Working Together - United in Purpose

We are here in Los Angeles not only to make disciples, raise up leaders and plant churches, but to see God’s Kingdom advance in every direction and dimension leading to a church-plant movement.

Part of keeping us healthy spiritually, emotionally and relationally and on track with this purpose is a monthly meeting with other area pastors to fellowship, encourage and resource one another.

The purpose of The Urban Pastors Association (UPA) is to glorify God by expanding and advancing God’s Kingdom among the urban poor through the making of disciples and church planting. We come from churches of all different sizes and shapes, but we all hold to this purpose. The first Saturday morning of every month we get to see and experience God’s commanded blessing (Psalm 133) and a renewed sense of hope and strength through this band of brothers and sisters working for Jesus in unity.

We recognize that though God has big plans for our church Fuente para las Naciones it is still just a piece of the big global picture of what God is doing. As we mentioned in our last post, we got to see that first hand at a conference geared for pastors throughout Mexico at Fabiola’s home church in Puebla, Mexico. This was a huge time of being refreshed and further equipped for the task before us. There was such a generous outpouring of love and prayer. It is amazing being united in purpose and vision internationally as well as locally.

Thank you for your faithful prayers as we continue to work together to see that, as many as possible, people might know our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ,

Chad and Fabiola Wolyn

Wasn't That Fun!

Updates
Thank you for your prayers! Here is a look back at highlights of the last month (it’s so fun to serve the Lord!):

Kid’s Club (VBS)
The week leading up to Easter we had a marvelous time sharing the Easter story with children and their parents at our Vacation Bible School (VBS) at the park. For the last two weeks we have been diligently working at visiting every family in their homes and building more relationship off of our time together at the park. Not only were many families blessed, but we were able to build and deepen some other strategic relationships in the neighborhood. Please continue to lift up these families in prayer!

Kid’s Club 2010

5 days of Bible stories, crafts, games, songs & a whole lot of fun!

146 children participated in our VBS

3 high school youth groups came to help

275 hot dogs served at our mid-week family BBQ

700 candy-filled eggs were eagerly found

The kid’s cycled through stations where they learned a Bible story, did a craft that reinforced that story, played games and enjoyed a snack. They had memory verses and sang lots of fun action songs. As the children we’re busy having fun and being loved we connected with the parents. (Fabiola, pictured below in white, was able to sit and get to know more parents every day.)

We had children separated into age groups. It was exciting to see that as the youngest group heard the gospel presented every day their parents were sitting with them hearing the same Good News!

Easter Sunday
The whole week of Kid’s Club was to designed to bless the community, build more relationships and lead up to our first ever Sunday service. We had a nice group of people gathered at our house. Everyone that normally attends during the week came along with a few others that we hadn’t yet met.Pictured above, Fabiola teaches the older children during our first Sunday worship service out behind our house. We had some volunteers from World Impact help us with our nursery class.

Two primary goals in having us meet together was first to bring all our different groups (cell groups that meet during the week) together since they have never met one another. The second goal was to give everyone in the church a chance to get involved and serve in some way. As I (Chad) shared the Easter message I emphasized this point and we were ecstatic to see how from the moment the message was over every detail imaginable was taken care of. We had a huge potluck out at the park, Easter egg hunt, games and fun fellowship. Every detail from the BBQ to chairs and tables being set up, clean up, game organization, everything was taken up by the people. We were also blessed to see that they did mingle and get to know one another naturally without us organizing anything to facilitate this. The food was great, but the fellowship and richness of being together as a newly formed body of believers was much greater. Continue to pray for us as we grow.Above, some of the Fuente para las Naciones children show off the eggs they found. Below, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus together with the classic pot luck!

“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford

Mexico
Thank you for praying for us while we were at the pastor’s conference in Mexico. We were able to meet a lot of great men and women of God some whom we are sure we’ll be working with more in the future as our churches expand and send people out to continue evangelizing, discipling and planting more churches throughout the nations. We were stirred up in our faith and in many ways had a spiritual retreat that prepared us to come back to Los Angeles refreshed and ready to work all the more passionatly and focused on what God is doing here. Even though we were very busy visiting people the whole time the change of pace and enviornment was very healthy for us and has allowed us to rekindle some of the heart for the city that God has given us.

