Welcome to IBC!

gadietrich — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:44:11 +0000

Welcome to the web site of Immanuel Baptist Church of Kingsford. Our church is located in the beautiful upper peninsula of Michigan where the creative handiwork of God displays His glory.

Immanuel is a place for people at every stage of spiritual development to worship God, and respond to His redemptive grace through trust and obedience. We also seek to serve God by integrating our Biblical faith into all of life’s experiences as maturing disciples. We desire to witness about the love of God, fulfilling our part of the great commission in the Upper Peninsula and around the world.

Hopefully your visit to our website will be informative and a blessing, and we invite you to worship with us when you come to the Kingsford/Iron Mountain area.

Sincerely Yours and Forever His,

Pastor Ron

Current Sermon Series

gadietrich — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 14:39:09 +0000

Pastors Ron and Alex are leading the congregation at Immanuel through an expositional study of 2 Timothy. Paul’s second letter to Timothy is warm and personal in its tone, containing the advice and encouragement of the aged apostle to Timothy, the young pastor. It also gives us a deeply moving insight into the way the great apostle, shut up in his cold damp prison cell and chained like a criminal, faced the closing days of his life prior to execution.

This epistle is immensely relevant for the life of today’s church. It was written when Christians were suffering persecution under the Emperor Nero, and when falsehood had become fashionable within the church itself. But Paul urges Timothy not to yield to the pressures of the age, but to ‘preach the Word in season and out of season’, and to remain faithful to the Apostolic faith. That is a message we need to take to heart today.

In this second letter, Paul is chiefly concerned to remind Timothy that, as a pastor, the ‘deposit’ of the gospel has been entrusted to his care and that he is to preach it faithfully and ensure that it is transmitted to other faithful men who will teach it to future generations.

This is a message that is highly relevant today when the church appears to be so confused regarding the message it is called to proclaim to our modern world.

Why Study 2 Timothy?

There are several great reasons for looking at 2 Timothy:^{^[1]}

From Paul’s imprisonment and his attitude in the face of certain execution we can learn as Christians how to face the extremities of life.
Like Timothy, we all have our God-given gifts, but Paul’s exhortation to him to ‘stir up’ his gift teaches us that the responsibility is ours for the use we make of our gifts.
The warmth of affection that existed between Paul and Timothy, and which is amply demonstrated in this epistle, teaches us the worth of fellowship among believers.
We learn how the ‘deposit’ of the gospel has been entrusted to us as it was to Timothy, and like him we are to pass it n to others.
It teaches us that the most effective way to combat false teaching in the church is through the preaching of sound doctrine.
It presents us with the solemn truth that as history draws to its close and the coming of Christ grows ever nearer, we can expect the world situation to deteriorate, and living the Christian life to become more challenging.
We learn that the Holy Scriptures are inspired by the Holy Spirit, and how we are to use them for the work of ministry and witness.
It outlines the work of the pastorate and emphasizes the preaching of the gospel as the most important element of that work.

^{^[1]} Adapted from Peter Williams, Opening Up 2 Timothy (Leominster: Day One Publications, 2007), 8–12.