An Update from Riverside Community Church
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
Update from Steffen Mueller in Munich
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
What's been happening at Hope City Presbyterian in Cape Town, South Africa
It's been a while since we updated you with news from our little community. A lot has happened in the last few months. By God's grace we're now in the second year of our plant (in 2 months time we'll celebrate a year of Sunday worship services). At the start of this year we really felt we needed to focus on the basics of the Christian faith. 2013 had been a good year for us and our basic structures were all up and running but we felt we were lacking in doing some of the basics well. So we made two commitments to each other in January, and asked God for his help in these:
1) That we would cultivate deep spirituality both individually and corporately. We got together and prayed for God to meet with us in a special way, filling us with his love and assurance. Without the life-blood, which is the love of the Father, we cannot hope to plant this church and so cultivating a robust and deep spirituality had to be a number one priority in 2014. This means increased focus on prayer, corporate worship, and the practice of spiritual disciplines - both communally and as individuals.
2) That we would cultivate meaningful relationship both inside and outside of our church. God's love needs to spread - that's simply the very nature of his love. And the way he has consistently spread his love is through relationships - people sharing their lives with each other while keeping the gospel at the center. We knew we couldn't hope to plant this church if we were not cultivating these relationships with people in our church and with people who are not yet part of our church. We ask for God's help in this great task and privilege.
So far the year has been exciting as we've committed to these two things. New people have joined us, for which we praise God, and our church has been growing in depth and in opportunities to serve our city. The Lord has brought interesting and diverse people to us and is teaching us how to be community to each other in all the ups and downs of life. He's also opened doors for us to serve the community (see the picture of the the team serving at the Arise Family Day).
I prayed earnestly at the beginning of this year that God would expand our relational base - to date he has been very faithful in answering that prayer. God is definitely at work, and for this we are deeply grateful.
Please uphold the following things in prayer with us:
- Continued growth both numerically and in terms of the depth of gospel understanding in our group.
- That God would honour our commitments to cultivate deep spirituality and meaningful relationships.
- Please pray for us as we think about how best to serve families with children. To date we haven't developed this area of the church and so we're looking to expand here and serve people in this life stage.
- Pray for God's spiritual protection over our community. I seem to be having way more pastoral meetings this year than last. I have no doubt that Satan would like to disrupt the work here so please pray for God's strength in the hard times.
Thank you again for this partnership in the gospel.
God's Richest Blessings,
Stephan and Robin Murray (and the rest of the Hope City Crew!)
Spotlight: Ralph Cunnington & City Church Manchester
Ralph Cunnington is the newest member of the Spanish River Church Planting family. Ralph is planting New City Church in Manchester.