The Elders of Omaha Bible Church met on October 8 at 7:00 p.m. and Senior Pastor Pat Abendroth opened our meeting in prayer, giving thanks to God for his grace to us as a local church and asking for his wisdom as we strive to promote the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Todd Swift lead us in reading the first Article of the London Baptist Confession of Faith, The Holy Scriptures. Paragraph 10 of that article says “ The supreme judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Scripture delivered by the Spirit, into which Scripture so delivered, our faith is finally resolved.” 

What a great reminder that Scripture alone is the only authority. We also acknowledge the work of the Holy Spirit over the ages working in the church and we benefit from those who have contended and battled error and heresy.

We then moved to discuss attendance and finances. We finished our fiscal year on August 31 and our final financial reports for the year were very positive as we finished with a net income of $79,233, which was almost $14,000 above our target of $65,304.

The Lord richly provided for our church through you again this year and we praise him and thank you. 

Attendance was strong again in September as we averaged 383 people each Sunday, an increase of 44 people over September 2018. This continues a string of seven consecutive months of significantly increased attendance over the previous year. 

We are encouraged by the increased attendance but it has resulted in things becoming a little tighter in the auditorium, so right after Labor Day we added 70 more chairs, which has helped. 

In order to replace the folding chairs we now have in the auditorium the elders approved the purchase of 55 additional chairs of the same design as we have now at a cost of about $4,600. 

Also approved was new equipment for the nursery at a cost of $2,000. This will improve the check-in process, provide better name badges for children along with matching check out labels for parents, including photos of those approved to pick-up children.

This system provides a roster of children in the nursery with contact information for parents and logs of who checked each child in and checked them out, along with streamlined text message notification for parents that need to attend to their child in the nursery.

We went on to discuss a number of pastoral items. The meeting was closed in prayer for several people in our church who are struggling with physical illness at this time.

- Mike Holloway