’d like to find a class.

• Wednesday Nights! We are gearing up for our new year of midweek ministries. Our Kickoff Carnival is August 10 and a great opportunity to invite people to check out Forest Hills. And then, our full Wednesday night programming launches on August 17 with new EQUIP classes, age group ministries and of course, Wednesday night meals. I hope you will make plans to join us and bring someone with you! Check out all our FHBC Weekdays discipleship groups, classes and schedule at fhbc.org/weekdays.

While we are sad to see summer come to a close, the new church year offers us so many new opportunities to carry out our mission of making and multiplying gospel-centered disciples who love, grow, serve and go. I hope you will join in and invite others as together we take our next steps as a church family.

This Sunday, we’re continuing the Simple series looking at our grace stories and how we can simply understand and share what God has done in our lives. Your story matters and I want you to be equipped and ready to share it. Join us for worship and Bible study on Sunday.

Love you and praying for you church. See you soon! 

Until All Hear,

Pastor Jay

Pastor Jay's Mid-Week Memo

Dear Church Family, 

I hope you are surviving this insane heat we are experiencing! Maybe this is God’s way of getting me back for giving y’all so much grief over the cold and icy winters we have had in Nashville since we moved here.

Three things I want to share with you this week:

1. We are celebrating thousands of people reached and impacted by our student missions teams that served last week in Los Angeles and Memphis! It’s exciting hearing the reports from David Reed and Keiron Miles of how God worked in and through our students. Thank you for praying for them and supporting them as they served. We are praying God will continue to use experiences like this to help the next generation to know how to live on mission every day.
   
   
   

   
2. This week, we are gearing up for Engage The City this Saturday, June 25. We will be focusing on two areas – Tusculum Hills and 12^th South – with neighborhood outreach and block parties. Our hope is to partner with our friends at Tusculum Hills as they continue to reach their diverse area. We also want to make more meaningful connections in the 12^th South area, which we were able to engage leading up to and on Easter. If you haven’t already, you can sign up to serve by visiting fhbc.org/engage. Our family is looking forward to joining with you as we serve our community on Saturday.
   
   
3. As we look ahead, I want to ask you be praying for the kids that made decisions for Christ at VBS. We are working to follow up with all of them and their families and will start celebrating baptisms very soon. Baptisms are so exciting to celebrate and we can’t wait to celebrate with these 24 kids and their families in the weeks ahead. We also have many others who are making decisions to be baptized. Pray for them as well and if baptism is your next step, please reach out and let us know!

This Sunday we continue our Summer in the Psalms series with our friend, Michael Kelley preaching from Psalm 23. Michael is a familiar face and was so encouraging in the interim season. He is now serving in a new role as Executive Director of the Nashville Baptist Association. I wanted you to be able to hear from him again while we support him moving into this new, critical ministry area. I’m looking forward to hearing from Michael and worshipping with you on Sunday!

Love you, Church!

Until All Hear,
Pastor Jay