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Generosity and Gratitude: A Church Debt Retirement Story

This week at Wilkesboro Baptist Church we will celebrate. On Wednesday April 21 and Sunday April 25, we will spend our worship services in a debt retirement celebration.

Just a little more than four years ago, Wilkesboro Baptist officially began a sanctuary renovation campaign. Church staff and leadership had the foresight to see the need for renovating our sanctuary and prepared by having the church select a sanctuary renovation committee prior to my arrival at Wilkesboro Baptist as pastor.

Church Interiors began work on the renovation in late December 2016 and completed their work in April 2017. In November 2016, Wilkesboro Baptist kicked off the fundraising campaign to pay for this sanctuary renovation.

Our campaign was titled Renovate 938 based on the following financial targets:

  • $762,000—Sanctuary Renovation 
  • $90,000—Additional property and house
  • Project Total–$852,000 
  • $85,200—Tithe to missions 
  • Total goal for the Campaign $938,000

As of the final week of March 2021, Wilkesboro Baptist Church is again debt free!

In the early months of 2020 we could see the possibility of retiring this debt near the end of the year. We were in the beginning stages of planning a debt retirement push at the church. Then the Covid-19 pandemic happened, and everything shifted.

Even with the challenges of virtual church and slowly returning to in-person worship that we’ve seen over the past year, the members and attenders at Wilkesboro Baptist Church gave generously. Not only did we meet our 2020 proposed budget, but the church gave in excess of budgeted needs. People continued to give to the sanctuary renovation debt, and we were able to see the possibility of retiring the debt early in 2021.

Not only are we now debt free, but thanks to the generous giving of those at Wilkesboro Baptist we were able to give additional funds to local and global mission partners. Through the Renovate 938 missions giving, we were able to assist mission partners in some of the following ways:

  • Help those facing disasters from hurricanes.
  • Send missionaries to other countries.
  • Feed people who were hungry.
  • Shelter people who were homeless.
  • Care for people who were struggling.
  • Encourage people who were hurting.
  • Spread the good news of Christ to those who were lost.

What is awesome is that this missions giving coincided with paying down and retiring the debt at Wilkesboro Baptist Church.

If you gave to the Renovate 938 Sanctuary Renovation campaign, thank you! Thank you for being generous. Thank you for praying. Thank you for supporting. Thank you for spreading the good news.

This celebration remembers our heritage while looking forward to the greater things God wants to do. The following is adapted from our sanctuary dedication service in May 2017:

WHO WE ARE IS WHO WE WERE. A church that prays, gives, and goes on mission is who we will be. A church that prays, gives, and goes on mission is who we have been. Our first pastor, George Washington Greene (1880-1885 and 1886-1890) left Wilkesboro Baptist Church for the mission field. He was a graduate of Southern Seminary when it was in Greenville, SC. He went from Wilkesboro to Canton, China to teach at a seminary there. WBC sent its first pastor on mission with the Foreign Mission Board. He served for 20 years in China and died on the mission field their in 1911. We are a church with a heritage of missions engagement.

WHO WE ARE IS WHO WE WERE. We are a church that will pray for the harvest because we were a church who prayed for the harvest. We are a church that will go into the harvest because we were a church that went into the harvest. We are a church that will give so that others can go because we were a church that gave so others could go. We are a church on mission because we have always been a church on mission. Let us declare boldly and live faithfully our mission to lead our neighbors and the nations to follow Jesus.

Sanctuary Dedication Service, May 7, 2017

Let us celebrate God and his blessings.

Word of the Week: Sanctification

“Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory!”

One Seraph to another in Isaiah 6:8

“Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!”

The four living creatures in Revelation 4:8

The thrice holy declaration of God’s otherness from these two passages of Scripture remind us that God is set apart in a way unique only to him. There is no one like him. The thrice holy declaration is also unique to God’s attributes. No other attribute (love, power, glory, justice, etc.) is designated in Scripture by stating it three times. God’s holiness is gloriously, eternally unique.

God’s holiness is moral purity, but it is more than moral purity. Jerry Bridges in his book The Joy of Fearing God, describes God’s holiness as transcendent majesty (67).

In this sense, God is so much more than we are and he is truly OTHER. God is full of holy majesty and glory in a way that we cannot fully comprehend.

Yet the wonder of our salvation is that God in his holiness reached down to man in his sinfulness. Through Christ, who is God and is the fullness of God enfleshed with holiness and love, God entered into his creation. Christ experienced God’s holy wrath and displayed God’s glorious love on the cross. Jesus is the very image of God’s holiness and love.

