Good morning on this Saturday, September 29th. Today's blog is a potpourri of subjects I wanted to cover.

(1) Please pray for our missionaries to Kenya and former interns, the Bobby Bechtels. Their son Dylan, underwent a procedure to repair a hole in his heart and subsequently suffered a blood clot on his brain. The Bechtels were to be with us this weekend for our Missions Emphasis Day, but were told by their son's doctor that they are to stay within 20 minutes of the hospital in Des Moines until the crisis passes. We will have a special video testimony from the Bechtels in tomorrow's services, but our Mission's Pastor, Dan Cullett, former missionary to Thailand, will be speaking in the Bechtel's absence. Our thoughts and prayers are with the Bechtel family today and in the days ahead.
May God heal Dylan and comfort the Bechtel family.

(2) Special thanks to those Edgewooders who invited and brought first-time visitors to last Sunday's special gospel-outreach services. We had nearly 40 first-time adult visitors attend our various services to hear the message about the necessity of the new birth. For those who did not receive Christ during these services, we are following up their visits and attempting to win them to the Lord. Please urge them to keep attending. I remind you that most adults do not respond to the gospel the first time they hear it. The majority of adults respond only after hearing it several times.

(3) We have only about 25 openings left for my 44th Anniversary/Retirement Banquet on Thursday, November 8th at the Davenport Fair Grounds facility. You need to make your reservation as soon as possible because of the limited seating. When we have filled all of the reserved seating, we will have to add people to a waiting list and some will not be able to attend. Since we don't want that to happen to you, we are reminding you to be sure to sign up during tomorrow's a.m. services.

(4) Our current missionary interns, Derek and Melissa Glynn, will be concluding their internship on October 31st. Derek will be ordained at 6:00 p.m., October 14th. On Sunday evening October 28th, Edgewood will celebrate the conclusion of their internship with a reception in the church's Multipurpose Center. Mark your calendar with these dates and don't miss these events. We want to do everything we can to encourage the Glynn's as they prepare for their missionary work in Costa Rica. With Stacy Lovett now in Japan after her commissioning service last month, and the Glynn's preparing to go to Costa Rica, we will have two of our finest young people who have grown up at Edgewood fulfilling their calling as missionaries. We thank God for our mission's emphasis at Edgewood and the fruit it is bearing.

I'll look forward to seeing you in tomorrow's services.
Mel Brown

Outstanding Meeting

Good morning on this Saturday, September 22nd. I am writing my blog a little later than the normal time today because I had a power outage which caused my Internet connection to fail. I'm writing today on my son-in-law's IPad through his Internet connection. Earlier this week I had the privilege of speaking at the Fall Baptist Bible Fellowship Meeting in Canton, Ohio. I was burdened by the number of preachers who confided in me their level of discouragement and heartache. It was a blessing to be able to provide them encouragement and hopefully help with their burdens as pastors and missionaries. In light of the statistics I shared about pastors in my message, I suppose I should not have been surprised at their needs, but when you hear their stories, it is a heart-wrenching experience. Their is a truism that has often been repeated in ministry, "God never wastes a heartache." My experiences in the early days of my ministry at Edgewood helped me to not only understand their burdens but empathize as well. I found myself wanting to weep over their circumstances and become determined to help them any way I could.

I also found myself thanking God for today's Edgewood and the wonderful people who have supported me through the nearly 50 years of my ministry. Thank you to all of the Godly faithful people who have made my ministry a success and given me such joy in my service for The Lord. It is because of God's grace and you that I am what I am today, and I thank God for the privilege of pastoring some of the very best of God's people. As one of our members told me, "we brought you up right." After 44 years through the tough times and the good, I can say, Amen to that.
Mel Brown

Pastor Brown is speaking at the national Baptist Bible Fellowship Pastor's meeting. His blog will resume next week.

Good morning on this Saturday, September 8th. Today's blog is a potpourri of items I'd like to discuss.

(1) Please be sure to sign up as soon as possible for my 44th Anniversary/Retirement dinner on Thursday, November 8th. There is a limited number of seats at the Davenport Fairgrounds facility and seating is on a first come-first served sign-up basis. It promises to be a wonderful evening of great food, fellowship and fun. I would hate for you to miss this very special occasion.

(2) We are in a countdown to the weekend of September 22nd, 23rd in a special effort to bring our unsaved/unchurched relatives, friends and neighbors to Edgewood's services to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. After hearing the fate of those who will be left behind during our prophecy series, it behooves all of us to go all out to reach those who don't know Christ before our Lord returns. These outreach services coming up in just two short weeks will provide an excellent opportunity to bring them to church and win them to Christ.

(3) Canada is closing its embassy in Iran and urging their citizens to return home, ostensibly because of Iran's failure to protect other country's embassies, but the undercurrent is that they expect Israel to strike Iran's nuclear sites sometime before the end of the year. Many analysts are opining that a strike against Iran is highly likely before our presidential elections. Syria, Hezbollah, and others have vowed if Iran's nuclear sites are attacked they will retaliate against both the United States and Israel. Clearly such a strike grows more likely every day.

(4) Aren't you sick and tired of all of the political ads flooding the airwaves. Usually we have to endure a bevy of them in the months immediately before the election but this year they started many months ago and have aired everywhere ad nauseam, and my phone has been ringing off the hook with repeated political calls. I will be glad when the election is over and the constant barrage of ads finally will come to an end. But we still have two months to go and it undoubtedly will get worse before it gets better.

I hope to see you in church tomorrow to hear my sermon entitled, A Life-Changing Encounter With Christ.
Mel Brown