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Happy Monday, church family! How lovely was the weather last week?! And how abrupt of a change yesterday! Such is spring! It was so wonderful to have such a beautiful day last Wednesday for our Family-In-Service Wednesday Roots Night! Thank you to all who came out to help us with a variety of projects inside and outside of the building as well as off-site! Sharon Davis, the Property and Witness Commissions were helpful in organizing a list of tasks of things around the campus that we all could contribute towards. It was really neat to look around and see the many groups working on different projects like cleaning nursery toys, preparing materials for the Wee Friends Carnival, cleaning up the playground, helping the Cemetery Committee with some site work and clean-up and planting the church garden. Dave Wimer took a large group of Youth Roots guys to Loren Bucher's property to do some spring clean-up there, too. Thanks to all who helped! Many hands make light work!

Thursday, Kerri Kreider and I attended a gathering of the CONNECT Children’s Ministry cohort at Lancaster Bible College. This group of tri-county area Children’s Ministry leaders meets monthly to worship, fellowship and learn from guest speakers. I have not made it to many this school year, but Kerri and I were both encouraged by this discussion on defining and practicing discipleship for families. I look forward to sharing this learning with Roots Volunteers soon!

Friday was the Celebration of Life service for Anna Jane Glison. Many thanks to all the hands who helped serve her family that day. In the evening, another wonderful showing of church family members came out to help the Wee Friends Preschool team set-up and prepare for Saturday’s Carnival Fundraiser! Many thanks to all of those helpers! A HUGE thank you is necessary to all of the Preschool and COM Staff members that led and organized a really successful event on Saturday! Their team worked long and hard to prepare for this community event! It was so amazing to see so many families here! 

On Thursday morning (early!) I will head to Nashville with five other MGCB Church family members for the 2026 D6 Conference. Please pray for the spiritual enrichment, fellowship and inspiration that Bobbie Davis, Traci Homsher, Kerri Kreider, Aliza Kraynak, Suzie Hershey and myself will participate in during this year's conference. I am looking forward to all that we will glean!

We will return on Sunday morning, and I will be back in the office on Monday, but there will be no column from me next week. I’ll be excited to share updates with you from the conference soon!

 

What WE’RE Learning This Week: A nugget of what our Lil’, Youth and Adults Roots heard this week

Our Key Idea: I dedicate my life to God's purposes.

Our Key Verse: Romans 12:1

How Every Generation Lives This Out: Talk as a household, what does it look like to “Pick Up Your Cross” in 2026?

Check Out This Week’s PODCAST

*This season of the “The Dig” podcast is on hold! New episodes will come soon, 

but some other projects out of my office have needed to take priority! Stay tuned!

 

What I’M Learning This Week: Sharing what I’m reading and listening to lately

Our key verse for this week in our BELIEVE series was Romans 12:1. In the Bridge Roots Sunday School class we spent a little bit of time digging deeper into that verse, as well as verse two. Romans 12:1 starts with the word “therefore” which means we should figure out what it’s THERE FOR. So, we looked a few verses ahead to answer the question “why should we offer our bodies as living sacrifices?”

Romans 11:33-36 does just that. Here, “Paul delivers a poem, structured much like a hymn, expressing his profound reaction both to God's ways and to His mercy to sinful human beings.” These verses highlight that God is full of wisdom, he is all-knowing (verse 33-34). He has no needs, he is all-powerful (verse 35). And that he deserves all the glory and honor because he is all-present; yesterday, today and tomorrow (verse 36).

These character traits or nature of God should spur us to awe; to worship! That’s what Romans 12:1-2 is there for! We are to offer ourselves as living sacrifices because of our all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present Creator and King! And as living sacrifices, made in his image, we are to not live CONFORMED to the world but TRANSFORMED to be like Christ, because of the Holy Spirit in us. 

 

Make Every Week Count: Parenting, Grandparenting & Spiritual Mentoring Resources

Something to Read: Just listened to a great podcast interview about utilizing “J is for Jesus: Enjoying Who Jesus Is from A to Z” for family discipleship!

Something to Listen to: A beautiful song that makes for a beautiful prayer - Forty One by Samantha Ebert

Something to Follow: D6 Family Ministry dropped these statistics about 2026 graduates, it’s an interesting find! 

 

How Can You Pray? Prayer Requests and Praises from Roots Ministries

PRAY for my D6 Conference crew! Pray for traveling mercies, fun fellowship and fruitful learning!

PRAISE for all of the efforts from our COM family members for their Carnival Fundraiser!