Busy, busy, busy!

Well summer is over we are well into fall and I have allowed business to keep me from posting. I apologize!

We so appreciate each and ever one of you and covet your prayers so much!

With the summer months we saw the typical summer decline in attendance. I had been warned this would happen, however, when you drop by 40% and you have just started as a church or campus it definitely sucks the wind out of you! I would be lying if a didn't have my doubts this summer if this is what we were supposed to be doing. Thankfully we stuck it out and we are now back to the numbers we were at before the summer. This is actually really good as we had several who had come over from the original campus that were there to help us get started who finished up their commitments and returned to the original campus. Even with these leaving we are back at the numbers we were at which means we are experiencing growth.

Don't get me wrong, numbers are not always synonymous with doing Gods bidding but they can and often are a metric we can use to take the spiritual pulse of a church. Our calling is to be making disciples and baptizing them.... as the great commission tells us in Mathew 28. In many churches in the U.S. we do this backwards. We want them to convert and then we will disciple but notice what Jesus commanded. We were to make disciples and then baptize them and teach them in the way they should go. Implied here is that discipleship begins with non believers and somewhere along the way they give their life to Christ symbolized through baptism. If we as a church say our role is to just focus on those within our "walls" and are not reaching out to the world around us we are missing the mark. New faces and new people coming to church then are a measure of how well we are living out our calling.

Last week we celebrated Grace Fellowships first ever Spanish Alpha Course completion. By the time the course was finished every attendee had prayed to receive Christ and the Holy Spirit. now several are wanting to be trained to lead the next Alpha course.

Here at Grace Fellowship it is our vision to be "A House of Prayer for All Nations." Above in the  picture of our first ever Spanish alpha there are seven nations represented. They loved it so much that they have decided to continue to meet as a community group! so now we have a new community group! This is the kind of growth we want. Not just people walking into a service because they happened to be passing by. No we want relational growth. People who are coming to Grace because they are already in relationship with one of our members. 

As you pray for us pray that God would mold us into the image He envisioned His church to be!

Pray that Grace North would be selfless. That we would understand and live out our calling to be incarnational! That He would grow His church!

Also we are in transition as our current children's minister is looking to retire from her position so please pray that God would lead us to the right person for our children!

We love you all and thank you for interceding for us!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Joshua & Tate

How to defeat the "Dog Days" of summer!

Well summer is here in full swing! AS you and yours gear up for all the summer fun you plan on having here are a few things you can pray for North:

1. V.B.S. the week of July 7-11. Pray that God would bring the community together! We are hosting it in a community center at a park and are hoping that the community we minister in and too will feel Gods call to bring their kids and be exposed to the gospel!

2. We are going to one service each Sunday in July followed by a potluck every week as well. Pray that our church family grows in closeness and that the community feels welcome and decides to check us out!

3. We are doing various movie nights in the parking lot along with cook-outs and such so pray that we can have and provide fun for the community.

Here is a great read I would suggest for all of you as you plan your summers out and to implement in your church families this summer!

http://www.vergenetwork.org/2014/06/18/3-needs-for-missional-communities-in-summer/?mc_cid=987c817734&mc_eid=51db32ad4a

As always we can't thank you enough for all your prayers and we need them so much!

Love you all!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Joshua and Tate

Summer is Here!

Well we have made it to our first summer!

With that realization comes a whole lot of "What is going to happen now?"

Undoubtedly we will not escape the summer lolls of endless amounts of people being out of town and on vacation. This can be difficult for any church but for a new one that is only 26 weeks old it can be down right scary! Not knowing what to expect makes it rather difficult to not only plan but try to grow accordingly.

We have many things planned for this summer including our first ever VBS so please be praying that we can not only exist but that we can thrive this summer! That VBS will reach into the community and bring not only children but adults into a relationship with Christ!

Also as we go through this time pray that our hearts and our passion will not waiver. It would be easy for our members to become discouraged and we want the opposite, we want revival and spiritual awakening!

currently we are seeing lives changed slowly and surely people are growing in their walk with Christ!