In a most glorious realization, God redeems us in order to make us holy. This is the part of salvation called sanctification.

Let’s take a moment to review salvation in three basic parts. (There are more aspects to salvation than these three. See the previous word of the week posts. But these three parts provide a helpful framework).

  • Salvation as justification: God declares us righteous. This is salvation in the past tense. God declared us righteous by the gracious work of Christ on the cross and through our faith in him.
  • Salvation as sanctification: God makes us holy. This is salvation in the present tense. God does save us from our sin, but being made holy is a process of God removing sin from our lives and making us into Christlikeness (Romans 8:29).
  • Salvation as glorification: God glorifies us. This is salvation in the future tense. God will give us glorified bodies and allow us to experience life as he originally intended.

We explored justification in a previous post. We will explore glorification in a future post. In this post, we are going explore salvation as sanctification.

Sanctification is an aspect of salvation that can be controversial.

Does sanctification mean that God does all the work, and we can behave any way we choose? This would be antinomianism (or anti-law).

Does sanctification mean that we can become sinlessly perfect this side of heaven? This would be perfectionism.

Let’s try to answer these questions by offering just a few observations on the doctrine of sanctification.

Sanctification has at least two aspects. First, positional sanctification is the concept that God makes us holy through the work of Christ. In essence, we are sanctified through the work of Christ (see Romans 15:16; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 6:11). Nothing sinful will enter into God’s presence in heaven. So the work of Christ in justifying us and sanctifying us will completely cleanse our sin away.

Second, practical sanctification is how we partner with God to be holy in our character and conduct. Practical sanctification recognizes the reality that we still live in a sinful human body in a sinful world with an enemy who tempts us to sin. While we are sanctified positionally, we must partner with God to be set apart or holy in our behavior.

To answer question #1 above, sanctification does not imply that it is ok to live in sin after conversion (Romans 6:1-2). To answer question #2, sanctification does imply we will be perfectly holy, but not until heaven. We cannot be sinlessly perfect this side of eternity though holiness is to be our aim.

For the rest of this post, we are going to explore some practical ways that we can partner with God to be holy.

It is important to note that God expects holiness of his people.

You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.

God to the people of Israel, Leviticus 19:2

Peter quotes this passage in the New Testament and adds additional explanations in 1 Peter 1:14-16.

14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, 15 but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, 16 since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.

God’s holiness is the primary reason that he expects us to be holy and set apart. God has given us the Holy Spirit to indwell us and strengthen us to experience sanctification (Ephesians 5:18).

We participate in our sanctification when we do the following things:

  • Confess and repent of our sins. We cannot expect to be holy in our conduct if we tolerate sin in our lives. When Peter reflects on the command to be holy, he reminds his readers to reject their former passions. Regular confession and repentance are means of pursuing holiness in our daily lives.
  • Reject and remove temptations. God commands us to resist the devil (James 4:7) and flee temptations (2 Timothy 2:2). We cannot expect to be holy if we are inviting sin into our lives. Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount that we are to do whatever it takes to remove sin from us (Matthew 5:29-30). If you have a struggle with a particular sin, you must remove that temptation from your life. Here are two examples. If you struggle with drunkenness, you cannot sit in the parking lot of the ABC store. You must avoid (flee) temptation. If you struggle with pornography or lust, you cannot be awake at 1 am with your smart phone in hand. You must avoid (flee) temptation. To reject and remove temptations may mean that you act drastically (cut out TV or internet, not go to restaurants that serve alcohol, stop surfing FaceBook, etc.). But remember we are not called to be like everyone else. We are called to be holy.
  • Replace temptations with virtues and pursue righteousness. Being holy is not just about the negative (rejecting sin). It is about being set apart. In the Old Testament, priests were set apart as holy by their cleansing rituals, dress, and conduct. While we don’t have to emulate their rituals, the imagery is instructive. Replacing a temptation like wasted time on a smart phone with reading the Bible or a good book is conduct conducive of holiness. Likewise, we should pursue righteous behaviors (faith, love, peace, purity 2 Timothy 2:2). Spiritual disciplines like Bible reading, prayer, sharing the gospel, serving others, and meditating and memorizing the Bible are spiritually formative and helpful in pursuing holiness.

Here are some practical action items as you finish reading this post:

  • Thank God that he has set you apart to be holy through Christ.
  • Take a moment to confess and repent of your sins today asking God’s forgiveness and cleansing.
  • Remove a temptation from your life today.
  • Practice a spiritual discipline today (read, pray, study, memorize, share, serve).

When we pursue sanctification, we embrace the salvation that God has graciously given us.