First Free Family,
What an exciting year we had together! As you may remember, 2023 started as a very challenging year for me, with many health problems. I’m so thankful for the graciousness and helpfulness of our church, and especially our staff, in helping us through that time.
The year soon turned into a beautiful picture of God at work among us. Personally, we got to experience a sabbatical for the first time. This was so refreshing for my family and a great blessing to me as I continued to recover.
We tried something new last year with an annual focus called “Back Together.” Throughout the year, we read, listened, prayed, cared, served, and definitely ate together! At the end of the year, we were thrilled to see a 16% increase in in-person attendance. We all know that numbers don’t tell the whole story, but it’s a part of the story and a sign of health, especially in a post-COVID world where most churches are getting used to the new normal of lower numbers and lower giving.
Many of you invited your friends and neighbors to church and shared the gospel with them. Thank you for reaching out and sharing the love of Jesus with people who need him in their lives. It was a great privilege to be able to meet and talk with many of them personally.
We were incredibly blessed by your generous giving last year. Because you give, we were able to support missionaries all over the world, provide for ministries in the St. Louis area, make bigger investments in the next generation of young Christians at First Free, and continue to grow our groups, outreach, and other ministries at First Free.
My prayer for 2024 is that we as a church will build on the idea of “Back Together” to be even more committed and engaged with God’s mission for the church. With your help and by God’s grace, let’s make this year’s impact even greater than last year’s!
In Christ,
Adam Bowers
Senior Pastor
Always be joyful. Never stop praying. Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus.
– 1 Thesalonians 5:16-18
Your elder board used 1 Thess. 5:16–18 as our theme verses this year. We saw great joy and blessing in the ministries at First Free this year and through times of sorrow and sickness, we learned to thank God in all circumstances. One of our greatest joys continues to be serving the First Free Church family, praying with people, and praying for all the ministries.
A few of this year’s highlights include:
For 2024 we look forward to seeing how God will work in our church and following Him where he is leading. We are excited about the 2024 focus for the year, which will be rolled out at the annual meeting. We will continue our focus to live out the aspects of our vision and values: First Free Church is a growing community passionate about worshiping God, reaching the lost, growing spiritually, praying continually, deepening community, and developing leaders who continue those pursuits in every area of life.
Thank you for your faithful commitment to the local church and we ask that you join us in stepping out in faith in an even greater way this next year!
Your 2023 Elder Board:
Adam Bowers, Senior Pastor
Bruce Eckhardt
Jeff Estes
Rich Keffer
Bill Peskorse
Mike Proctor, Vice Chair
Ben Thomas, Chair
Martin Truong
Todd Yeager, Secretary
My favorite thing about care ministry is witnessing the power of a conversation, phone call, visit, meal, or prayer when someone is facing seemingly insurmountable obstacles in life.
The GriefShare – Surviving the Holidays workshop was a moving event for people facing the holidays without someone they love. Participants could tell their stories, care for one another, and develop a plan for family gatherings.
I am excited about the ongoing opportunities to share the peace of Christ with people who are walking through challenging life transitions.
The nature of my department means that I get a broader view of what’s going on in the church than some of the other ministry leaders, and it’s so encouraging! There is so much life here!
Seeing how quickly our church funded the Thanksgiving Offering! Those funds will be well used by Oasis International and Kypseli Church in Greece.
Our leaders have big dreams for First Free and I’m excited to see how God guides and blesses our efforts.
The volunteers! We have wonderful volunteers. They are caring, humorous, cheerful, and so Spirit-led; they are the heart of the ministry. I especially love hearing stories of their interactions with our congregation and seeing how God is working through them to move in the lives of others.
The addition of 75 volunteers in our ministry was an incredible blessing this year. Additionally, through our shared “wins and prayer requests”, we have seen numerous examples of God answering prayers in the lives of our volunteers.
I’m excited about new opportunities for our congregation to get connected in 2024.
Disappointing, but hopeful. Almost all of our major all-church events, concerts, etc. were either postponed or canceled altogether, so it was a difficult year for events. At the beginning of the year, we still had no idea when this would end or what it would look like for events following the pandemic. We are still not out of the woods, but I’m excited for events to hopefully return in 2022!
Highlights included the spring carnival with Kid Connection, the summer picnics when we were finally able to get back together in person, the Cookout for a Cause which provided 350 lbs of food to our ministry partner Circle of Concern, the Chosen Christmas Special, and closing out the year by bringing Cookies and Cocoa back for Christmas Eve!
I’m looking forward to the possibility of hosting concerts and large outside events once again! They are always such an exciting way to bring the church together, the community together, and they give us the opportunity to meet people who may never set foot in our building otherwise.
Having the opportunity to impact the lives of so many people by meeting the facility needs of the various groups and ministries here at First Free. The goal is always to provide a positive environment and then be able to see the people having an undistracted, life-transforming experience! The facilities team and volunteers are always available and willing to jump in when called upon, which in turn makes for a great working experience and an encouraging environment to grow.
