Annual Report
2020 was a….year. While a pandemic raged and there were many reasons to fear, God provided for Friendship in several ways. Take a look at just what God did at Friendship.
Mission
To bring people to Christ and develop them into fully mature, reproducing followers of Jesus Christ.
Vision
Glorify God by seeing each person in SoArNoCa introduced to Jesus, impacting and transforming our community with the gospel of Jesus Christ
A Note from our Pastor
As I sit down to reflect on 2020, I think of Isaiah 43:2 which says: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.” Truly God demonstrated His faithfulness to Friendship throughout 2020 as we encountered challenges none of us have face in our lifetime. I have often thought of churches meeting under trees or in freezing conditions, but little did I think that I would have the privilege to pastor one! We know churches aren’t allowed to meet in many countries and any gatherings can be broken up by the government. I never expected to have our own church building closed and be visited by a state trooper to ensure we weren’t meeting. I have heard of the tension in the church in China between those who believe the church should submit to government rule and those who believe in the house church movement, but never did I think we would have similar tensions in our own church.
Above all, I never would have imagined that with all the challenges we have faced in 2020, that we would see giving increase, guests join the church, conversions and baptisms continue, staff hired and Friendship thrive. Then again, perhaps my faith was too small. I led us into the year with a focus on “Faith,” little realizing it would be my own faith that would be stretched as the gospel went forth and God exalted Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. We ended up with an amazing year with so much to celebrate, and I pray you will take the time to scroll through this report. Pause at each section and give God the praise for all He has done. He not only was with us, but He worked powerfully through us throughout the year, and for that we are thankful.
No one knows what 2021 holds. It may be more challenging than 2020, but regardless, God will continue to be with us and build His church. I’m excited to join you in this journey and see where He leads us.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Robert
2020 At a Glance
Baptisms 12
Average Attendance Pre-COVID 228
During COVID 109 in person
30 during stream
200 throughout week
Adults in Growth Groups Pre-COVID 70% of members
55% of attenders
During COVID 47% of members
25% of attenders
Total Giving $465,000
FriendshipKIDS Overall Attendance 158
Friendship YOUTH Overall Attendance 61
Gather to Worship
We started 2020 with showing growth over the 2019. We were seeing almost 250 people come out to services each Sunday and FriendshipKIDS having an average of 43 children each week. All of our ministries were filled with many awesome volunteers.
Then COVID hit.
Right around Easter, many churches were moved into a lockdown scenario. We weren’t able to meet in person and had to find ways to bring the service to the homes of everyone who was in lockdown. The project was started by Eli Palmer and finished by Nick Perry.
In order to provide a good worship service, we realized that we had to change much of the technology in our sanctuary. We added cameras, new computers, and new software. At the prompting of the worship team, Elder Jason and his team started analyzing the electricity at the church and had to rewire a lot of it. We also took this time to update our audio wiring under the stage so that the worship team could be anywhere on the stage without needing to run a lot of cables.
We were permitted only 10 people in the sanctuary at a time during the strictest part of lockdown. This allowed us to have a skeleton tech team, a skeleton worship team, and Robert preaching. We are thankful for those who helped during this time: Carolyn Perry, Sarah Sherman, Chris Wilson, Quincy Vanderhoof, and Ethan Kendall. Also during this time, the worship team’s schedules were also affected by the lockdowns and Anthony Spargo stepped up and led the team through this season.
Eventually, the lockdown restrictions started to ease and we started having services again. At first, we were doing outdoor services and then we did both outdoor and indoor services by fall. Our outdoor services got up to 60 people by the fall. We are thankful to the team of dedicated guys who pull of this service each week: Joe Westfall, Tyler Dexter, and Elder Tim.
At the end of the year, we hired Steve Barrick as our Worship Pastor and his family joined our ranks. Steve has been a pastor for over 18 years and has significant experience leading worship.
Easter, Back2Church, and Christmas
As the lockdowns were just kicking in at Easter, we were not able to meet in person this year. Robert’s Good Friday service was online and we recreated his living room. We videoed his Good Friday devotional with his family as we streamed it live.
For Easter, Robert went out to an undisclosed location to perform baptisms in the Chesapeake Bay. We ran a sunrise service as well as both a 9 and 10:30 service. Overall, that service reached almost 3,000 people as many churches were cancelling their Easter celebrations because of COVID.
We were unable to really have any special event for Back2Church Sunday.
At Christmas, since the lockdowns were ending and we were at 50% allowed indoors and 250 allowed outdoors, we decided to run a large outdoor Christmas Eve event. We had planned on a semi-professional audio and lighting team who were offering their services to us for free, Voices in Praise choir, the full worship team, live animals and nativity with fire pits and propane heaters. We were hoping for 750 people to hear the Christmas story.
