HANCOCK

COUNTY

CHURCH

OF

CHRIST

Bulletin Editor:

Donald P. Ames

Oct. 2, 2011

Vol. 1, No. 26

P. O. Box 560

(4197 S. 600 W.)

New Palestine, In. 46163

(317) 894-3888

WORSHIP SERVICES:

SUNDAY:

AM Worship….....9:30 AM

Bible Classes…10:30 AM

2nd Worship……11:20 AM

WEDNESDAY:

Bible Classes…...7:30 PM

EVANGELIST:

Royce U. DeBerry

To GROW :

G = Go

R = Right

O = On

W = Working!

You quickly lose interest in the church when you have nothing invested. [P. 51]

GOSPEL MEETING!

John A. Smith – Speaker

(Lafayette Heights—Indianapolis, Ind.)

Oct. 23-25 (Sunday thru Tuesday)

7:30 PM (Sunday: Regular time)

Bring your Bibles and study with us!

OUR SHUT-INS:

NEEDS:Letter/card, call, visit, prayer

Liz Jackson

2930 N. Sherman Dr.

Indianapolis, Ind. 46218

“You Know how It Is”

She was a member of the local church and hadn’t been at services, so I called to see if she or one of the children might be sick. When she answered the phone, I explained my concern and reason for calling. She assured me that all of them were well, none of them were sick, they just had an open-house family get together with lots of relatives dropping in –“you know how it is”—and didn’t come to services!

I never cease to be amazed at the lackadaisi-cal way in which we view our service to the Lord. Who would think of not showing up at work Mon-day morning, then when the supervisor calls, re-spond, “I’m fine, no problem, I just didn’t come in for work this morning”—and at that point swing into that “you know how it is” routine about over-sleeping or relatives came in for a visit, etc.

Talk until you are blue in the face and you’ll never convince me that you’d do this. In the first place, you’d be too embarrassed to try to palm off on your boss such a flimsy excuse for not coming to work. In the second place, you know that no reputable company is going to tolerate such a display of irresponsibility on the part of an employee. Yet you expect the Lord to accept it! I want to say to these folks, “NO, I don’t know how it is!”

--Lowell Blasingame

(Via Jamestown, Ind. bulletin)

[P. 52]

The Pattern

For almost 20 centuries Christians have been gathering together (assembling) each first day of the week. The reasons they “churched” were ob-vious, as they came together to: break bread (1 Cor. 11:23-33; Acts 20:7); collect for the saints (1 Cor. 16:1-2); pray and sing (1 Cor. 14:15; Eph. 5:19); and hear preaching of the gospel (like that from Paul in Acts from Paul in Acts 20:7).

Our goal as a congregation is to follow this pattern as “churches of Christ” (Rom. 16:6) did in the New Testament. We know fellowship with God occurs as we seek to “hold fast the pattern of sound words” (2 Tim. 1:13) as delivered by the apostles of Christ. If you’re visiting today, please ask yourself, “Is the religious group I am associ-ated with concerned about Bible patterns?” If not, let us reason together! --Kenneth D. Sils

(Southside; Crawfordsville, Ind. bulletin)

“I Married The Wrong Girl”

I’m sure a lot of people in the 1st Century thought or said, “I married the wrong person,” be-cause, let’s face it, many of them didn’t get to marry the person they wanted to (their marriages were often arranged by their parents while they were still young). But does that relieve them of their duties in the marriage? Does that give them the allowance to go and find someone else? I do not believe that anyone could ever marry the wrong person! Why, you might ask? Because we can CHOOSE to fulfill every single command of love in the scriptures with any random person of the opposite sex in the world and that marriage will be successful. As long as we follow the scriptures our marriages will never fail, because scriptural “love never fails” (1 Cor. 13:8). The problem is not marrying the wrong person, the problem is that one or both spouses have not chosen to follow the commands of God.

--Tanner Campbell

(Piggott, Ark. bulletin)

Go to church faithfully—make the church building’s steps some of your first steps each week.

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There are no unimportant people in the body of Christ.