Seven people joined during our last Exploring Grace class

Pray that our "Community" groups would continue to grow and thrive and that we would see more people coming into true community!

We love you all!

Jeff, Kim, Max Joshua and Tate

I guess we are a church now!

Well it didn't take long! We have been meeting as a campus for 19 weeks now and personality issues have begun to arise! I guess I should be excited that the enemy views us enough as a threat so as to try and mess with us but today I am tired, tired of people getting their feelings hurt. Some with genuine reasons and some without genuine reasons. As you pray for Grace Fellowship North and for Kim and I pray for energy, for strength, wisdom on how to handle each situation. Pray for revival and spiritual awakening! Pray that God would send a harvest. Pray for our children's ministry! IT is in this area where we have needed and had most change and where people have gotten their feelings hurt the most. Pray that God would give us wisdom and direction especially in this area.

We love you all!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Joshua and Tate

Tilling The Ground!

     Yesterday, instead of worshiping as a church in the traditional way, Grace Fellowship (both campuses) shut the doors and went and served in the community! AT North Campus we had around an 80% participation from our members and regular attenders. We did a lot of work at two elementary school campuses, two carnivals for lower income neighborhoods or apartment complexes and some of our people went to a laundry-mat and paid for and helped do laundry for the community!    

     I have to say, there is very little that will build community like serving together and I can't really tell who was more blessed, those we were serving or us! It was fun, working for others and worshiping our God by being His hands and feet in the community!

     At the laundry-mat two people were so moved by those helping them that they opened up and prayed to receive Christ while many others received prayer from one of our members that was loving on them. It is amazing how when we help people clean their physical laundry and pay for it they feel the need to open the flood gates and let us help with their spiritual laundry!

    At the carnivals we loved on kids and had multiple opportunities to speak with their parents. I can't wait to hear all the stories from conversations that took place between our people and these families. What I do know is that dozens of people said they wanted to come to church as they were touched that we would love on them and their children just because the love of Christ compelled us too! Countless people responded greatly to the fact that the church had gotten out of it's four walls and rather than asking for money gave it away freely!

    At the schools we tore out overgrown weed infested beds and basically spruced up the campuses of two elementary schools that Katy ISD tends to overlook because they are title 1 schools and the parents are either to busy trying to make ends meet or have not been in the country long enough to know that they can complain that the ISD is neglecting the upkeep of these properties like they would never do south of I-10. Ripping out the old and replacing it with new!

     Yesterday was great! AS you pray for us, pray that "He who began a good work would be faithful and bring it to completion." Pray that we would see the ripping out of old and newness of life begin in the lives of those that were touched! Pray for revival for us and spiritual awakening for north Katy! Pray that Easter would be a time that these people would come and hear the Gospel and respond! Pray we can get the word out effectively! Pray that our children's ministry re-launch would be a success and that we could reach the next generation growing up in Katy North! Pray for Rene, our children's minister, as she plans and preps for this day!

     Thank you for praying and covering us! let these stories bless you as you are a part of the work here as you move mountains in the spiritual realms with your prayers that make all this possible!

We love you all!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Joshua and Tate

Revival?

I know it has been a while since I posted and I do apologize! We so covet your prayers of covering for us!

We are eleven weeks in since our first service and things are going really well. The past two weeks I have preached a mini series called "Why We Do the Things We Do." the first sermon in the series was on the authority of scripture and why we preach exposition of the word at Grace and yesterdays was on the 7 Hebrew words of praise and why we worship the way we do at Grace. At the end of our second service I told the congregation the could linger if the needed to and no one moved for about 30 minutes as they just kept praising our Lord.

We are actively seeking and praying for revival at Grace fellowship this year as we have felt the Lord prompting us to do so this year. I can't help but wonder what was happening in the hearts of those who refused to leave yesterday? Could God be beginning revival  at North? I hope and pray so! Would pray for that with us?

Also pray for us as we begin our first official North Campus Staff meeting today? Pray for the many more to come! That God would lead us in all we do!

