Hello April!

Well we are a quarter of the way through the year now!

….dramatic pause and let that sink in…….

Sunday our “Church Has Left the Building” was a great time! We shut the doors of the church and left the building and went out into the community and served. Our family and small group along with about 40 other members went to Franz Elementary School and worked alongside the PTA and the school doing various different things. What a blessing to get to serve others for no reason other than Christ loves them!

At a time of year where the church becomes so inwardly focused in many ways and we gear up for one of our highest attended Sundays of the year (Easter) what better way to spend Palm Sunday, the Sunday prior reminding our selves of the real reason Christ came! Thousands of years ago the people worshiped Christ and waved palm branches and laid them down along with their cloaks for the donkey to walk on as Christ entered Jerusalem. However the people were worshiping the one they thought had come to be an earthly King who would liberate them from the rule of the Romans. In many ways they worshiped Him with self serving motives. Sometimes I wonder if we do the same today? Christ, on the other hand, had other plans. He had come to serve not to be served. He had come to die for us! What better way to place Easter in context today than to worship Him on palm Sunday in a way that remembers that we are to be like Christ and Love God and love our neighbor as ourselves. By going and serving others the Sunday before we celebrate His death and resurrection for the forgiveness of our sins so we could be in a relationship with God Himself! 

Pray:

As we gear up for Easter please pray that all our work in the community will bring people into a relationship with Christ. pray for His name to be made great in the greater Katy Area! Join us in praying for our unreached people groups in Indonesia the B's, M's BG's we will call them God knows their names!

Now that Kim and I have been here three months soaking up Graces DNA it is time for us to begin to look for location and staff and volunteers to go launch with us! Please pray God will lead us to the right people and location for this campus!

Kim's health! This cold front has caused her fibromyalgia to flare

Our house in Carrollton to sell!!!!! This is a big one!!!!!!!!!!

Praise:

Max our oldest has taken a new passion to the bible and is reading and soaking it up! God continue to grow his hunger for the word

God continues to bless us and we can't thank Him enough! HE blessed us with the opportunity to take the boys on a great vacation this summer and it will be great after the stresses of moving and starting new everything, to get to go away as a family and just enjoy each other and His creation!

Love you all!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Joshua and Tate

Church Has Left The Building

Well spring break is over! Kim and the boys had a great time in McKinney visiting grandparents. Then some of our great friends came down and visited and Scott and Dustin helped me out with a skit on Sunday morning during the sermon! It was great!

This week we gear up for Church Has Left The Building (CHLB)

I'm supper excited about this opportunity! This coming Sunday, Palm Sunday, We will be closing the doors to the church and we will be serving the community! Rather than attending church we will be the church in action! Over 55 small groups will be out ministering in their community and then there are several big projects as well. I will be leading one of the big projects at Franz Elementary school. We will be sprucing up all of the PTA's carnival games. We will also be re-painting all of the covered slab games, doing some landscaping and many other little projects. At the end of the day our goal is that the community of Katy will know Jesus loves them as his church serves them!

As you pray for us pray that CHLB will be a success! Pray that Christs love is lived out! Pray that many of our groups will be able to share Christ with the lost! Pray that God will use this as an opportunity for us to make our presence known in the area we are seeking to open a new campus in! Pray that our families will grow "deeper" in their relationships with each-other and with Christ as they serve as families.

Other prayer concerns:

Pray for our prayer pastor Brenda who's mother went to be with the Lord this morning!
That our house in Katy would sell
Kim's continued health
God would prepare me (Jeff) for our trip to Indonesia and for the campus launch
God would begin to call people to launch with us!

Praises:

Max has suddenly become supper hungry for the word and can't stop reading it! I think this is in part due to the Bible series on TV which has peaked his interest. Pray God will write it on his heart!
All three boys are well adjusted in school now!
Our house feels like home!

Are You Nervous?

Are you nervous?

I have been asked this question to many times to count as I have been preparing to preach the next two weeks at Grace. The answer is simply no! Yes, there will be more people than I am used to preaching in front of.  Yes, this will be my first time to preach in front of our new church. Yes, I am looking for many to decide to go and start a second campus with me preaching to them weekly. But, no, I don't feel intimidated. I am not worried about people’s perception of me. I am not trying to impress. Maybe a preacher of old put it best:

“Whatever subject I preach, I do not stop until I reach the Savior, the Lord Jesus, for in Him are all things.” - Charles Spurgeon

My job, what is asked of me, is that I would merely be a vessel through which God’s Holy Spirit could do what He does through me! If people don’t remember me at all, rather they encounter God on Sunday, then I will have been successful.

I preach not unto men but unto God and ask that He in turn speak to those in attendance and bring change and intimacy with Him.

As you pray for us this week pray that God would do just that this Sunday and next! Pray that it wouldn’t be me they see! Pray that God would remove every distraction so I might hear Him clearly as I prepare and as I preach! That lives would be changed!

Preaching is one of life’s greatest blessings and most powerful ways I see and hear God! Pray I would be changed!

Thanks!

Jeff