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