We stayed with Fabiola’s sister and got to see her mom and dad every day, which was great for all of us. Rebecca and Justice got to know their cousins, aunts and uncles better too, which was great – and knowing they were having fun with family allowed us to do some of the things at the conference without thinking about how they were doing.

We were appreciated and showered with blessings. The women’s group rallied the congregation to shower us with gifts, which they called ‘Christmas in March’, to show their love and support of our family. The generosity, hospitality, sincerety and passion for the Lord that the pastors, leaders and people of God have for Jesus and His Kingdom are contagious and humbling.

On our last day we were honored in front of the entire congregation of over 3,000 people where we were sent out from Mexico (Fabiola’s home church) to plant the church Fuente - Los Angeles with their love and prayers. This formal act demonstrates how much prayer, love and support is really coming from Mexico and part of the reason we are seeing fruit here in this hardened city of Angeles.

Please Pray With Us
·Pray that we would build trust and show love as we seek to build relationships with our neighbors, especially as we continue to visit every child that came to VBS – that’s a lot of homes! Pray that hearts would be open and ready to receive the Good News!

·Some friends from Abiding Place Christian Fellowship will be coming to support us in various ways this coming week (March 19-23). Please cover this time in prayer as we prayer walk the community, do some outreach and evangelism as well as a variety of other projects.

·Big Screen Family Movie Night (Facing the Giants/Desafio a los Gigantes) Tuesday, March 20 – After teaching about how being a disciple means making disciples and sharing about our relationship with Jesus with others, this will be the first event for our church where we’ve encouraged people to invite friends, relatives and neighbors. Up to this point we’ve focused on meeting people at the park or passing out fliers. This is special because it will allow us to meet people that are connected already to our existing relationships. Pray that converting our home into a movie theater will go well and many new people will come out.

·Men’s Retreat - June 11-13— The majority of our church is made up of women and children. We ask that you would pray with us that we could take a good group of guys up to the World Impact camp, THE OAKS, for this year’s Men’s Retreat. Pray specifically for Primo, Adelso, Carlos, Alejandro, Daniel, Jesus, Urbano and Florentino. Some of these men are faithfully attending our cell groups, but others we know only socially because their wives come out faithfully. Please pray for some breakthrough in the lives of these men…many who are struggling to make ends meet and some who have other addictions or problems they are dealing with right now.

·Please continue to cover our family in your prayers. Pray against sickness. Pray that we would be good parents and Rebecca and Justice would be good children. Also lift up our unity and the balance in our work load – we want to honor God in all that we do and all that we don’t do. We know there is an abundance of wisdom that God will continue to pour down on us so that we can be more than victorious.

Enjoying His Presence & Loving to Serve His People,
Chad & Fabiola

Reaching As Many Families As Possible

As we lay the foundations of this new church we have been called to plant, God has been bringing us a lot of families. Part of our vision is to minister as a whole family and so it is exciting for us to see that God has made reaching families a cornerstone part of the strategy of planting Fuente para las Naciones. Every Sunday we have a team of volunteers come out from various churches and help us put on a children’s ministry aimed at both reaching the kids and integrating the whole family in the process. The children explore and experience the love of Jesus Christ and the richness of the community of believers through quality time with our team, a time of games and recreational activities, interactive messages, praise songs, small groups and arts & crafts. As the children are having fun learning about Jesus we meet with the parents. The goal of our time with the parents is to empower and equip them to raise godly children. In our meetings we share the gospel, include them in the activities with the children and have a special small group time for them to share their life and apply what is going on. This time has been one of the most fruitful times for us to invite people out to our church services. The week leading up to Easter we will be blessed with the partnership of some high school youth groups from three different cities to help us put on a vacation Bible school (VBS) type program for children in our neighborhood at the park in front of our house. We are preparing for a huge turnout. We believe this will not only give us more opportunity to get to know people in our community, but will build up momentum to our celebration service Easter Sunday. Please be praying that both the VBS outreach and the Easter Sunday service go as God has planned and many people commit their lives to Him. Please also pray that we may responsibly take care of everyone that we meet and help them walk into a healthy and mature relationship with Christ. With all these exciting opportunities to be out and about in the community and reach families we are confronted with the challenge of childcare and children’s ministry during our regular meeting times. Since our team is so small we do not yet have enough people to help lead the children, babies and adults simultaneously. We currently need help with our Tuesday morning, Wednesday morning and Sunday morning children's programs. We know that God has some great and creative solutions so please pray with us that we would discover what they are and continue to grow into what God has called us to become here in South Central Los Angeles.

