Beyond the Vow...

This week we are starting a series at FBC Melbourne at our Bay West Campuses and Melbourne Campuses called "Beyond the Vow" and it's a crucial one.

As a pastor, I see a lot of marriages, both inside the church and outside of it, that are experiencing trouble and because we are human, it can get a little disheartening, even if the majority of the marriages around us are in good shape.  Even so, you have to think...why is that?  The disparity of marriages in the church in trouble or ending in divorce, really is not that different statistically from that in the world and why is that?

I believe that part of the reason is that we've legislated and written and analyzed and psycho-analyzed our marriages to death.  We've struggled through the definition of roles of the spouses and what's fair and what's not and what's too constricting and consequently, what's too freeing...and in all that verbiage, we've forgotten what marriages are for.

For the month of March, we'll be going through this series in our worship services, but we'll also be bringing in Dr. Daniel Akin, president of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, who's done a lot of Biblical study on marriages, to help us take an intense look at our marriages on March 23-24 at our 2 to 1 Marriage conference.  Feel free to signup to come if you'd like here 2to1marriage.com .

Also, in the month of March, off the heels of our Hungry for God series, our church will be participating in a corporate fast***, seeking God intently to move in the marriages in our church that are under attack and for vision/direction for our church as a whole moving forward in how we serve God in the Melbourne/Palm Bay area...March is going to be a HUGE month.

In Beyond the Vow, we are going to take a good hard look at the reason anyone gets married in the first place, exactly what marriages are and AREN'T supposed to accomplish and how we can take that knowledge and "re-track" our marriages on a path that will really last "'til death do us part".

Don't miss it.

***Basically Pastor Scott, Senior Pastor at FBC Melbourne, has called our entire church to take some time and let go of something that we do this month, and use that time seeking God's presence in these areas.  Formally, we are asking members and regular attenders of FBC, both campuses, to consider fasting for a period of time in the month of March from food or some other form of physical gratificaion to seek God's presence in these two areas in our church.  For more info on fasting, you can click here for our page on fasting and some resources OR you can listen to our sermons on fasting here from our "Hungry for God" series.