News & Announcements
Vacation Bible School 2024
“STELLAR - SHINE JESUS’ LIGHT”
Join us for an unforgettable week of faith, fun, and friendship at our annual Vacation Bible School!
Dates: June 23rd-June 27th
Time: 6PM Each evening
Location: Woodsfield Church of Christ Fellowship Building
What to Expect:
Bible Adventures: Dive into exciting Bible stories, where kids will encounter heroes, miracles, and life-changing lessons.
Creative Crafts: Get hands-on with crafts that reinforce the day’s theme and Scripture.
Worship and Music: Sing, dance, and praise God together with uplifting songs.
Outdoor Exploration: Explore God’s creation through outdoor games.
Snack Shack: Enjoy tasty treats and snacks that tie into our daily Bible lessons.
Friendship and Fellowship: Make new friends and build lasting connections with other kids and leaders.
Upcoming Guest Speakers
Sunday, May 19th - Jeremy Powell
Sunday, June 30th - Travis Williams
These gentlemen will be conducting the Sunday morning worship services while Scott is away fulfilling his National Guard duties.
Men and Women Reflecting His Image
As we wrap our Biblical Manhood and Biblical Womanhood series, I find myself reflecting. The church today is staring down a cultural moment that is unparalleled in modern history. Unfolding before us is a great deconstruction of ideas and institutions that have always been accepted by the majority of society, secular or Christian. As we see things like marriage, gender, sexuality, education, childhood development, and other parts of the fabric of society being questioned and dismantled, it is tempting to run or get angry. What I would encourage us to do is to lean into the teachings of Scripture, find our footing in what God’s word says on these topics, and allow the Truth to encourage us and embolden us to live differently than the world around.
I have said this before, and I truly believe it: the world will get tired of this, eventually. It may not be in your lifetime or mine, but eventually people will come to the end of these debates and will be looking for something that actually works. Once the shiny has worn off, people want to know what they can bank on and build lives on. It’s at that moment that Christians have an opportunity to step in with the Truth. However, it won’t be just because we have the Truth—we will only be able to speak the Truth if we are living the truth. So, in the meantime, as the world is wandering and wrestling, live the Truth. Reflect the image of God proudly in our genders and in our distinctiveness.
Resist the urge to make men and women the same or interchangeable. Men’s strength and courage, women’s nurture and wisdom are gifts that reflect the image of God in ways the other gender cannot.
The world desperately needs to see God.
Let them see Him in us.
Scott McFarland
Ladies Bible Study
The new ladies study will begin April 20th at 9:00am in the fellowship hall.
"NICE"
by: Sharon Hodde Miller
God never called us to be nice.
We live in a culture that prizes niceness as one of its highest virtues. Niceness keeps the peace, wins friends, gains influence, and serves our reputations well, but it also takes the teeth out of our witness and the power out of our faith. When we choose to be nice instead of faithful, we bear fruits that are bland, bitter, empty, and rotten to the core.
In this 5-session series based on her book, Sharon Hodde Miller explores the seemingly innocent idol that has crept into our faith and quietly corrupted it, producing the bad fruits of cowardice, in authenticity, shallowness, and more. She challenges readers to cultivate a better “tree,” providing practical steps to reclaim our credibility as followers of Christ, and bear better, richer, more life-giving fruits.
What is a Woman?
It sounds so crazy to even ask that question, “What is a woman?” Half a century ago, no one would have questioned what defines a woman or makes her who she is. But, here we are today, trying to redefine gender and sexuality, attempting to reimagine cultural norms so we can create a new world where definitions of masculinity and femininity are fluid and
“non-conforming.”
My point is not to rant about the ills of society, but I do mention that to bring up a point I have been thinking of recently. Since when did we let the world dictate what we believe as truth? The church must be careful as the world progresses more and more into relativism and redefinition not to be swept away by the currents of culture. John has some helpful thoughts on how to discern false teaching within the church that I believe also applies in principle outside the church:
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already. (I John 4:1-3)
Don’t believe everything you hear. Test it. Examine it to see if it is from God. Examine the source. In this day and age, we can never be sure. In the end, Scripture and God’s revelation of reality is our only hope to holding on to truth. Everything else is suspect.
Scott McFarland
A God of Surprises
As we celebrate Easter this weekend, there are a lot of Easter traditions that accompany the holiday. At some point today or this past week, you may have given a child an Easter basket, participated in an Easter egg hunt,
colored Easter eggs, or made candy. The combination of different traditions, for Christians, symbolize much more than a bunny or an egg. For us, it is a way to teach our children and remind ourselves of the God
who won victory over sin and death at the tomb after evil and Satan seemed to have won the day at the cross.
Many of the traditions we share over Easter involve “finding” something—an Easter egg hunt where eggs are discovered or cracking open a plastic egg to discover the kind of candy or treat inside. This is such a great reminder to us of the God of the unexpected, the God of surprises. At the tomb that Easter morning, no one expected Jesus to be raised. The women carrying spices did not. Even Jesus’ own disciples did not believe
after being given the message by the women who had gone to the tomb. They had to run to the tomb to see it themselves to believe, which is especially ironic considering the disciples were told multiple times over
Jesus’ ministry that he would be resurrected. No one saw it coming.