God had other plans.
So the day before, the staff and elders were on an emergency Zoom call at 10pm changing all the plans. We moved the nativity indoors on the stage, cancelled the choir and outdoor audio and lighting. The live animals were moved to the side of the building and our parking team got soaked as they made sure everyone was able to enjoy Christmas Eve. We are thankful to Chris Perry, Kevin Sincavage, Jason Hand, Matt and Amy Stewart, David Mendez, Carly Wood, Doug Palmer, and many others. By the end of the night, we still reached about 250 people in person and hundreds others online.
Check out the pictures below to see how we Gathered to Worship in 2020.
Jesus Loves People
Newcomers:
64 Guests - of which 23 are still with us!
We Welcomed:
Alvarez, Barrick, Burchinal-Tipton, Carillo, Colbert, Crewes, Gregg, Hall, Haynes, Jackson, MacKnight, Mendez-Hutcheson, Schwartz, Sherbert, T. Taylor, Whitaker, C. Wood, H. Wood, and Wyant families!!!!
New Members:
Harris, Logston, O’Brien, Dexter, Alvarez, Gingell, St. Clair, Stubler, Vanderhoof, Stewart, Barrick and Sherbert families!!
We Said Goodbye to:
Members: Harris, Mallory, Sites, Stawnyczyj
Attenders: T. Wilson, Heine
Passed on to Glory: Shirley Day, John Rogerson
Babies Born / Adopted:
Jackson Dohman, AJ Kendall, Larry Kendall, Steven Kendall
Weddings in the Family:
Hope & Barnabas Furth
Grow with Others
Our Growth Group Highlights:
Many of our groups had to pivot to new meeting times and most had to shift to either all-virtual or a hybrid meeting method.
Women’s Ministry: While the group had to make changes due to the lockdowns, they have grown to about 25 women each week in a hybrid setting and have done studies such as Matchless by Angie Smith. Paula Kendall leads this group each week.
FriendshipYOUTH: The youth have really stuck together tightly throughout the pandemic. They have grown their faith and understanding of the Gospel while having fun doing it. Kenny Swanson has led this group.
Young Parents: Pastor Robert started meeting with parents of young children as we have had a lot of these families express interest in the church.
Parents with Teens: Pastor Robert has been leading a group of families/parents with teenagers to help them to launch their teens into adulthood.
Young Adults: Fred Noble has led our young adults each week, studying through books of the Bible. In 2020, we focused on the books of Romans, Hebrews, and James.
Upper Marlboro: Fred Noble & Jason Hand lead a group in Upper Marlboro that meets every other Friday night. They have studied through several books of the Bible such as Hebrews, James, and 1 Peter.
Seniors: Elder Mike has led a group that has moved beyond seniors and into anyone who wants to join. They have studied through the books of Acts and Romans.
Sunday Morning Mixed Adult: Each week online we have a study group that meets to go through a very deep dive into theology and Scripture.
Owings: Pastor Robert leads this group of adults as they take the Bible and learn to apply it to their lives.
Deale: Elder Jason leads a group of adults who share a meal together and apply Biblical truth to their everyday lives.
Alcoholics Anonymous: Every weekday morning at 6:30 this group of men and women come for friendship, accountability, and Biblical understanding.
LifeWorks: Each Sunday, Fred Noble & Quincy Vanderhoof work with the men in our LifeWorks house to build basic life skills.
Women’s Book Club: Mimi Noble leads this group of women and authors each month through a different book such as Tessa Afshar’s Pearl in the Sand and Cathy Gohlke’s The Medallion.
COME SERVE WITH US
Go & Serve
Our service ministries looked very different this year than in years past. We had planned on repeating and building upon the successes of 2019, but God had other plans for us.
When COVID hit, we needed to figure out how to service a community that was hurting, food insecure, and isolated. In past years, we performed a lot of ministries that put us directly in front of several people in order to share the Gospel with them. With COVID, our ministries were mostly to individuals instead of groups and it took on a much quicker interaction time than with our previous ministries.
We immediately contacted the Maryland Food Bank and became a distribution point for families who were unable to get access to food or who had lost their jobs and could not afford food. Through this ministry, we reached an average of 400 people each distribution, giving away up to 10,000 pounds of food each time.
The American Red Cross immediately lost many of their sites for blood drives due to the pandemic. Friendship immediately stepped up to become a donation site. Each month we have 60-80 people come to visit Friendship who have never been here before. While here, those donating will listen to worship music and see a slideshow of the church and the Gospel. Julie Windsor leads this ministry.