The facilities team has had many unexpected blessings this past year, including Joe and Dale joining the team, meeting several unexpected expenses, and three new HVAC units that were finally delivered and installed. We are also blessed to have several deacons who have a great deal of experience and knowledge regarding facilities, and they have offered a great deal of wisdom. Perhaps the greatest unexpected blessing is that we are now on good footing with the fire marshal, who has graciously opened up the main lobby and allowed us to go back to business as usual.
2024 offers up the potential for a number of facility upgrades, including the remodel of the Bigg House for the staff to be able to work together in a single location. This year also gives us the opportunity to better organize many of our spaces in the main building, especially the storage areas. We want to better utilize our space to help make our ministries more successful.
I love seeing people grow in their walk with the Lord! This happens most transformatively in the context of relationships, so groups ministry is a great place to see what God is doing in people’s lives.
We had 8 new groups launch this year which helped several previously disconnected people get connected.
I hope to keep launching new groups to help connect all of the new people God continues to bring to First Free. To do this, we’ll need new leaders to step up, so I’m looking forward to hearing from you! 🙂
We have FUN in Kid Connection. We have a great leadership team and amazing volunteers who welcome the kids each week to a fun and interactive place to learn more about Jesus. AND, we have a lot of our older kids serving our younger kids, which is so cool to see!
We have welcomed a ton of new families into our doors, which is a huge blessing. Also, adding Kyle Howard to the team has been amazing and we are excited to see how we grow with a new Family Ministries Pastor!
We are starting a KC Camp this summer: a week full of games, worship, and Jesus for 4 year olds through incoming 5th graders! And along with it, we are creating a time for our teen volunteers to have some fun as well. Mark your calendars for July 22-26!
We laugh a lot and enjoy working together! But even more than that, we love having the opportunity to work with all of the different ministries in the church. We get to play a part in almost everything that goes on!
Because we often help behind the scenes, one of our favorite things is seeing God at work in the other ministries. Within our department, we reorganized to develop an administrative team so that we can serve our ministries even better. We also made huge strides in the ministry measurement systems, and we hosted our first concert since 2020!
We are looking forward to enabling the other ministries and helping them to execute their vision, especially as we continue to develop both the administrative team and the ministry measurement systems.
My favorite thing about outreach ministry is helping people connect with God’s mission in their sphere of influence. Helping people to share the love of Jesus with neighbors and people far from God is what we are made for.
Hosting Dr. Aila Tasse from Lifeway Global in Kenya was a special blessing to our church. Hearing stories of the disciple-making movement in East Africa and drawing transferable principles for our ministry was deeply motivating.
I am excited about sharpening our outreach focus in 2024 through efforts to reach our neighbors with the gospel and evaluating our involvement in global missions.
The awesome Safety Ministry volunteers! The Safety Ministry has been blessed with a fantastic group of volunteers that are dedicated to the safety and security of the congregation.
We were blessed this year with an influx of volunteers across all three positions within the Safety Ministry. With these new volunteers, we were able to fill vacancies and stand up the newly created Safety Team.
We’re looking forward to completing all of the safety infrastructure upgrades.
We love the life-on-life impact our leaders have on students! We have an incredible team of volunteers who are faithfully present week-to-week through the challenges, changes, frustrations, laughs, and memories that are forged in teens as they continue to grow into the men and women God has designed them to be. But this is not only in our adult leaders – many high school students are active in ministering to each other and to our junior high students, building relationships and changing lives!
God has been incredibly present in this ministry as He has continued to grow our students, often impressing us with their maturity and leadership. A timely blessing from God is our Family Ministries pastor, Kyle Howard.
We are excited for the ways our students will continue to surprise us in their spiritual maturity and for our new summer camp opportunity at the EFCA Challenge Conference. We are also looking forward to finding a Senior High Pastor.
The easy answer is my team, and that’s true, but also the ever-changing technology that lets us continue to try new things.
We have had some volunteers on the team who stepped up in some awesome ways and one who donated three new Macs to help ensure tech issues were not a distraction during service.
We are starting a Tech Advisory Team! We’ve invited some of our key volunteers to provide input into what the tech team can try to accomplish with our current resources and 2024 budget over the next year!
I love our volunteer team and the way different gifts come together to create something bigger than any one of us could achieve on our own. In 1 Corinthians 12:5-6 it says, “There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord. God works in different ways, but it is the same God who does the work in all of us.” I love how God works through the different gifts on our team!
We were able to upgrade to an electric drum kit this year! We’re really excited about how the kit looks and sounds, and we’re excited to use this awesome new tool for ministry in 2024.
I’m really excited for new volunteers to join our worship family and get involved in the worship ministry in Kid Connection, Junior High, Senior High, and our Sunday Services! It’s so fun to get to know new musicians and vocalists and discover their gifts and how they fit with our team.
We baptized 28 people this year!
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