From Pastor Cliff Mayton
My Dear People,
We never dreamed we would be in the position we are in, but here we are in the midst of a plague, the Coronavirus, COVID-19. President Trump announced Sunday that Social Distancing has now been extended through April 30. As you know, at MBC we are fully complying with the directives given to us by the Special Coronavirus Task Force and the Stay at Home Order from Harris County last week. The church office was closed effective Wednesday, March 25 and will now remain closed if the Stay at Home Order is in Force. Despite these directives, I want to assure you our staff is working daily doing everything possible to keep MBC family connected.
For example, we have divided up the church directory, calling on our church family to see how they are doing and letting them know we are here for them. I have made numerous calls and have enjoyed the conversations I have had. All the other staff members are reporting similar experiences. All the families I called and were able to reach, said they were all okay. Some of them said what has happened has caused their family to enjoy more time together and were thankful they were all well. I love to hear that kind of attitude and spirit. The main thing I want you to know is all our staff are available to you anytime. We want to hear from you so feel free to call us, if you like. We are seeing positive results from our Sunday School Classes that are doing their Bible Studies each Sunday through Facetime Live, Zoom and other Teleconferencing apps. For Classes not doing the teleconferencing they can join any of these classes. Feel free to call Anita Wood and she will be glad to help you get connected to a class. Anita’s Cell Number is (346)
236-3353.
For your convenience I have listed all our other ministry team leaders cell numbers:
Carlee Qualls (713) 818-4224
Laura Huff (346) 225-2610
Josh Mathias (713) 992-8161
Almost everyone I have talked with tells me they have enjoyed tuning into the services every
Sunday morning at 10:45. If you have not been able to tune in, you can view both now. Just
type into your internet browser www.mbchouston.org/watch. This will take you to the page to
click on the latest sermons. As you scroll down the page you may even choose to view several
archived messages. We feel these online services are a great way, to keep you inspired as we
worship together. Remember what I have said before, worship is not about a place, but a
person. We worship the Lord Jesus Christ, and your family can have a sprit-filled service in your home every Sunday. As you and your family view the services, I want to encourage you to sing along with Pastor Doug, pray as we pray, say the Scripture of the Month out loud, and let God speak to you as the message is proclaimed. It is now obvious we will not have Easter services at the church, but we will have an inspiring service online. This Sunday, April 5 is Palm Sunday. Plan now to tune in as we have stirring music led by Pastor Doug, and Georgianna will sing just before I preach the Word. My heart grieves over the fact we cannot have our traditional Wednesday Night Lord’s Supper Service. Those services in the past have been without doubt some of our most memorable services. But I am not going waste time and energy thinking about what we can’t do, I am just grateful for what we can do. In my heart, I believe we can have the largest Easter service we have ever had. We can get a pretty good picture of how many people are joining our online services and the past two Sunday’s we have been pleased with the response. For example, for the March 22 service we had 610 “hits” or viewers on Facebook and 252 on our website. That is a total of 862 possible viewers. Then this past Sunday we saw 510 “hits” on Facebook and 206 on the website, for a total of 716 possible viewers. In past years, Easter Sunday attendance has averaged between 650 and 700 in attendance between the two worship services. We can hope this Easter Sunday we will see a big spike in our online attendance. So, let’s all pray for these online services and trust God for the results. Since we are not able to publish the newsletter you can find our “blogs” which are much like our articles on Facebook and our website. On the website click the “Connect” tab at the top of the home page, then click “Blog and Newsletter.” Since we are not doing a newsletter, do not click to download newsletter, but continue to scroll down the page. You will see Pastor Scott’s, Anita Woods and my Blog. The three of us we will have these blogs up each week. We will also make this blog page available to any of our other staff who wish to communicate with you through a blog. So, make it a practice to check these sources of communication each week. We will try to upload these articles or blogs by Tuesday of every week. This is just other ways of keeping the lines of communication open. You know who have known me for 20 plus years I rarely push for offerings, but within the midst of this crisis I have no choice. Even with the office closed our bills keep coming in and we must pay them. I appreciate the generous response we have seen so far; however, we need to see every contributing financially. You can either mail in your personal checks, send an electronic check through your bank or give through Easy Tithe. To give through Easy Tithe type in your browser www.mbchouston.org the home page will open. In the upper right-hand corner is the “Give” tab. Click on it and you will be taken to page where you will see “Give Online.” When you click you will be taken to the Easy Tithe site. Just follow the directions and you can give your gifts quickly and easily using either your debit card or credit card. I want to thank you in advance for your faithful giving during this crisis. I want to thank all our people who are doing so much during these challenging days with unprecedented opportunities. We are living through an experience which has never happened before. This plague has infected 151 countries in the world. We know our Lord was not surprised, He knew it was coming and I just think surely, He should have the attention of the world by now. As believers we know Romans 8:28 is true. We have a rock-solid confidence God is going to work this out for His glory and our ultimate good. Most likely you can quote Romans 8:28, but we often fail to emphasize the condition of the verse, the promise is reserved for “those who love the Lord.” I pray you and I are loving the Lord more than ever. I am asking God to show us His mercy during this scourge. Let’s pray as never before, and in God’s time and way, we will see this plague come to pass.
Until then always,
Keep Looking Up!!!
Pastor Cliff