Watering Seeds of Ministry

05.01.09

    It has been encouraging to see God water seeds these past few months.

    It has been encouraging to see God water seeds these past few months. We've seen Him work in amazing ways in some marriages that seemed hopeless and now have hope. We've seen Him bring good out of some really tough family situations. We've seen His provision and direction for families in situations of uncertainty.

    resurgence - Resurgence - The Road to...We've also seen him water some seeds of ministry. In April we began to work with Grace Bible Church in a "trial" phase as we consider the possibility of adopting that church into the Village Bible Church family. As you know from previous meetings correspondence, if God leads this process to an actual adoption, we would become one church with two locations. (Actually, God may be doing something even bigger than that as He seems to be bringing additional churches to us with very similar requests.)

    The first month of this "trial" is off to an encouraging start. Four significant things have already taken place:

    1. We have begun to sync some of our ministries and have opened Village ministries to Grace. At the same time, you will see some of Grace's ministries sprinkled through this ministry update as options for you to be a part of.

    2. Under Mario's direction and assistance, David Wood and Emily Sterkel started a youth group at Grace that is meeting on Sunday nights, with over a dozen kids already involved. They are also planning their own summer mission trips to Detroit and Chicago.

    3. Travis Fleming, whom many of you met when he preached at our Good Friday service, has been serving at Grace and will be preaching there during the month of June - with the possibility of further ministry after that.

    4. Our elder teams have begun praying, and working together and have even attended a pastors' conference together. God is building relationships and helping us discover how best to work together.

    That seems like a lot for our first month into this trial. Please continue to pray for wisdom as we seek God's will for helping to grow the ministry of both church locations and also for us as a church as we allow God to lead us to serve Him in ways that may not fit the traditional model of church ministry! The impact of this endeavor will be limited if it's just the elders who are involved in this process. It's going to talk all of us working together in new ways - and we suspect that out of it all will come new blessing!

    Your elder team,

    Al Gonnerman, Mario Arindaeng, Tim Badal, Scott Capp, Keith Duff, Jon Pilkington & Ray Prigodich

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