First Baptist Church of Petrolia is committed to founding strong Christian values in our community, to being a place of Worship for the believers and where we welcome people who want to learn of God.

Three W's for 2012: Worship, Work for God, Witness.

This year our church is celebrating 140 years of ministry in this community. What better way than to have an event involving our community focussing on God's precious Word.

With the help of the Canadian Bible Society, who organized the readings and helped with the planning, we hosted Proclamation 2012 in our church from Thurs. April 26 to Sat. May 5. We read the entire Bible out loud during those 10 days. We began at 7:00 a.m. sharp(some with eyelids half shut) and ended around 8:45 p.m. each day.

Our purpose was to do this for God's glory and to bring believer's together to foster Christian fellowship. Somewhere between 150 to 225 people from our church and our community participated in this event.

The Bible was read in 5 different languages: english, french, spanish, arabic and dutch and people came from different walks of life and from numerous towns and cities such as Windsor, Toronto, London, Chatham, Dresden , Sarnia, Watford and of course Petrolia and surrounding area.

God touched our lives, our local churches and our extended community as we read His Word out loud in our sanctuary. It was wonderful listening to people read and to have the opportunity to pray for people and to sit down and have fellowship over refreshments. I believe that all of us grew spiritually in some way as we heard God's Word and as we built better relationships with other believers.

Some experiences will last for a lifetime. On the night of the Proclamation Praise and Celebration service a lady came up to me and said "Boy, you say Praise the Lord alot in this church" to which I replied "Praise the Lord". If God touched others in our community through Proclamation then let God get the glory.

In the NIV Isaiah 62:11 says, "The Lord has made proclamation to the ends of the earth". Only God knows the impact that Proclamation will have on people. May God's Word continue to change lives; ours and those in our world before the coming of the great day of our Lord.

Peace.
Pastor Phil