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Location:
6425 Jefferson Rd. For
directions, click here.
FROM
THE BISHOP From In
calendar year 2005, the Conference had
a net gain of 4,410 persons. That's a
growth rate of 1.3 percent. Our total
membership now stands at
342,045. These
figures represent persons who were
loved into our church and who are
having their lives transformed by the
grace of God. They represent changed
lives and transformed
communities. Congratulations
to the clergy and laity of the North
Georgia Annual Conference! Still,
there is something disturbing in the
numbers. In 2005, we received only
6,584 persons by profession of faith.
By comparison, in 2003 we had 8,400
professions of faith. In 2004 the
number was 7,820. Fully
one-third of our congregations in North
Georgia did not have one profession of
faith in 2005. This
trend is of great concern to me. It
tells me what we're
not
doing in the area of
evangelism. It is
my firm belief that congregations that
go a full year without even one
profession of faith have, in a real
sense, ceased to be the
church. I
would like for each congregation in
North Georgia to take a close look at
what is happening with your
evangelistic witness. Are you inviting
people into a new relationship with
God? Are you reaching out to children
and youth and inviting them to make a
joyous response to the grace of
God? Pastors,
are you really preaching for a response
so that when people come on Sunday
morning they understand God is calling
them into a deeper relationship, one
that will truly transform their
lives? Laity,
are you doing your part? Are you
reaching out to the people in your
community? Every
church that entrusts its ministry and
outreach primarily to the clergy is
stagnant or declining. Every church
that entrusts ministry and outreach to
the laity is growing, even in the most
challenging of cultural
contexts. If
you divide the number of members in our
Conference by the number of persons
received by professions of faith, you
will discover that it evidently took 51
of us to reach each one of these new
Christians. I
find this ratio simply unacceptable for
an annual conference with our great
history, tradition, and the resources
available to us. The
recent decline in professions of faith
here in North Georgia -- the strongest
conference in United Methodism --
should be a trumpet call for us to
become more serious about being the
church God is calling us to
be! Bishop
G. Lindsey Davis
Gateway
Church gathers
for worship
Sundays
at 10:30 a.m.
(Hwy. 129) in Athens,
Georgia.
Ministry
of the
Word:
Recent
sermons
Our quarterly e-magazine
Gateway
Today
For the Gateway family
Pastor
Jerry's Weekly
E-Mail
Gateway
Today
The
e-magazine of
Gateway Church
SPRING
2006
Our
membership is growing, but...
The
latest numbers reveal an alarming
trend
The
numbers are in -- and they show that
the North Georgia Conference is
continuing to grow!
Digging
deeper
In other words, we had about 1,800
fewer professions of faith last year
than in 2003, and 1,200 fewer than we
had in 2004.
A
challege to clergy and
laity
Let's
get serious
North Georgia Conference
The United Methodist
Church