Celebrating our Risen King with many families!
Chad & Fabiola

Concentric Circles

Updates
Lately as we faithfully focus on feeding the “one” – the “one” being each person as the important and unique individual that they are, made special and loved immensely by God – we have seen the concentric circles forming, radiating out from this one’s sphere of influence, drawing others to come and eat as well.

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” (Mat. 4:4)

“So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.” (Isaiah 55:11)

Continually Increased Ownership
We’ve had some amazing study times with Blanca, Dora, Nacha, Primo and Bere lately. We asked them to read through the gospel of Mark during the week. With us mostly looking on they spent over an hour just sharing with one another all the exciting things they read, re-reading entire sections, so that everyone could hear how amazing it all really is. Fabiola was with the five children and I just helped answer any questions that came up and sat in awe of the hunger and excitement of the whole study.

As we’re away in Mexico (see below) they have been given charge of the group – which is our ultimate goal anyway. We have modeled how to lead a Bible study and now two of them will take turns hosting and leading. Our teammate Norma will be there if they need some guidance, but they are really excited about the opportunity to grow more as they lead one another in studying God’s word.

The Circle Continues to Expand
The women that meet with Fabiola every Tuesday have been calling a lot to invite us over to meet more of their family and friends or get advice about something. We’ve been able to take two youth to World Impact’s teen youth program so far and sense more are interested. Also, about a week ago we went to meet Marisol’s brother-in-law who has a lot of struggles, severe depression being one of them. As we were sharing the Good News with him, Marisol realized she needed to get right with God. Fabiola and Marisol prayed right there – a prayer of repentance and gratitude for salvation in front of this family member. This week at the women’s meeting she said to the group, “I don’t care what my family says to me about my beliefs because they aren’t the ones that are going to save me or give me peace. God has done that for me.” Please pray for Marisol that she might continue to walk and mature in that peace. Pray with us also for her large family, that they all might come to know Jesus and Lord and Savior.

Jesús and Emily

Above: Emily

After meeting Jesús and his adorable daughter Emily playing soccer together at the park, we struck up a new friendship and were invited to Emily’s 4th birthday party. Although we tried to do the culturally correct thing and show up late we were only 45 minutes late and ended up being the first ones to show up. (Side note: 1 hour late is very normal; it didn’t really get going until we left about 3 ½ hours later!) Being the only ones there however provided us a wonderful opportunity to get to know Jesús, his wife, Betty and her mom, Maria, better. Since then we have had Emily over to play with Rebecca and this week we went over to their house for a delicious “caldo de camarón” (shrimp soup) and a chance to get to go deeper in our relationship. They seem very curious about God and church and asked some good questions. Please pray with us for Jesús, Betty, Maria and Emily that God would really move on their heart’s and prepare them to come to Him.

Above: Rebecca get’s her face painted by a clown at Emily’s birthday party as Jesús looks on.

Answered Prayer
We now have set up a rotation of teachers for our Children’s classes that take place while we are meeting with the families on our Wednesday night cell group service. We have two ladies that are teaching at the World Impact school and a couple others stepping in from outside churches that we’ve been building relationships with. Thank you for praying with us about this need.

Upcoming Events/Prayer Request

Mexico
We will be in Mexico from March 15–29. We will be part of a Pastor’s Conference at Fabiola’s home church in Puebla, Mexico and visiting several other cites and churches to raise awareness of our mission’s work and ask for prayer as we continually look for more ways and potential future links to expand the Kingdom of God by reaching all nations. Our last trip to Mexico helped us really ramp up our prayer support and break through some spiritual barriers and we are believing for more of that this time as well. During these two weeks Fabiola and the kids will also have a good time between all of this activity to spend time with her mom, dad, sisters and the extended family. This family time may be the most important part of the trip as it is critical re-charging time for Fabiola who gives so much of herself to the church planting efforts relationally, emotionally and spiritually.

