The Thursday Update

AUGUST 22, 2024

Lakeshore Friends—

Life is not easy.  In fact, it’s pretty difficult at times to live with faith, hope, and love when all around us are signs of fear, despair, and hatred.  The news is often filled with so much depressing information that it just seems like things will never get all that much better.

For 2,000 years Christians have felt this way.  From persecutions and martyrdom in the first three hundred years since the time of Jesus, to the torturous treatment of so many Christians around the world today, living for Jesus Christ usually costs us something.  We’re seeing it in increasing measure in our country today.  It’s happening with people who are simply praying in front of an abortion clinic, or who believe in the traditional biblical view of the family and publicly say so, or who just want the right to talk about their faith and views in school or at work.  For simply being open about their beliefs in a peaceful way, some are being arrested, having their homes raided, or even being fired from their jobs and the like.  All while it seems like violent activity goes unpunished.

That leaves us with a decision.  Will we press on in our faith?  And if so, how do we press on?

The answer is we should press on and we can do it when we think about one important thing: the promised land, God’s promised land.  We know it as heaven, when we spend eternity with God.  When we think about the rewards awaiting every faithful Christian in heaven, we have the courage to live out our faith on earth.  As the classic country song by Jim Reeves in 1962 puts it, “The world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through.”

What problems are you facing?  What unfair treatment are you experiencing?  What mistreatment are you experiencing because you’re a Christian?  Remember that this world is not our final home.  Heaven is.  So stay fixed on your future residence there until God fulfills His promise to us to take us there very soon.

Warmly,
Vince

AUGUST 15, 2024

Lakeshore Friends—

We've spent the past five weeks working on the final phase of major church-wide technology and production upgrades.  After completing the LED wall and stage lights in 2022, this summer we have worked on the final phases of our upgrades.  They include a new sound system for the Auditorium, new energy-efficient LED house lights, a new video camera system that will help us better capture services for online experiences and future viewing excellence, and soon, new viewing technology to customize what is presented on each of our over 30 TV monitors throughout the building.  All of this will help us catch up to today’s tech standards.

This will help us in a number of ways:

1. Our Auditorium sound will be improved.  The sound will be more uniform throughout the room and be more soothing to listen to.  We have really needed this.  It will take time for us to perfect our use of it all, but you’ll notice improvements immediately.

2. Our Auditorium experience will be more creative.  We can now create moods and experiences with our house lighting for various moments and elements in the services held there.  Good Friday? Christmas Eve?  Easter?  We can create moods that help us appreciate Christ’s sacrifice, His birth, His resurrection, and so much more.

3. Our Auditorium seating is much more accessible.  You’ll see that we have reconfigured the seating locations so that there is easier access to all seats with the use of shortened rows of seats and more aisles, thanks to the increased floor space we now have. By the way, we also have seats in the back of the Auditorium that are reserved exclusively for families with young kids, giving them a dedicated area near the exit in case they need to make a quick retreat. Of course, we always encourage families to engage their kids in Lakeshore Kids classes, where the team, led by Jill Freese, do an amazing job helping them learn about God, the Bible and His love for them.

4. Our Atrium and classroom experience will improve.  This will happen over the next few weeks as we upgrade the Atrium sound and service broadcast quality.  Stay tuned!

The big question, though, is why? Let me share why we are and are not doing this.

We are not doing it to be the most trendy, tech-forward church in Rochester.  Who cares about that?!  With that said, the technology in our twenty-year-old Auditorium was increasingly growing more outdated and breaking down.  This was the natural next step for us to take for the long run.

We are doing it because technology and production quality is an important means to some eternally important ends.  Technology is the means of effectively sharing the gospel and the Bible, but the end is helping people more effectively discover and develop a growing relationship with Jesus Christ.  That’s eternal.  That’s our goal.  That’s what counts.  Old tech is a distraction from the message of the gospel.  New tech enhances the delivery of the gospel. 

So I hope you’ll recognize why this expensive and time-consuming (but necessary) project has been so important. 

Thank you for all your patience during this process.  Thank you for your generosity to help us stay near our General Budget goal so that this project was made possible.  And thank you for seeing this work as a means to help people and not an end in and of itself. 

By sometime in September, we should have all the work completed.

Warmly,
Vince

AUGUST 8, 2024

Lakeshore Friends—

As we learn more about faith in our series in Hebrews 11, we’re learning how to express it in practical ways.  One the most important is to express our faith through our love.  In Galatians 5:6b the apostle Paul wrote, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself in love.”  A strong faith will find ways to demonstrate bold love.

That’s what LOVE WEEK is all about.  In just a little over a week, we’ll begin showing our community the love of Jesus through our faith put into action.  After all, faith without works is dead.

I think it’s really important to understand what we are and are not doing this for.  We are not just doing this to do nice things for nice people so that they will think that we are…. well, nice.  We are doing all of this so that people will think that Jesus Christ is amazing.  So that they see how he would inspire total strangers to do things for others with no expectations for something in return.  So that they see what God’s love looks like.  And ultimately, so that they might consider the gospel and find their own faith in Jesus (or if they are already Christians, be strengthened in their faith in Him).

Every day that passes in my life creates an increased sense of urgency that the gospel must be the ultimate focus of all I do.  I ask myself more often these days how I can try to share my life with others so that a door for the gospel might be opened, like Paul explained in Colossians 4:2-6.

It’s not too late to join a LOVE WEEK project.  Most importantly, it’s never too late to show your faith in the way you love people, and to do so with a heart for people to hear the gospel from us and become Christians.

Our world desperately needs it.

Warmly,
Vince