Newsletter

December 2010 Newsletter

Featured Church: First Baptist Pompano Beach, FL

First Baptist Church of Pompano Beach, a Southern Baptist congregation, is located just north of the Greater Fort Lauderdale, Florida area. Its membership is approximately 1,800 parishioners. Dr. Ron Harvey has been the Senior Pastor since May, 2005. Ramona Orlandi has served as the Women's Ministry Director since February 2000. Reverend Buddy Spear is the Pastoral Connection for the Women's Ministry.

We first learned of The Amazing Collection through a mailing received from "Big Dream Ministries". At that time, we did not immediately look into it. It was about a year later when the new Women's Ministry Bible Study Team Leader, Debbie Manwell, came on board. She and her team began reviewing potential Bible studies for our ladies, one of which was "The Amazing Collection". We were awed that we could offer a study where the women could have a complete overview of a different book of the Bible each week. We started the classes in 2006. Classes were (and still are) offered Tuesday mornings and Wednesday evenings. Two years later, we had several women from both classes receive their Certificates of Completion. We were very proud of the ladies for fulfilling their two year commitment. They were recognized and presented the certificates during our Sunday worship services.

Watching the ladies "see all the pieces come together" as they study has been wonderful fruit for us. One of our ladies even discovered there was more than one John in the Bible! Reading and studying the Old Testament, continuing into the New Testament and "seeing" the prophecies fulfilled, is like finding a puzzle piece you had been looking for ..... and there it was all the while.

One of the surprises this study revealed was how much of God's message we have missed over the years. The stories we learn as children are a very small part of what the Bible offers. Unless one is disciplined to go through the Bible, book by book and chapter by chapter, we miss much of what God is sharing. In TAC, we realized how much there is beyond what we hear in Bible stories, sermons preached or even in our Sunday School classes. TAC is like reading a bestselling novel that you anticipate getting to the exciting conclusion. But, you don't want to skip any chapters because of what you feel you will miss.

We highly recommend this study to all women, regardless of the age or stage of their lives. Our classes consist of retired women, singles, housewives, moms of pre-schoolers, etc. The Tuesday morning class has been a vessel to reach many women outside of our church. The study is so "amazing" that several of the ladies started over and are about to complete their second study of TAC.

If you would like to contact Ramona, she can be reached at 954-745-6106 or Ramona@FBCPompano.org.