Annapolis Inaugural Service

174 at Annapolis Inaugural Service on 10/10/10

First Baptism Occurred 10/2/10 – Midshipman Hayden Van Dyke

On 10/10/10 at 10am, the Greater Annapolis Church of Christ had its inaugural service! This marked the official planting of the church in the beautiful city of Annapolis, Maryland! The original team of 14 members and 9 children started meeting together for midweeks in September. We prayed, fasted and shared our faith with a great number of people in the Annapolis area!

Our brothers and sisters from the Greater Baltimore Church of Christ joined us in Annapolis the week prior to our service and also shared their faith! We rented a meeting room at the Annapolis Sheraton Hotel with a capacity of 200 by faith! On Friday night before our first service, we asked the Senior Evangelist of the Greater Baltimore church, Doug Lambert, to do a lesson for us at our Friday night devotional. He inspired us with an incredible message and at the end we prayed thanking God for the miracles we would see on Sunday! We prayed to see the empty seats fill up more and more during the church service, we prayed for God to use every disciple on stage in an incredible way, we prayed to see people at the service who none of us had directly invited and we prayed to see a miraculous number of friends at the service. As the Sunday service started, we saw one by one, all the prayers come to fruition. When the service started the room was not quite half full but as we worshipped God in song, the room filled up and we had 174 in attendance that day! It was very encouraging to see the responses on the response cards after the service. God was truly glorified!

There were two single men who showed up who had an incredible story. Someone in Annapolis had been invited to our service and could not make it because they were going to be out of town that day so they invited someone else to the service on an airplane and that person could not make it to the service either so they gave the invitation to one of the single men who showed up at the service with a friend! Both men loved the service and are very eager to study the bible! Many others attended the service with relatives who live in the Annapolis area.

We are very grateful for our brothers and sisters in the Baltimore church who have prayed and sacrificed financially for years to see this day happen. We are also grateful for all who came from the Baltimore and Montgomery County church to serve and help us with singing and the children’s ministry program for our first service. Our brother and elder from the Hampton Roads Church in Virginia who is also a graduate from the naval Academy, Bill Throne, shared the communion message at the service! God has already unified our small team of 14 disciples in only a few weeks! Already, we have seen one more soul added to our number as Hayden Van Dyke, a midshipman at the Naval Academy was baptized on Saturday, October 2nd – just one week before our inaugural service!