The Thursday Update

MAY 8, 2025

Lakeshore Friends,

My heart is filled with so much joy because of you. It always has been, but with our 30th-year anniversary, I have another reason to add to my long list.

So many of you show up so faithfully, and we’re grateful for that. And so many of you are hungry to grow in your faith. You invite people to church and help us reach those who need Jesus. So many of you serve with your gifts. So many of you are generous givers to God. So many of you really love people. The list could go on and on from so many of you. Add to this list that you are so loving to me and my family. Again, that’s always been the case, but your generous gift to me for pastoring Lakeshore for 30 years last Sunday meant so much. Thank you! If there was another more intense word than “thank you,” I would use it. Thank you, thank you, thank you is all I’ve got. Please accept this from a heart filled with so much appreciation.

The gift is nice, really nice. But like the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 4:17 (ESV), “Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that increases to your credit.”

I’m excited that we will resume our new series, How to Find Joy in Life in the New Testament book of Philippians on Sunday, as we celebrate moms. In fact, the topic, “Joyful No Matter What,” will be perfect for the day.

Thanks for being a church that brings me and all of our staff so much joy!

Warmly,
Vince

MAY 1, 2025

Lakeshore Friends,

This Sunday, May 4, we're celebrating the greatness of God in a special way. Lakeshore turned 30 years old in April and we want to thank and praise Him for all He has done in these incredible three decades to impact lives in Rochester and around the world. God loves it when we celebrate Him because He is so worthy of it.

In fact, God called on Israel to celebrate seven of them with feasts and festivals: Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, The Feast of Weeks or Pentecost, The Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and The Feast of Booths (or Tabernacles). These events were commemorative (remembering what God did) and communal (done with all the people together). So when we celebrate God like this, we are doing something that pleases Him.

On Sunday, we'll celebrate Thirty Years of God’s Faithfulness and I want every one of you who loves God and loves Lakeshore to be here!

I’ll talk about how God has been faithful to us and how He will be faithful to you too as we reflect on our past and talk about our future. I think you’ll learn a lot about Lakeshore, learn a lot about living a great life for Him that satisfies you, and get a glimpse into my heart for what the future holds for Lakeshore.

I hope to see you here with friends. I’m trusting God to use it to help everyone see His greatness.

Let’s celebrate together!

Warmly,
Vince

APRIL 24, 2025

Lakeshore Friends,

This past Holy Weekend is the greatest one of the year, along with being the busiest. I hope you enjoyed it and that our services helped make it really meaningful.

At Lakeshore, we had four services that brought in a high attendance of 1,720 people, which is close to an all-time high, and three of the four services were somewhere between comfortably full and packed. I want to thank you for inviting people to church, even if they didn’t attend. I met many of your friends and saw some of the many friends I invited. I also thank those of you who are taking yard signs. Let’s keep them up all summer and hope that people visit Lakeshore because of it.

As we leave this great weekend, I think this coming weekend will be a really good one as well. We'll kick off a brand new series in Philippians called, “How to Find Joy in Life.” Can you think of a more timely series than this?

There are so many people are struggling to find joy in our joy-sapping world and I’m convinced the main reason is because people are looking for joy in all the wrong places. As we’ll see, joy is a choice, and it’s only when you know how to choose joy will you be able to find it. We'll talk about how to find joy in relationships, in tough circumstances, in conflict, in stressful times, and in so many more circumstances and moments.

So thanks again for being a part of last weekend and I hope to see you this weekend for the kick off of this new series.

Warmly,
Vince