As we celebrate Easter this year, remember that God has always been and always will be full of surprises. He rarely acts in ways we expect, but always acts in the best way. He often doesn’t show up when we feel He should, but He’s always right on time. He doesn’t follow the script we give Him; He writes His own. That’s what makes Him God. But, rest assured, He will always come through, even when you don’t think anything is possible. The empty tomb is proof of a God who makes good on His promises, knows the right timing, and is full of surprises.
Scott McFarland
2025 Bible Bowl
The 2025 Bible Bowl will be March 1st – March 2nd and will be held in Centerville, Ohio, near Dayton. The book of Luke, chapters 1-24, are the study material for the competition. The teams will include younger and older teams with grades 3-12 included. If you are interested, please see Merna.
Where Have All the Good Men Gone?
If you grew up in the 80s, the opening lines from Bonnie Tyler’s song “Holding Out for a Hero,” written for the movie Footloose, can be heard clear as a bell:
Where have all the good men gone
And where are all the gods?
Where's the streetwise Hercules
To fight the rising odds?
The question, “Where have all the good men gone?” is a common one asked among females of all ages. Women of all ages struggle to find men who are serious about life, serious about their values, and have a clear direction and focus. What is going on? It would take more than a bulletin article to give a full answer to the above question, but I think what is at play is a society in which men are given a pass on just about everything. Psychologists have recently talked about “delayed adolescence”—young men who have been allowed to dodge maturity and responsibility through high school, into college, and beyond. Since others around them expect so little, young men are allowed to grow into adults who have little direction, are allowed to do what they want when they want, and are trapped in a pattern of boyish behavior that keeps them from developing the character and maturity that makes good husbands and fathers. Even getting married and becoming fathers does not produce the maturity their spouse or parents hope to see—they continue to act as boys while married with children. “Boys will be boys” is more than just a phrase—it has become a way of passing off immature behavior into adulthood.
Perhaps my assessment of manhood in our culture is too harsh, but I don’t think so. I’ve seen enough, talked to enough women, and experienced enough of it myself to think the above paragraph is overstating the point. 80 years ago, men graduated high school in June and were fighting Nazis in Europe by October. They came home at 22 years old, got jobs, got married, bought houses, and began families. By their mid-twenties they were several years into a career and a family. Today, only about 2/3 of 25-year-old males are even working full time! What’s the cure? There are no easy answers for this kind of societal issue, but I believe the Bible has a lot of help to offer in this area of manhood and becoming a man. Issues like building moral character, developing discipline, understanding responsibility, and other values and qualities of becoming a man are found in the pages of Scripture. Books like Proverbs, letters like Ephesians and James are just some starting points for these conversations. Take heart! I think the world will eventually have enough of the lack of manhood in our society. When it does, we have the opportunity as believers to develop ourselves and our young men into the kind of people God would have us to be. It starts with us.
Scott McFarland
Biblical Manhood, Biblical Womanhood
Twenty years ago, most of us probably did not stop to think much about what it meant to be a man or a woman. The majority cultural values pretty well lined up with what the Bible taught on the subject, and only people on the fringes of society were questioning what it meant to be a man or what it meant to be a woman. Fast forward to 2024 and here we are, questioning what it means to be male, what it means to be female, if you can be both, or if you have to be either one at all. For those who lived the majority of their lives before this period of gender questioning, you probably think everyone has gone crazy! And you’d be right.
Why is this? Why are we questioning basic, foundational building blocks such as gender? Why are we trying to redefine what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman? I believe it’s because we have lost sight of God’s created identity and become enamored with other identities and expressions of self.
Over the next few weeks, I’d like us to look at what the Bible says it means to be a man or a woman. While the Bible was written in a different culture and time, the lessons it teaches about being a man or a woman are timeless. Its lessons about the created intent for man and for woman are more relevant now than ever. I don’t really have a creative title for this series, but please bring a friend and certainly bring yourself. Let’s look at Scripture together and stop listening to the world and its definitions of gender and identity. Let’s learn about Biblical Manhood, Biblical Womanhood together!
Wrestling with Self Forgiveness
Getting involved with other people helps us to forgive ourselves. God made
the church for many good reasons. One of them was so that we could encourage
one another. Of course, if we choose not to be involved with the church, we will receive little encouragement, and negative feelings of self-unforgiveness will creep back into our lives. Instead, we must practice Hebrews 3:13: “but exhort one another daily, while it is called ‘Today,’ lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” We need daily encouragement. Being actively involved with the local body of Christ will give us that.
God also foresaw that Christians would need a regular time to meet with other Christians. So, he had Jesus establish the Lord’s Supper to be observed every first day of the week. Acts 20:7 tells us that the church met on this day for this very purpose. In Hebrews 10:24-25, the Holy Spirit said, “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching.” Christians need to be involved in the lives of other Christians. This is a great way to overcome self-unforgiveness.
Finally, James 1:27 says, “Pure and undefiled religion before God and the
Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their trouble, and to keep oneself un
spotted from the world.” You will never have a “bad day” visiting an orphan or a widow. They remind us of God’s grace and mercy. They create gratitude in our hearts. They keep us busy doing what God wants us to do instead of going back to the guilt of the world.
Kevin Cauley
New Boston Church of Christ
New Boston, TX
