A Double Portion

Last month one of our prayer requests was “a freshtouch of the Holy Spirit”. We have seen that descend upon us in symbolic form and have had more first time visitors to our church in the last three weeks than in the last three months.

Recently we had a beautiful white dove come make the front door of our house its home. As we talked about how this was symbolic of God’s blessing over our home and church a second dove flew down from the sky and landed next to the other one. “Yes Lord! We want a double portion!” They spent the night – actually several nights.

(Side note: Doves “get married” or keep their same mate their whole life and often return “home” to the same nest or area to raise a second generation of young. Aren’t those great family values!)
People came to church and entered the house with huge smiles commenting on the big, white birds at our door. The problem came a few days later when we opened the door and saw what a horrible mess these two “love birds” had made. I quickly scared the birds away. They were beautiful in flight, but I was now glad to be rid of them. They were too much problem for their worth.

Then, as I was scraping and washing their mess up I realized that we can often treat people the same way. We want to have them come to our church and participate in our ministry – bless us with their presence, but when it comes to the reality that they are messy and have issues we shoo them away or neglect them until they leave on their own.

We have been called to minister in the city and reach out to people that by no means have their act together. They are coming from broken places, messy addictions, bad habits and aren’t the brightest and strongest, but God has called them to Himself and has made us His chosen instrument to love His people here and now.

What is a double portion? More of God. A lot more. More fruit. More favor. We ask for faith, we ask for wisdom, but are we ready to learn and grow the way God wants us to or are we just hoping for a magic pill or a magic prayer that will take us into the deeper places, the more fruitful places with Jesus? We understand life isn’t getting easier, but His blessing is all over us and it is getting better. “Come, Holy Spirit, pour out more and more over our family, church and community!”

UPDATES

Leader In Training (LIT) Retreat
A highlight of the month was the Leader In Training (LIT) Retreat. Chad and Alex had a lot of quality time to connect. While seventeen year old Alex is going through the LIT program he is serving in the children’s ministry at our church. Just last week he organized all the games and activities for the children after their Sunday school time (pictured below). He will be teaching a devotional lesson on Sunday February 26. Continue to pray for his growth.

Felipe & Judy Jaquith Visit
We were blessed to have Fabiola’s pastors from Puebla, Mexico come visit us and give two powerful, Spirit-led messages at our Sunday service. It is so fun to sit in the service and hear
the Word proclaimed with the knowledge that specific issues we’ve prayed through and counseled people in that same week or even that morning were being addressed. God is so cool!

Fellowship Time Extending & Growing
After service the second Sunday of every month we have a fellowship potluck. When we started nobody fellowshipped with anyone beyond their own family. Now we have grown to true fellowship – including encouragement, life-on-life sharing and laughter that isn’t limited only to the meal time, but continues throughout the week.

Please Pray with Us…..

After School Drop-In Center
We’ve visited the high school (pictured below) down the street from us several times this last month and currently have a couple students regularly coming to church. We feel it is time to make another step forward in reaching that huge population of students and all of their families. We will be working at opening a teen drop-in center for after school activities offering things such as:
·Bible Studies
·Small groups/discipleship classes
·Evangelistic messages
·Video and board games
·Christian counseling
·Study room with computer access
·Monitored internet access
·Healthy snacks
·Life skill classes (cooking, budgeting, conflict resolution, etc.)

Pastors & Leaders Conference
Fabiola and another lady from our church will be heading to Mexico in March for a special
conference. This will be a key time of refreshing, equipping and increasing of faith and vision for both ladies. Chad will be staying back with the kids and keep things going with the church.

We need continued prayer covering to see these needs met:
(1) a BUILDING with more space for our church to meet in
(2) 12 strong LEADERS
(3) strong MARRIAGES and families
(4) musicians with a heart of WORSHIP
(5) SAFETY
(5) a DOUBLE portion of blessing, favor, protection and fruitfulness

Thank you so much for your love and support. You make it a joy to pour out our lives each day – we know that we don’t stand alone. May God richly bless you!

Chad & Fabiola

We Love the Church!

We love the church!  God has set forth an amazing blueprint for expressing His love to the world through His people – we are the Church and amidst its imperfections and quirks there is great power and beauty expressed by the corporate body of believers called the church.  That is why we love planting churches too.  We get to be at the birthing phase of this amazing redemptive process God has set up here on earth. 

Just the other Sunday one the men that comes before service to set up the chairs and help with the sound system began to share his burden for the lost and urgency for the church to rise up and be who we are called to be.  I (Chad) smiled and shouted a great big “yes!” inside of me as he mentioned the need for our church to have healthy families that can be models and guides for the new people that will be coming.  I challenged him and myself that we need to be those families.  We need to live as examples of the hope, joy, peace, love and restoration found in Christ for the whole family.  Healthy families are attractive.

For the months of January and February we are focusing heavily on everything related to the family during our mid-week Bible studies.  Being arguably the largest felt need, not to mention real need in our community we have decided to help rebuild families one life at a time.  One way we are doing that is by modeling.  Fabiola and I have both been blessed in our pasts to have godly families in our churches that we can watch and learn from and then follow in their footsteps.  It is our desire to raise-up many families that will be examples and leaders in the community in our church plant – leading to even greater growth and health in our church and community in the months and years to come. 

There is nothing better than ministering life on life – meaning we share our time, energy, resources and life with the rest of the church family.  They see our successes and our failures and they are there with us when we need to make decisions about the family.  Addressing the relationship between husband and wife, parents and children and even the process of preparing for marriage or dating has a profound impact on individuals and families as we live it out in front of them as well as teach and preach it at a study.

Please pray for us and these families as we press into restoring this foundational building block of society that has been ravaged over the last several generations.  God is pleased at our pursuits and we sense His favor; the enemy, however, has not been giving up easy and there is an increased awareness of the intensity of this battle. 

Chad & Fabiola