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
