Pastoral Update 3:2025
Good Monday Afternoon Downtown Pres!
Over the course of this year, I’ll be writing a pastoral email ever so often to update you on some things in the life of the church, as well as share a few resources, ways for you to grow in your faith, and some things that I am enjoying.
1. Our Hope: The Next 3 Years! During the month of March, we prayed for the future of our church, heard testimonies of God’s work in the life of our people, and we talked about concrete hopes for our church. I want you to know how encouraging it was to hear from you and your excitement about this. During this month, we saw nominations for future elders, new people sign up to serve, and we saw our monthly giving increase! We pray that God will bring our hopes to reality…bit by bit…in faithfulness. Thank you for being on this journey with our young church plant!
2. Hosting Presbytery - May 3: We are excited to be welcoming elders and pastors from all over eastern NC to Azalea Station in just a few weeks. As a presbyterian church, we are part of a larger structure of accountability and mission - a presbytery. Presbyteries ordain pastors, plan for church planting, and help to encourage gospel proclamation in a region. While it looks a lot like a business meeting (because it is!) I love being with other churches in our region for worship, fellowship, and business.
If you’d like to help: We are looking for a few people to help serve earlier in the day on Saturday May 3rd. We need 3 people to help set up for the meeting from 7:30am to 8:30am and we need 2 people to oversee the breakfast/hospitality area from about 8am-10:15am (all the food will be here already!). If you’d like to serve, please email me at jay@downtownpresilm.org.
If you’d like to come: We begin presbytery with worship from 9am to about 10am. You are welcome to join us! There won’t be any childcare or other ministry happening on that day like we do on Sundays. After worship, you are welcome to stay and see how presbytery works. You don’t need to sign up and you can leave at any time. If you have any questions at all, just let me know!
3. Spring Calendar: We are a week into April and May will be here soon! We’d love for you to invite your friends, co-workers, and neighbors to worship with us on Easter - April 20th! Also make sure to know what’s happening in the life of DPC by visiting our calendar HERE.
4. Praying Specifically: I want you to know that I pray for you often. It is such a blessing for me to know how to pray for you. We’ve set up a simple form that you can fill out and I’ll get an email with ways that I can pray for you. As we grow in the gospel together, asking others to pray for you helps us to step more deeply into the grace of pursuing humility.
5. Some Resources/Things that I'm Enjoying:
Discipleship: At the end of March we introduced our quarterly discipleship resource - What is the Lord’s Supper by RC Sproul. There are still some copies remaining and will be on the welcome table on Sunday (one per household please)! If you would like a digital copy for free (epub) you can downtown it here.
Music: Back during Christmas, one of our members, Justin Whitley, introduced me to the Red Clay Strays. Maybe it isn’t your thing, but it takes me back to growing up in the county with the windows of our old Ford Aerostar rolled down, and the smell of freshly cut grass.
Golf: While I am not the best at golf, I really do enjoy it. This week is the Masters! I’ll be checking the Masters App and the website this week (maybe more than I should!). I’d argue it is one of the best apps/websites in all of sports! https://www.masters.com
Cargo District: In just the last few weeks, we’ve seen a number of new businesses open in the food hall! I love Empanadas and Seoul Sushi are open for business.
Fun: To know more about what is happening in Wilmington, there is a great new-ish website and email list called Check What’s Good. Started by a UNCW Alum, they post regularly on social media and send out a weekly email with all types of happenings around town.
We are less without each other,
Jay