Holy Week & Easter
Did you know that a survey that was conducted in 2005 showed that only 48% of people surveyed knew that Easter was connected with the resurrection of Christ! (Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 3/25/05)

We will be putting on a Kid’s Club (Vacation Bible School style) during Spring Break— Monday thru Friday (3/29 – 4/2) at our park, South Park. We have three different high school groups helping us make this happen. We anticipate over 100 kids and hope that we can connect with families throughout this week. On Wednesday we will have a large BBQ for the children and their families which will be followed by our evening Bible Study time for those who are interested.

Easter Sunday we will gather all of the people we have been meeting with weekly in various homes together for the first time, have a great service celebrating the resurrection and of course lots of great food and fun activities for the whole family. Please pray for all of the details to come together and not get in the way of the joyous purpose of us getting together in the first place.

Thank you for your continued prayers and encouragement.

He is risen indeed!
The Wolyn Family
Chad, Fabiola, Rebecca and Justice

The Vision of Fuente para las Naciones

Last month we introduced our team to you, this month we’d like to tell you more about the church we are planting. Our name, Fuente para las Naciones, or in English “Fountain for the Nations” brings with it some symbolism that helps explain our vision. Water - Starting with the essential, purpose and presence (for without the water the fountain would be just a heap of material that ‘looks good’) the water is God’s presence flowing through us.

Fountain - We, the church, are the fountain, the receptacles, jars of clay that have been given the honor and opportunity to be filled by God. Fuente can also be translated as “Source” and so in that sense God is the Fuente. We are not anything worth giving to the nations, but it is Christ in us that we give and that releases power to heal and save lives.

Nations - The nations are every people, tribe, language and nation—every ethnic group on the earth. This is our mission field, our hope is to see the Earth (people) filled, refreshed and freed by the Living Water of Jesus. We are a congregation that is filled with God and pours out so that all might experience the goodness and richness of God’s glory and power.

Like the bridegroom in Song of Solomon 6:2-3 we are able to come into the garden with the whole flock and still delight in the Lord and pick the lilies—not being distracted by the flock (the ministry, the many needs), but allowing the flock to eat of the richest grass around straight from where the Source of water and nourishment is located. We minister out of intimacy with God.

Fuente para las Naciones is a Christian community of believers united in our love for God by God’s love for us that is fulfilling God’s call to a hopeless, hurting world. Out of the riches we experience in God’s presence we will bring the ministry of reconciliation, a true fountain of hope, truth, love and justice, to the world–restoring God’s original purpose of His Kingdom’s reign and rule.

Our church, both locally and globally will be part of God’s arm in extending mercy, justice, truth and love to people near and far. The mission of Fuente para las Naciones is to gather together in the inner room and meet God and then leave proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ extending the Kingdom of God through the training of people, families and leaders first in our city and then to the ends of the earth.

Our Purpose is to worship and honor God and delight in Him, help one another grow sharing our gifts and talents in love, and minister to the world in word and deed to make Jesus known. We want to see the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole person throughout the whole world. We don’t want to be a church with a missions program, but a global church with a missions purpose.

As Anatole Frace said, “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” So far we have three established cell groups (25+ people). Please pray that we can add many more and gather everyone together in a corporate celebration service. We are believing for 120 people in the first year and want to raise up 12 strong leaders in three years.

Blessed that you are praying with us for great things!

Chad & Fabiola Wolyn

Growth Praying

"The history of missions is the history of answered prayer." (Samuel Zwemer) Thank you for joining us on this mission and praying with us as we continue to empower the urban poor, raise up leaders and plant churches. We know that we are nothing without God and His people surrounding us and lifting us up in prayer.

We have been blessed with some great growth this first official month of church planting. Last week we had 6 new adults and 6 new children come out. We are meeting new people through our outreach and evangelistic efforts (mostly on Wednesday and Sunday). It was exciting; however, that 3 of the adults that came out were not invited by us but by somebody who just started coming herself. Our weekly totals are right around 30, putting us (within a month) at 25% of our year-long goal. (We believe God has called us to have 120 people under our care in the first year.)

