Pastor's Blog: Meet Ben Winder (and Laura Beth and Levi)
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One of the challenges of doing church today is finding the right ministerial leadership to help the church meet its ministry objectives. While that’s been a persistent challenge for churches, the dwindling supply of young people aspiring to ministry today makes identifying the best candidate for a ministry opening much more daunting than it even used to be. But if a group patiently persists in their openness to the Holy Spirit’s leading, God always comes through.
I believe we’ve seen God’s faithfulness to meet our church’s leadership needs manifested once again in our search process for our next Minister to Students. Ben Winder, who is presently Minister with Youth and Families at the First Baptist Church of Knoxville, Tennessee, will be with us this Sunday, July 1, in both services as the recommended candidate of our Minister to Students Search Committee. Ben is a native of East Tennessee, and a graduate of Lee University in Cleveland, Tennessee, and the George W. Truett Seminary of Baylor in Waco, Texas. Along with his wife Laura Beth, Ben brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to our church in student ministry. After speaking with a number of friends and colleagues who are familiar with Ben, I am elated at the prospects of him coming our way.
You’ll get a chance to meet Ben before Sunday at a special reception that will take place on Saturday afternoon at 4 PM in Heritage Hall. This “meet and greet” time will allow you to speak with Ben, Laura Beth, and their one year old son Levi before we vote the next day on the Search Committee’s recommendation to call Ben to our church staff. While a number of our student leaders, parents, and youth had the chance to hear Ben when he came on a visit last month, others in our church didn’t and will get to do so this weekend.
Also, I’d ask you to say a special word of thanks to Douglas Grant, who chaired the Search Committee, and others on that team who were a part of bringing Ben and Laura Beth our way. The committee did an outstanding job of representing our church and community to the Winders and we owe them a tremendous debt of gratitude for the good work they did.
We are so blessed with competent and committed staff persons at Mountain Brook Baptist Church. Ben will be a great addition to the team and I look forward to seeing how God will continue to smile upon our church as together we seek to love Him and live with grace and generosity.
“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus” (Philippians 1:6).