Our Mission Team is safely home. Welcome back the team that took our Church's prayers and belief into Honduras for a fruitful mission trip. Be sure to speak with any of the team about their experiences.
Posted on Jun 28
The Congregation and Session of Vance Memorial Church joyfully welcome
Pastor Charles LaPlaca (and his wife MaryAnn)
as the new Pastor and Chief of Staff.
Our Sunday Brunch with Chuck and MaryAnn was scrumptuous, full of fellowship, and very well-attended.
If you haven't had a chance to meet Chuck and MaryAnn, you might want to download this brochure for information about them.
Here is Pastor Chuck's first sermon as our new pastor at Vance.
Remember all of our weekly sermons--and selected music as well--can be found on our "podcast" page.
Here is the sermon from June 21, 2009, 11am service.
It was Pastor John Rickloff's final sermon at Vance as our interim minister.
Title:
"You Are Just a Boy"
Scripture:
1 Samuel: 17:1-58, 1a, 4-11, 19-23, 32-49
Mark 4: 35-41
"If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land."
C.H. Spurgeon's Morning Devotional
"The illfavoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven wellfavoured and fat kine."-Genesis 41:4 Pharaoh's dream has too often been my waking experience. My days of sloth have ruinously destroyed all that I had achieved in times of zealous industry; my seasons of coldness have frozen all the genial glow of my periods of fervency and enthusiasm; and my fits of worldliness have thrown me back from my advances in the divine life. I had need to beware of lean prayers, lean praises, lean duties, and lean experiences, for these will eat up the fat of my comfort and peace. If I neglect prayer for never so short a time, I lose all the spirituality to which I had attained; if I draw no fresh supplies from heaven, the old corn in my granary is soon consumed by the famine which rages in my soul. When the caterpillars of indifference, the cankerworms of worldliness, and the palmerworms of self-indulgence, lay my heart completely desolate, and make my soul to languish, all my former fruitfulness and growth in grace avails me nothing whatever. How anxious should I be to have no lean-fleshed days, no ill-favoured hours! If every day I journeyed towards the goal of my desires I should soon reach it, but backsliding leaves me still far off from the prize of my high calling, and robs me of the advances which I had so laboriously made. The only way in which all my days can be as the "fat kine," is to feed them in the right meadow, to spend them with the Lord, in His service, in His company, in His fear, and in His way. Why should not every year be richer than the past, in love, and usefulness, and joy?-I am nearer the celestial hills, I have had more experience of my Lord, and should be more like Him. O Lord, keep far from me the curse of leanness of soul; let me not have to cry, "My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!" but may I be well-fed and nourished in Thy house, that I may praise Thy name.