In the fall, Jessica Minner orchestrated a movie night that would bring 75 people together to enjoy Mission BBQ, all kinds of candy & popcorn from Calvert Kettle Corn, and we watched the movie Wonder. It was a wonderful night that we hope to see repeated in 2021.
Christmas in April took a very different look this year. Normally, we get all these houses done in April. But COVID meant that Christmas in April turned into Christmas in November. We had several people step up to help fix up houses: Elder Gary and his son Calvert, Ryan Baker, Joe Sherbert, Donnie and Julie Windsor, Quincy Vanderhoof, Norm Taylor, Jason Luby, Fred Noble Sr., Jason Hand, Ben Zechariah, and Walner Alvarez.
As the pandemic went on, schools were realizing that they needed to step up to help families with food. They were able to get grants for food for families through the week, but the weekends, many of the children were still in need of food. We continued working with Sunderland Elementary and started working with Tracey’s Elementary to serve 68 families every weekend. Mimi Noble leads this ministry that has over 30 volunteers.
We were concerned about Operation Christmas Child in 2020 as that is a very people-heavy ministry. What we realized is that God works amazing things even when we don’t know how they will work. We were able to produce almost 3,200 boxes for OCC in 2020, led by Kip & Staci Sanborn and Carolyn Perry. Over 150 people came together from the church and community to make OCC happen. And to end the OCC season, Tony & Christina Close offered their landscaping team to haul all of the boxes to the distribution center.
Check out the pictures below for some ideas as to what our ministries did in 2020.
Administrative
Staffing
We added Steve Barrick as Worship Pastor. He comes with 18 years of experience as a pastor and leading worship.
Elders
We added Gary Burkholder to the Elder Council
Both Frank Mallory & Joe Sites moved out of state in 2020 and needed to step down from the Elder Council.
Norm Taylor stepped down from the Elder Council
Facility Improvements
The parking lot project continued in the hands of the county. By the end of the year we had the county’s notes and were in the process of amending the drawing to conform to their notes.
The building addition was finalized and voted upon. We received the final construction drawings at the end of the year and submitted those on February 1, 2021.
COVID gave us the down time we needed to perform some much needed upgrades to our technology.
We started with the wireless internet in the building and improved that with a mesh system that allows you to travel anywhere in the building while maintaining the same signal
We then focused on our ability to stream the services. We added the stream service Vimeo and created a YouTube channel. We now have the ability to stream to Facebook, YouTube, and our website.
Jason Hardesty and his team rewired the entire stage, giving our worship team the ability to expand while also the flexibility to move anywhere on stage.
Nick Perry focused on the tech booth and provided us a new computer as well as the software and training needed to stream our services.
Robert & his family drywalled the back wall of the stage and created a wonderful “invisible screen” for our projection.
We invested in lighting for the stage as well as a new projector so the days of not being able to see the screen are behind us.
We also invested in a new camera to help us stream the services better.
Financial
Total Funds Report
General Fund Received $464,592
General Fund Spent $410,377
Difference $54,215
Special Offerings $7,880
Total Kingdom Investment $472,472
CDs $32,252
Money Market $481,887
Checking Account $165,339
Restricted Funds $23,480
Paycheck Protection Program $41,259
Total Money in Bank $744,217
Special Disbursements
Pablo & Sarah C-T $24,445
Peru Orphanage $9,519
Asia (protected names) $6,054
Mohan & Leina Zaigradar $7,726
Baltimore Rescue Mission $4,438
Fred Hartmann $1,712
New Missionaries $5,371
Total to Missionaries $65,947
Elder Fund
Assisted 7 families in the church $5,585
The Road Ahead - 2021
This year will be about “All Hands on Net.” Robert will be bringing us back to the Great Commission and being “fishers of men.”
Gather to Worship
Continue to improve the “one church - multiple ways to worship” idea. COVID gave us an opportunity to grow how we worship.
Begin the process of bringing people back to church. COVID kept us away from community for far too long. Now it is time to return to worship as a family.
Improve our assimilation process through an enhanced membership class
Rebuild the core Sunday service ministries of First Impressions, Hospitality, Worship, Tech, FriendshipKIDS, and FriendshipYOUTH.
Grow with Others
Continue to bring people back to Growth Groups and build back to 80% participation.
Provide regular training for Growth Group leaders and provide all necessary support.
Go & Serve
See our outreach ministries more focused. Do more outreach with our current ministries rather than more ministries that do outreach.
Build a spiritual gifts database with 80% of membership and 50% of attenders.
Utilize outreaches for Gospel conversations.
Facilities
Finalize permit for parking lot and get bids. Hopefully begin construction on new lot.
Continue the discussion for the building addition. Get through the permitting process and determine if we want to move forward with it.