2023 Like No Other
Year EndREPORT
This really was a year "Like No Other" for Loving God, Loving Others and Making Disciples. Just take a look and see for yourself!
SOCIALLYconnected
Our website and social media presence continued throughout the year to create new and better ways for our people to engage.
Between Facebook, YouTube, TheOrchard.life and Instagram, we worked hard to keep those digital connections as real and effective as we could.
FB followers watched
minutes of videos
.LIFE visitors logged
sessions
viewers watched
broadcasts
Living Like no Other for the gospel resulted in
35 Baptisms
and 85 Decisions for Christ
MAKING THE GOSPEL RELEVANT
Like No Other
by serving
Our church family really served Like No Other in 2023! Teams continue to grow, increasing our serve capabilities across the board.
The attack on Israel on October 7th divided us, not just as a nation, but all around the world. Our friends in Israel and Jews around the world are now facing persecution and violence on levels not seen since the Holocaust. Anxiety and fear are high, but prayer is a powerful weapon. On November 12, 2023, we gathered together to pray for Israel. It was a powerful, spirit fueled evening.
A Year Like No Other for Gilmer
Thanks to all of our amazing volunteers, our church out did themselves for our community in so many ways this past year! Here's how we did that...
Loving God, Loving Others & Making Disciples
At Super Tailgate Sunday we had more LifeGroups than ever before and many took advantage of the opportunity to meet them and make a decision on the spot to join one. With Pastor Steven Mansell on board our youth ministry has been growing. Youth throughout our community are attending more gospel centered events, thanks to Steven's hard work organizing local churches to plan multi-church events like DNOW, C4 and Fall Retreat. The Orchard Guys continue to reach out to men in our community through hosting events and running small groups throughout the week. Our Ladies Fellowship hosted a "You are Special" luncheon in March and attended their second women's conference, "Women of Joy" in October.
18 LifeGroups are meeting weekly in homes! They're eating, praying and studying God's Word together. They also completed 2 book studies by Ray Comfort, Anyone But Me and God Has A Wonderful Plan For Your Life.
Since Steven Mansell joined our team as Pastor to Youth & Discipleship our youth ministry continues to grow. Weekly attendance is now averaging 54! 14 youth gave their lives to Christ in 2023 and 19 have taken the first step of obedience by getting baptized.
The Orchard Guys had 30 attend their Man-Up Event in May, including the 7 volunteers that put this adventure all together. They enjoyed worship, teaching, fellowship and some really cool outdoor activities!
19 women attended our second women's conference together in Gatlinburg, TN! In addition, 64 women came together in 2023 for fellowship at our "You Are Special" luncheon event designed just for women!
2023 Financial Report
2023 was a year Like No Other. LifeGroups completed 2 book studies by Ray Comfort, Anyone But Me and God Has A Wonderful Plan For Your Life. In June, we went back to Israel for another spirit filled tour. Plus our youth went on their first Fall retreat along with Covenant Community Church in September. In between it all we worshiped, baptized, celebrated, studied, discipled, prayed, and served our church, each other and our community. But most importantly, we got busy preparing for our Right Now building campaign in 2024!
Yearly Budget
General Giving
General Spending
2023 Allocation
Two Important Notes:
Tag assignments for Sunday Worship related expenditures were changed for 2023 to reflect these as “Love God” expenses. They were previously tagged in 2022 as either “Love Others” or “Make Disciples.”
Extraordinary expenditures involved repair of various stairs, porches and ramps, adding covering to portable 1 and refurbishing it for Highland presentations, replacing toilets, and fixing stuff.
Year To Year Contributions
ForGilmer
Your gracious giving to ForGilmer and the General Fund allowed us to not only fund our usual outreaches, but enabled us to flex with the changes, so we could do what nobody else is doing to reach people nobody is reaching.
$2,307
Total Giving
$7,973
Total Spending
Orchard Student Ministry
The youth are our future! Your giving helped lower food costs on Wednesday nights. It also enabled us to provide student scholarships for DNOW, FUGE camp and our Fall Retreat, assuring any student that wanted to attend, could.
$39,743
Total Giving
$26,227
Total Spending
Celebrate Recovery
Watching Celebrate Recovery grow is a blessing! Thankfully, even though their spending this year exceeded their giving, they had enough overflow from 2022 in their account to cover it.
$17,923
Total Giving
$22,531
Total Spending
Highland Fund
Your continued support helps us prepare for moving to our future home.
$1,576,480
Total Giving
$65,754
Total Spending
Guatemala
Two elders and two deacons walked into a church building in Guatemala.
It is an old, run-down awful building. Pastor Secundino is trying to get his new church building built. His congregation has raised enough money for four walls and a roof, but still needed a floor, windows, and front doors.
We prayed about it, and funded the completion of their building by sending them $12,000 from our Guatemala fund in the first quarter so they could begin meeting there as soon as possible! We're happy to report that the church building is complete and services are in full swing. Their first service was December 21, 2022!
$2,031
Total Giving
$0
Total Spending
2023 End-of-Year Fund Balances
(Note: Highland Fund is not shown in the graph due to it's sizable amount.)
We hope that this information gives you a complete and well rounded look at how we seek to steward our resources. Your obedience and generosity makes all of this possible. If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to reach out to Larry Lynch through the button below. He manages our accounts and is more than happy to help!
If you would like to give towards our mission for 2024:
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