Sandhills Alliance Church - Pastor’s Annual Report/Message 2024

In three months, Ruth and I will have been serving with you here at Sandhills Alliance Church for five years. It’s hard to believe. I remember upon arriving during Covid in 2020 wondering what plans the Builder of the Church (Matthew 16:18) had for this body of believers. You had been through a difficult season, especially over the previous year. Families had left, a pastor was asked to resign, and the District Superintendent and Dexcom had put you on a non-accredited church status. The future was uncertain, but Christ the Builder of His church had plans. We are gathered here today because when the Lord of Heaven and Earth is in charge the church thrives.

Over almost five years we have seen how God has worked. Some of those who are a part of the church today didn’t know Christ as Savior, others have been baptized. Many have grown in their faith and a large percentage of you are serving our Lord and your brothers and sisters in Christ in some ministry capacity. God has added to this church many special people and families over the past five years. He deserves all glory, honor and praise for the work He is doing in us and through us.

One of the most important aspects of Christ’s building His Church is unity. Jesus’ prayer in John 17:20-23 reveals how He works in building His Church as He prays for all believers, which includes SAC.

“My prayer is not for them alone (His disciples). I pray also for those who will believe in Me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in Me, and I Am in You. May they also be in Us so that the world may believe that You have sent Me. I have given them the glory that You gave Me, that they may be one as We are one—I in them and You in Me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that You sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me."

Sandhills Alliance Church finds itself serving and ministering the Gospel in a fractured, selfish world. Our country is fractured over politics, gender, race, money, and false ideologies and religions. The world is a selfish place where most are vying for their own way. Unity is not what the world strives for, and yet this is what Christ prays for us. He prays that SAC be one, that there would be unity within the church, just as He and the Father are One.

Why does Christ pray for unity? Because unity among believers reveals to the fractured, selfish world that we live in, this truth: For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16) When we as a church body heed the call of Christ in His prayer to be one as brothers and sisters in Christ, putting the other before ourselves God will answer and many in this fractured, broken, selfish world – our world of Moore County NC will be drawn to the love of God and faith in His Son Jesus Christ that they see manifested in our lives. 

I believe one of the reasons that God has blessed us as a church to this point is that there is unity among us. For us to continue to be blessed by Him it is important that we strive in the strength of the Holy Spirit to work together in unity. I believe that as we strive toward unity in the strength of the Holy Spirit that God will bless SAC in 2025 and beyond with new creations (2 Corinthians 5:17) in Christ. As your pastor I am praying for this blessing for our church and encourage you to join with me in asking the Lord of the Harvest to add to our number those who are being saved. We must seek the Lord with all our hearts. As we do, this part of the world, we live in that desperately needs what we have in Christ will be blessed. Our God who is a Great and Awesome God wants a church that He can work mightily through. I’m praying that we are that church. I’m asking Him to bless us in this way – will you join me? Over the past five years God has begun a good work in us as SAC. Christ the Builder of SAC has just started, there is much more that He wants to do. I am looking forward to 2025 and our future together in accomplishing God’s good, pleasing and perfect will for us.

With my love for SAC

Respectfully Submitted,

Pastor Ed