September 17, 2018

Dear LABC,
This Sunday is Homecoming Sunday. With school starting in the middle of August, with a very full year round calendar of ministries and activities at LABC, with most of the programs that took a summer hiatus having already re-started for the fall, Homecoming can seem like something of a historical vestige, a reminder of an era gone by. Yet, it is good to welcome the Voices of Lakeshore back, it is good, for the 30th time, to present the Daisy Funderburk Award for Excellence in Christian Education, it is good to honor our Scholarship Recipients, it is good to conduct the business of the church and it is good to gather at table and share a meal. Thank you to the Ladies Night Out participants for coordinating the potluck luncheon.
Recognizing our Church Theme for the year, “Uniting In Love, Building On Our Foundation,” my sermons for the next three Sundays will deal directly with the multi-faceted force we call love. This Sunday, borrowing from the book “The 5 Love Languages” by Gary Chapman, my sermon will be “Fluent in the Languages of Love.” I will attempt to describe the languages of love and the ways in which Jesus was fluent in all of them. My encouragement will be to for us to learn to speak these languages so that, in the name of the Christ, we might fill the world’s “love tank,” a reservoir that it is often at dangerously low levels.

Prayers of the Congregation

• Tyrone Mack for his mother-in-law (health)
• Larry Sims for grandson Braylon (health)
• Jim Jeffrey as he prepares for surgery
• Thanksgiving with Brian Byamukama for employment
• Sharon Gordon for Louis Greer (health)
• David Holly (health)
• Cynthia Nelson (health)
• Sheila Zak (direction)
• Gloria and Phil Meads for Jean and Tiffany
• Thanksgiving with Rita Jennings that she is recuperating
• All who are dealing with fires and floods
• Thanksgiving for the formation/education ministry of LABC
• Thanksgiving for the ministry of  all the congregations of the Evergreen Baptist Association
• The unhoused of Oakland and those who minister to them
• Maxine O’Guinn (health)
• Sandra Dunn (health)
• Mary Karne for her daughter, Maryla
• Ann Fields for her daughter, Tamara
• Zondra and Marty Martin
• Carol Travis as she cares for her brother (Texas)
• Carol Knight for her family
• Joan Patten for Sierra
• Thanksgiving with Daphne Chin that her parents (Tuck and Jayne) are doing well
• Thanksgiving for the ministry of the San Francisco Kachin Baptist Church
• Jamie Reid (health)
• Dayle Scott (health)
• Pastor B.K. Woodson as he mourns the death of his sister
• Julio Cash
• Chad Gurney, safety for all first responders
• Lola Afolayan , prayers for peace
• Chris Schelin for the Starr King School of Ministry community as it mourns the death of Sarah
• Maya Hart for hope, healing and family
• Thanksgiving with Katrina Lau that her brother was not injured in an automobile accident