Finally pray for our "community" groups that they would continue to grow and that God would make community be the back bone of our growth rather than programming!

Thank you all!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Joshua and Tate

New things!

Yesterday we held our first ever Bilingual Grace 101 class! I have to say that it went off better than I could have imagined and I left super excited to see two campuses coming together and functioning as one church was pretty awesome! Jim Leggett our senior pastor taught the English version while I taught the Spanish version. In the Spanish version we had Brazilians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, and even a native from Chicago. TO listen to them share their testimonies was a real treat!

Praise God! As we seek to be a "House of Prayer for all Nations" God is bringing the nations to us!

Praise the Lord we have hired someone part time to lead our children's ministry! Rene will be working with our original campus children's ministry staff and will help us get up to speed in the children's area! We will be announcing to the community our children's ministry launch on Easter Sunday so please be praying that God will help us get all the wrinkles worked out before then!

On March 9th we will be hosting a potluck to celebrate the last Sunday of our "Fight for Your Family" sermon series through the book of Joshua! At the potluck we will be sharing testimonies from our community groups on what God has done in the lives of individuals as they have been applying what they have been learning from the book of Joshua. Please pray that this will be a time where people invite friends and neighbors. Where they feel a true since of community! Where we can celebrate and worship God by hearing of all he has done! Pray that it will strengthen our community groups and that those who still need to find a group will leave that day with a groups invitation to attend.

Pray that lives would be changed! That people would come to know the Lord! Pray for revival in our hearts so that we can see Spiritual Awakening in the community God has called us too!

We love you all and so appreciate your prayers!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Joshua & Tate

Revival!

It is hard to imagine that we have met for six weeks now as a North campus!

IT has truly been fun preaching through the book of Joshua and we are hearing from so many who are enjoying diving deep into the word! In ways I feel like its cheating, any time you preach the word it does all the work! It says it will never return void so why more preachers don't just preach the word and instead choose to be "topical" or "relevant" rather than invoking the power of God's written word which has given us the promise to be effective is beyond me! 

As we begin this week I would like to thank you all for your prayers! My back is feeling so much better and I am finally feeling better after having the flu last week. If you could please continue praying for our three boys who all had the flu and for Kim that this week we could find complete healing and wholeness in the Dietz home!

One of the goals that Grace Fellowship has set as a whole for 2014 is that we want to seek God for revival. Please pray that we would humble ourselves enough to see God’s revival break out here! Pray that we would understand that revival breaks out amongst believers and what most of us think is revival is truly spiritual awakening, when the masses come to Jesus. Pray that we would look inwardly and allow God to reveal sin that needs to be confessed, that He would break our hearts and our pride and humble us that we might be revived by His Spirit! Then and only then can we see the true heart of Christ go forth into the community and see lives truly changed! 

As you pray these things for us I pray for each of you! That you would see revival in your lives!

We love you all and need and appreciate your prayers so desperately!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Joshua and Tate

Tomorrow begins month #2

Well we have officially held a whole months worth of services and God is good! He is already starting to reveal Himself in little ways that have blessed me so much!

Today many of or community groups met and I had the privilege to sit in on one of our members group and then attend the one Kim and I will attend! God is good and has orchestrated the right people for the right groups and will continue to do so!

As you pray please pray for these groups! That they would flourish! That they would be true community!

Also pray for Kim and I. Kim's health is much better aside from her normal auto immune issues, however I hurt my back 3 weeks ago and have been trying to push through but it is only getting worse. Please pray for total healing in a miraculous way that our baby congregation can see that will reveal Gods power and might! Also today I started getting a cold (hopefully not the flu) and the two combined are getting the best of me right now and 5:00am comes awfully early even when your feeling your best!

I know God has done great things already and wants to do so much more! The enemy doesn't want this and so I ask you to intercede that God would manifest in power and might!

Thank you! We love and need you all in our lives and ministry!

Jeff, Kim, Max, Joshua and Tate