Growing is great! It does have its challenges though. We have to continue to balance the time and energy we pour into the different areas of ministry. We desire to always be about going and reaching out to bring more desperately hungry, needy and lost into our growing family. We also want to be about building a strong foundation with each person by providing quality fellowship and study times as well as a focus on individuals in leadership training and discipleship. Clearly not everything has to happen at once, but we are seeing certain needs arise. We ask that to avoid “growth pain” you do some “growth praying” with us. We know God wants to use us and our church to do some unexpected and different things. We know that He cares way more than we do for the children and their needs, the many lost shouting silently for freedom through their desperate attempts to encounter meaning in this life. He is the one that showed us His desire for a community of people in this neighborhood that love one another and study and apply the Bible as they grow in relationship with their Savior and Lord.

We also have specific times throughout the week where we meet one-on-one with people.
Please pray for our time with Blanca, Bere, Primo, Italia, Juan Carlos and others.

Other important times: Tuesday night – we invite a family/couple/individual from the community over for dinner to get to know them. /Thursdays: 2:30-4:00 Team meeting / Mondays: Much needed day off!

Praise Reports

Blanca has been growing strong in her relationship with Jesus since she committed her life to Him December 9th) she gave her life to Jesus. She is reading big portions of the Bible and memorizing verses and challenging the group to do the same as she brings observations and questions to the meetings. Recently she was inspired by the words of 1 Peter 3:1, speaking of winning an unbelieving husband without words, but with behavior. We’ve been praying with her for her husband, Alejandro, who does not believe in God at all. He has already noticed her change and begun asking many questions about what she is learning and why she is doing what she is doing. She has also taken an interest in learning to play the guitar and so we are teaching her what we know. Please pray for her family (she is one of Primo’s sisters). Blanca and Alejandro (pictured above) have two children, Jennifer and Anthony.

Tina and Adelso –You may remember we first made contact with them one day before Rebecca’s birthday party (in November) and invited them out. They came and since we’ve been able to get to know them a lot better. They are now regularly attending our Wednesday night meeting. Adelso, whose mother back in Guatemala is a Christian, is really interested in growing in God and exposing his family to the Church. Tina has surprised him by being all changed and ready to go with their two children when he arrives from work. Tina, not having any previous exposure to studying the Word of God, has taken a Bible home and been reading portions in between each meeting.

“When I return to my land people there aren’t going to recognize me, they’ll see that I’m a better person, they’ll see something different.” - Primo (pictured above with Bere)

When asked if she had a good time at the Winter Youth Retreat Italia responded, “Yeah, but I didn’t come here for fun—I came here to get closer to God.” And did she ever! She responded for the first time ever to the Gospel call. We’ve been meeting with her for the last 6 months, studying the Bible, having her shadow us in many different ministry activities and finally she responded by giving her whole life to Jesus for eternity!! J She now attends our youth group, along with her older brother Juan Carlos, on Fridays. Tiffany, our youth worker, is continuing to follow-up with her on her decision by working one-on-one through various issues a couple times a week.
Italia and her family L to R: Maria, Ramon Jr., Maricela (mother), Joel, Juan Carlos, Olivia, Italia, Marta


Prayer Requests:

Children’s Ministry Solution — With as many as 7 children (ranging from 8 months to 10 years old) showing up at a given meeting we need help organizing activities/lessons and somebody that can be in charge of these children so their parents can focus on the study and discussion. [We have a vision of training up the parent’s to take turns providing this Biblical education to their kids, but at this time we’re still building a Biblical foundation and getting to know them so we need a solution meanwhile.]

Easter Week Outreach & Celebration Service — With the school’s on Spring Break the week before Easter we are working on a plan to provide a VBS type activity for children and their families building up to a large corporate celebration service and BBQ/potluck afterwards. Please pray for the details and finances for these events.

Rebecca’s (and her parent’s too!) transition into Pre-School — Rebecca will begin to attend preschool in the afternoons starting Monday. She is soooo excited and we are too, but we might cry!


Thank you for doing what you do so that we can do what we do…we each play a part.
Chad & Fabiola

Shalom to the Strangers Amongst Us

Here is a link to a message I gave at Living Way Community Church of Los Angeles.

It is the third from the bottom. You can listen there or download it for later.

God Bless! ~ Chad