SRC Friends,
During my trip to Cuba in mid January, I had interesting conversations with leaders regarding US-Cuba relations. Read some brief descriptions of what we discovered in the newsletter below. (click on the link below)
Pray that God will continue to lead these leaders as new opportunities and possible threats affect their ministry.
Allen
J. Allen Thompson, PhD
God is working in India through the ministries of Khen Thoming, check out Steve Olmo and his experience on a trip to India.
Grace and Peace to you. Just wanted to send you a quick update. We had a great time celebrating our 2 year anniversary a few weeks ago. God showed up in amazing ways, through the music, the testimonies, the message and as we baptized 9 more people bringing our total to 95 baptisms in less than 2 years, along with that we had what looked like our largest turn out ever! Which made it even more fun! I put a little video together to share with you a few of the testimonies and the baptisms. I appreciate your prayers and support. Please send our thanks to SRC for your partnership with us here in Jax!-Tone Benedict
Jody and his wife Julie Stancil have planted Riverside Community Church in Cartersville, Georgia. He recently sent us an update and some prayer requests:
“Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.” - 1 Corinthians 10:17
This verse from 1st Corinthians has been a great encouragement to us in the past few weeks. It reminds us that our church plant in Cartersville is part of God’s family and part of the story that He is weaving throughout history and throughout the world today. We partake of the one bread, Christ the bread of life (John 6), along with our brothers and sisters across the globe as we share in the love and grace of our Savior. This has been especially meaningful to us as I have been preaching through the Gospel of John, and as we celebrated the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper together for the first time in December. It has been a blessing to have some Ruling Elders from our Presbytery come to assist us, we are hoping to have others come and help us out each month this year.
We are thankful for the new faces that we are seeing in the visitors that the Lord is bringing to us. We are also praying and asking the Lord that this year, He would use us to reach a lost family and to see them baptized and made a part of our church body.
Please pray for God’s grace to abound to those in our church who are suffering. We have a couple of individuals who are facing long term illness, and some children in our church family who are facing upcoming surgeries. Please pray for their healing and for comfort.
Pray for Jesus to open wide the “spiritual doors” of Cartersville for His gospel to go forth into our community. Bartow County has a high rate of poverty and drug abuse. Pray that the Lord would bring healing to our community, and that He would use us to be an effective part of that process.
Pray for fruit in our evangelism efforts and for the Lord to bless us with deepening relationships with the unchurched, relationships that are more than just superficial. This is a difficult fight in our culture, so please pray that the Lord would give us boldness and humility to reach out to others, and that He will deliver us and those we are reaching out to from the enemy.
We thank you for your continued prayers
Praise and Prayer Requests Thank God for the good services He gave us in December. Twice we had over 100 people in the service. Overall in the Advent and Christmas season there were about 75 new visitors (around 50 on Christmas Eve). One thing that is new is that the majority of these visitors came from Grünwald - which is wonderful because Grünwald is one of the most secular areas in all of Munich.
God is doing a lot of wonderful things at Gospel Church: several marriages that have been at a difficult place are moving in a good direction; there is good unity and people are really listening to what the Bible has to say - even though sometimes a good bit is quite new to them and contradicts a lot what they had been taught for decades. Please pray that we will continue to see good unity, deepening relationships (and that the new folks will be quickly integrated and brought in) and much spiritual fruit.
Last Sunday God gave us a wonderful service at the "Hofbräukeller" in downtown Munich. Due to the recent terrorist attacks in Paris I also briefly spoke about the fact that Christians and Muslims do not believe in the same God and that in fact, muslims desperately need Jesus (not as prophet as they think, but as God and Savior - muslims deny that Jesus died for our sins and that he rose from the dead). What I said was politically very incorrect, but the truth. God helped me to say it with a lot of love. Please pray for protection for us as a church and in particular for me and our family. Please pray that God will use the things I said to strengthen us as a church and give us more revival and a zeal to love and pray for muslims (as well as for materialistic people, atheists, secular people and others).
Thank you for all your prayers! May God richly bells you all in 2015.
Warmly In Christ, Steffen Muller, Pastor, Gospel Church Muchen