The elders met on the morning of April 14, 2021. Pastor Pat Abendroth opened our meeting in prayer with thankfulness to the Lord for sustaining and growing Omaha Bible Church (OBC) in gospel centered ministry for almost 30 years now, and asking the Lord to use us in the future for his glory.

Dallas Focht led us through Article 19 of the London Baptist Confession of 1689 on the topic of "The Law of God." Dallas noted this was particularly timely and relevant given Pastor Pat's sermon of the previous Sunday on April 11 on Matthew 20:20-28.

The elders have decided to move their regular elders meeting to the third Wednesday of each month in order to allow us to review the previous months financial reports more consistently. We previously have been meeting on the second Wednesday of each month. 

The elders approved Matthew Anderson as a new member of OBC and noted we have three other membership applications still pending review by the elders.

Also, over the past three months we have had several individuals withdraw their membership from OBC. Luke and Chelsea Fulliton, Josh and Chelsea Sluter, and Jacob and Jess Nachtigall have all removed themselves from membership at OBC.

Frank Barber and Pastor Pat gave us an encouraging update on a Bible Study group of young adults who have recently placed themselves under the leadership of OBC and is now considered a ministry of the church.

This group is composed of around 40 young adults who meet weekly at the Scooters at 158th and Pacific St. at 6:30 p.m. They are currently studying the book of 1 John. 

With the potential that the City of Omaha may allow the current mask mandate to expire on May 23, the elders are considering how this might affect our worship services on Sunday morning. Throughout the COVID pandemic we have gone to four Sunday morning services in an effort to allow everyone who wants to attend worship service at church on Sundays to do so.

We would like to continue to do that as we begin to transition back to a more normal worship service situation. So, in order to gain insight on what our congregation is willing to do and is comfortable with, you can expect to get a very simple survey from the church in the first week or two of May so we can get a sense of what services and how many services we need to offer beginning Sunday, May 30.

Please fill out this very simple and short survey when you receive it; your feedback will be a great help to us as we plan for our worship services over the summer. 

On the missions front, we have a significant opportunity to invest in gospel ministry in India to an even greater degree than we already are with Vineet Sasane and Living Hope Church in Pune.

Vineet's brother Aaron has been offered a full ride tuition scholarship to attend seminary in the San Diego area. His desire is to be trained in ministry there and return to India to build the church through a solid gospel and Christ-centered ministry.

While Aaron Sasane has his tuition costs covered by the seminary, living expenses and health insurance costs for himself and his family are not covered. The elders are considering providing the great majority, if not all, of Aaron and his family’s expenses while at seminary.

The short-term cost for us as a church, while substantial, seems relatively small compared to the long-term opportunity to impact the nation of India with the gospel. Please pray for us as we consider this opportunity to bring the gospel to the second most populous country in the world where solid gospel ministry is rare and is needed so much.

On a final note, our Lord has once again blessed us through the generosity of his people as seen in our financial reports for the month of March. We had a very good month of giving in March as we had total giving of $92,200. Our expenses for the month were just under $60,000 and that led to a net income for the month of $32,847.

That makes our YTD net income $154.714. We are in a strong financial position as we head into the last five months of our fiscal year, which ends on August 31, 2021. Thank you for faithfully supporting this ministry financially.

Todd Swift closed our meeting in prayer.

- Pastor Mike Holloway