Posts tagged Ed Nalle – Executive Pastor
VIDEO: REVEAL Survey Update
Aug 8th
In March of 2011, the RBC congregation was asked to take a survey that would help gauge the health of our body and provide insight as the leadership looks ahead in planning ministry strategy. In this video, Executive Pastor Ed Nalle gives a brief overview of the survey findings. (From June 2011)
2010 Annual Report Now Available
Dec 12th
This has been an amazing year at Reston Bible Church. In addition to our ongoing ministries here and around the world, God has blessed us with a new campus with which to carry out our mission of “Knowing Christ and Making Him Known.” We have many reasons to be thankful and to rejoice in God our Savior.
This annual report is designed to give you information about:
- The major ministries of RBC where you may serve our church body and the community or learn and grow in your relationship with Christ.
- How the finances of RBC are handled
- How you can contact our ministry leaders
The staff and elders of our church family are thankful to God for the new campus He has provided. We’ve seen a 25% growth in attendance since we opened and you have responded by increasing your volunteer hours and caring for our guests in extraordinary ways. Thanks be to God! He has given us new families to care for and with which to share the Gospel.
The church pastors and staff are very happy to be together in the same building for the first time in many years. It has been so helpful to both internal and external communication and has contributed to better collaboration than we’ve ever seen. The new campus has also created opportunities to reach out to a new set of neighbors. It is a joy to see new people joining us each week for worship and service. I look forward to coming to work each day as it is a privilege to serve the Lord at RBC alongside our other pastors and elders. I love these men and respect their walks with God. We want to thank you for your generous giving which makes it possible for us to devote our energies to the preaching of God’s Word and the care of the flock He has entrusted to us.
1 Corinthians 12:4-7 instructs us in this way: “…there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who empowers them all in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” May God use the different gifts he has given to each of us for the common good, the good of our church family, our community, and the world. If there is any way that we can be of help to you as you walk with Christ, please allow us the joy of serving you for God’s glory.
Serving joyfully,
Ed Nalle
Executive Pastor, Elder
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CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD A .PDF COPY OF THE 2010 ANNUAL REPORT.
Print copies are also available at the Welcome Desk in the lobby.
A Prayer for Spiritual Reformation
Aug 31st
In our worship services on the 29th of September, I read a prayer and asked you to pray it with me. I’ve had a number of people ask for the text, so here it is. It is adapted from D.A. Carson’s wonderful book on the prayers of Paul, A Call to Spiritual Reformation.
Lord God, I ask your blessing on all who call Reston Bible Church their home, for without your blessing there will be no real benefit. We may have education, but not compassion; we may have forms of praying, but not fruitful adoration and intercession; we may have oratory, but be lacking in unction; we may thrill your people, but not transform them; we may expand their minds, but display too little wisdom and understanding; we may amuse many, but find few who are solidly regenerated by your blessed Holy Spirit.
So we ask you for your blessing, for the power of the Spirit, that we may know you better and grow in our grasp of your incalculable love for us. Bless us, Lord God, not with ease or endless triumph, but with faithfulness. Bless us with the right number of tears, and with minds and hearts that hunger both to know and to do your Word. Bless us with a profound hunger and thirst for righteousness, a zeal for truth, a love of people.
Bless us with the perspective that weighs all things from the vantage point of eternity. Bless us with a transparent love of holiness. Grant to us strength in weakness, joy in sorrow, calmness in conflict, patience when opposed or attacked, trustworthiness under temptation, love when we are hated, firmness and farsightedness when the climate prefers faddishness and drift.
We beg of you, holy and merciful God, that we may be used by you to extend your kingdom widely, to bring many to know and love you truly.
Grant above all that our lives will increasingly bring glory to your dear Son, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip us with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
Hostility, Heresy, & C.S. Lewis
Mar 16th
My wife Heidi and I had the pleasure of attending The C. S. Lewis Institute conference a few weeks ago. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity was the topic. It had been a few years since I’d read the book, and it seemed like a good way to get a refresher course on one of the 20th century’s great Christian thinkers.
Dr. Chris Mitchell, a professor at Wheaton College, led us through five fascinating lectures. I had not realized that Mere Christianity was originally a series of radio addresses that were given over the BBC during World War II. I also hadn’t previously known what it cost Lewis to clearly proclaim his faith to over a million listeners.
We often think that the world’s hostility toward faith in Christ is worse now than in our parents’ day. Not so. In 1947, Lewis’ picture appeared on the front cover of Time magazine. The headline read:
“OXFORD’S C.S. LEWIS, His Heresy: Christianity.”
Lewis was disdained by many at Oxford because he spoke publicly of his faith in Christ. Their attitude seemed to be it’s fine to be a Christian, but not to speak of it in public – and certainly not in academia.
Dr. Mitchell also read a startling quote from authoress Virginia Woolf. After a meeting with T. S. Elliot during which he told her he was now a follower of Christ, she wrote:
“I have had a most shameful and distressing interview with dear Tom Elliot, who may be called dead to us all from this day forward. He has become an Anglo-Catholic believer in God and immortality and goes to church. I was shocked. A corpse would seem to me more credible than he is. I mean, there’s something obscene in a living person sitting by the fire and believing in God.”
That quote is from the year 1928. I was reminded of Jesus words in John 15:18 – 20, “If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember the words I spoke to you: ‘No servant is greater than his master.’”
