Illuminate

Some of this site is still “under construction”… we will be putting together more content and uploading some pictures in the coming days.

In the meantime, feel free to look around, check out our online sermons that will be updated each week, and send us feedback!  You can write specific comments or suggestions about the web site to webmaster@ironbridge.org.

Thanks!

Ironbridge has become our church home away from home.  Brian and I came to the Richmond area about three years ago because of a job transfer.  I was pregnant with our second.  We also have a son, who was two years old at the time.  Brian and I grew up in Christian families.  We accepted Christ as our savior when we were young.  We both entered our marriage knowing God, but both Brian and I would say that we never imagined the lessons of love and commitment God would teach us through our marriage.  Not only have we learned how to love each other, but we’ve also learned about God’s love as we witness how He loves us unconditionally, just as we are to love our spouses.  It is through this love and commitment that Brian and I have learned to pray first before making decisions in our family. 

When the opportunity came to move to Virginia with his company, it would mean leaving family behind.  Through prayer we felt God’s leading to pursue this opportunity.  We stepped out in faith.  Not only did we leave our natural family, but also our church family we loved dearly.  Some of our many prayers about this move were that God would direct us to a church where we could serve, be challenged in our faith, hear truth and not just feel-good preaching, develop friendships, enjoy fellowship with other members, and finally, participate in a secure preschool ministry with a credible bible curriculum for our children. 

When we visited Ironbridge Baptist, we felt welcomed.  Pastor Mark’s preaching was based on scriptural truth and left us with a little something to chew on mentally during the week.  We clicked with the Adult 1 bible fellowship class from the start.  This group of vivacious adults attracted us to return for more. 

How wonderful to have a group of friends to laugh with, cry with, and grow together in our faith.  When we need prayer or support, we wouldn’t hesitate to call any one of them.  Not having family in Virginia, these people have become dear friends and have helped fill the void.  We prayerfully considered membership at Ironbridge and felt God’s leading to become members.  Since joining, we have begun serving and participating in several ministries of the church.  Serving in the preschool has allowed us to participate with our children as they learn about Jesus and make new friends.  The Godly Encouragement for MotherS (GEMS) ministry has blessed me in many ways by providing a group of mothers that support and encourage each other in our relationships, especially our relationship with the Lord. 

As I learn in my faith how much God desires for us to know Him, love Him, and experience His grace and love, I see God’s love resonating among the members of Ironbridge.  We thank God for leading us to our new church home.

After about six months, a missionary couple came to speak, and I thought that possibly a mission trip would be exciting to do during the summer of 2008. I did research and talked to people in preparation, and Ironbridge even sent me the Pac Rim Summit which is a conference targeting missions in southeast Asia. It was at this summit that I realized that God had been calling and preparing me for a career in foreign missions.

Although I am excited to call Ironbridge Baptist Church my home, I am equally excited about the amount of support I have received from Pastor Mark, the church councils, and, most importantly, my peers in Crossroads in helping me take the steps needed to spread the Gospel of Christ to the ends of the Earth.

Before I came to Virginia, I learned one valuable lesson to finish what I started. Since my childhood, I carried the loss of my mother and two brothers from a car accident.  I lived with my father who was deeply broken by our loss, and at Christmas time, I was often filled with the grief of our loss. God gave me a good  friend who shared Christ with me, and at Christmas time in 1984, we went from house to house, across the snow covered yards of our home town in North Dakota with the youth group, singing Christmas carrols.  I read a version of the Christmas story from Philippians 2:5-11, and was encouraged to “…have the same attitute as Christ did when He emptied Himself of His place in heaven to come to earth.” 

That Christmas, I was finished with college and looking for work.  I had just completed a 3 month tour with a Christian singing group and asked God to open the next door for my life.  There was one thing I had left unfinished that had been a burden to me for the previous 5 years, the making of a classic roll-top desk as a gift to my father.  I had started making it in a shop class in high school, and completed everything except the final sanding and finishing.  While moving the unfinished desk in the back of a pickup truck, a gust of wind picked it up and scattered it across the two lane country road.  I looked in horror in the rear view mirror, knowing that the task was going to be nearly impossible.  I spent 4 1/2 years procrastinating from that point on, and hated to even look at the broken pieces that I had piled in a corner of my father’s garage. 

Finally, piece by piece, I disassembled the desk, made repairs, and reassembled it back together again.  I had the strong feeling that this was one thing that I needed to complete out of respect for my father who had bought the raw hardwood for me to make it.  By that Christmas I had nearly finished the desk with the exception of the custom cut glass top.  I clearly remember the moment, on a freezing cold and snowy North Dakota day in early January. My father and I had just returned from the hardware store with the glass top and fit it into place with a few family photos underneath.  I sat back in the desk chair admiring the desk with my father, when the telephone rang; the caller was from Virginia and was offering me a job.  Before I packed my car and left home to travel to Virginia, I wrote the story of my lesson to “finish what I started,” and taped it to the pullout writing board. 

The years passed and my father would pull the board out to show my wife and our kids the story, as I know that he had done for other relatives and visitors.  I am still working on finishing the tasks of my life, one at a time.  Likewise, God who began a work in my life is completing that work, one day at a time.  One important work this past year has been to read through the Bible.  I was impressed at Ironbridge when collectively as a church body we read through the Bible in 86 hours, filling God’s house with His Word.  In our new worship center, from the few chapters that I signed up to read, I understood so much more clearly what I was reading. God encouraged me to read aloud and record on my computer all of the chapters of the Bible for my quiet time.  Having completed 10 of 12 months, 973 of 1189 chapters, and 9.66 gigabytes of memory, I’m asking God to show me what He has next for me to learn.  I’m certain that He will show me.