Dear friends of Poplar Springs Baptist Church you have blessed our hearts across this past year. Janet and I have so enjoyed walking with you during this pastoral interim. We have been thankful to see the ways God is at work in the church and through your lives as you scatter from 1106 Poplar Springs Church Road each week to share Jesus’ love and presence with our community. You all have ministered to us, and you have been just what we have needed to round out these 40 years of ministry to which the Lord has led us. With great joy and excitement, we are looking forward to your future as Aaron Hinton comes to serve as your Pastor on August 1 next week. Aaron brings a love for Jesus and a love for Poplar Springs that will form the foundation of a career in ministry to honor God’s calling upon your lives together that began back in 1898. You are an exceptionally healthy congregation with a great focus on community relationships and an encouragingly organic process for making decisions and working together in ministry! We pray for the Lord to help you keep your sights on your strengths for ministry even as he leads you to embrace more and more the gifts of the Spirit with which he has entrusted you for impacting the world around you.
I have found great joy this year working alongside Katherine Asis and Nicole Hamrick. This dynamic duo of ministers has cared well for the life and health of Poplar Springs for many years now and their passion for the Lord’s work will help Aaron to set a pace for the days ahead – a pace for equipping the church to be formed in the image of Jesus in new and world changing ways. Katherine and Nicole have been a great encouragement this past year and it has been such a pleasure to watch these women in ministry holding up the love and grace of Jesus for others to see and experience. Their calling as ministers of the Gospel is well-embraced through their commitment to ministry — their lives in the Lord a testimony to the truth of scripture that in these last days God pours out his Spirit upon sons and daughters who brings his Good News to bear upon this world (Acts 2:17-21). Thank you for being a congregation that recognizes and affirms God’s calling to ministry as declared by that Pentecostal proclamation with which the church began. As you live to be the “next chapter” of the Church’s story, you are positioned with such a great staff of ministers to help you write it!
I am thankful, too, by the ways I see you function as the church God is calling you to be. When you volunteer to serve you do it! Committees and ministries at Poplar Springs are very unique in their proactiveness – you work together to make things happen! From the fellowship times that draw the church together, to working with children and youth in Sunday School, to the outreach ministries that bless the lives of your neighbors, the “Poplar Springs way” is intentional, cooperative, and respectful of the lives of people it touches! Clyde Buckner and Hugh Bess work hard to keep the doors of ministry open and the dishes of fellowship full! From Bible Study and Sunday School teachers, to Deacons and Church Council, to WMU ministries, and Brotherhood outreach and beyond, Poplar Springs is a great example of “living stones” with which the Lord is building his church (1 Peter 2:5).
Over this past year, my drive to the church from Shelby has made an impression on me. I asked a while back, “What is this beautiful green plant growing in these fields down Poplar Spring Church Road?” I learned that that is the “amber waves of grain” we sing about in “America the Beautiful.” Then, I watched with every drive how those green stalks kept growing upward until they started to turn a new color from the bottom. As that amber color moved up the stalk it met with the kernels of grain. And then, later, the harvesters came through to take the fruit of the wheat for use to bless the lives of those who would receive it as food. And now, I notice coming up between the wheat stalk stubs the soybeans have sprouted and are on the rise — a new crop being prepared for harvest. This farming drama plays out around Poplar Springs Baptist Church as a metaphor for the church life! As we sit with Jesus – the “one thing” needed in this life (Luke 10:42) – we grow into a harvest of disciples the fruit from which (Galatians 5:22) is daily harvested to bless the world around us. And, after that has happened, there is a new crop that follows – a crop of new people coming to the Lord to grow into the people who keep the harvest drama alive for the days ahead. I am praying for you all as you grow in your faith in Jesus and see him use the fruit of your lives to encourage your neighbors, and the world, to come and grow with you.
Standing out in the Poplar Springs cemetery this past Sunday, I was impressed by the reality that we were standing among the graves of your family members – loved ones who have blessed your lives and who you remember with hearts full of thanksgiving for their lives and for the promise of resurrection! Our friends in Malawi have a saying, “Amoyo Salekana!” It is a way of saying goodbye. It means, “Those who are living will never be separated.” It’s the idea that if we are alive, we may run into each other again along the way so “we’ll look forward to seeing you later.” But, for followers of Jesus, it means more, viz. those who are “alive in Christ” will never be separated even by death so, if not before, “we’ll look forward to seeing you in that heavenly choir!!”
Thank you for your love for us Poplar Springs – you have been a blessing to our hearts!
Amoyo Salekana,
Tony and Janet Tench