Dreaming In Color

“Before I came to church,” shared Judy, “everything was dark and gray.  Life was without any real direction or purpose.  But now it is like I can see everything in full color.”  We have had an exciting month as we join this wave of what God is doing in South Central Los Angeles.  Drab to multi-color.  Death to life.  This is the story of Easter….something only Jesus can accomplish.  As missionaries here in the city we are dreaming in color – though at times what we see in the natural is bleak and shades of gray.  We are leading others to do the same – see, experience and live their life for what God meant it to be – full of Him.  We are celebrating the amazing things God has done and looking with anticipation towards the completion of other things He has said He will do.

Updates…

Easter Outreach

Our church did its first ever – completely on their own – outreach to our community at South Park.  In many ways it was one of the best outreaches we have ever done.  Everyone did a great job, sacrificing time, energy and money to make it happen. We had around 200 people come through and participate in the various activities. 

Prior to the event we had a training on how to share our faith with others.  This was well used as each person at their station was able to share their faith with people throughout the day. 

We had others from our church go around and talk to the people observing and share the Good News with them as well.

Food is always a hit!  We have a lot of people in our church with the ‘spiritual gift’ of food preparation – so what better way to draw people to our event, bless them, give them a reason to stick around and learn more about what Easter is really all about. 

We had several craft stations (all created and implemented by our emerging leaders) each with a Gospel story connected to it.  So as the children and their parents came around our emerging leaders were able to tell and re-tell the Bible story of how God loves us so much and that He wants a relationship with each one of us!

There were also games, a bounce house, music and much more!  Everyone was involved.  Not only that, but it was the least amount of work we have ever had to do personally as everyone really took ownership and did their part well. 

 Easter Sunday

 

For Easter Sunday we had a full house and best of all we had 5 people commit their lives to Jesus.  On Good Friday we had a powerful night of fasting & prayer and praise….but on Sunday it was time to feast.  During the meal it was amazing watching in every corner, at every table there was ministry taking place.  People were crying, laughing, hugging…and most of the conversations were not with people that they had invited personally.

Fabiola’s Birthday

Last month we (ok, it was me, Chad) incorrectly wrote Fabiola’s birthday as March 26^th, but it was (and always is) April 26^th.  (Oops!)  Well, our church put together a nice surprise cake celebration after one of our services to bless Fabiola and share their love. J

Planned Absences

We had a planned absence during our mid-week service (something we hope to do more often to enable more growth without dependence on us) and were very encouraged to have our indigenous team of 3 take care of all the different classes – adults, youth and children…with a larger than normal turn out. 

Mother’s Day

 

We just finished our teaching series on the family, which ended with Fabiola preaching on Mother’s Day.  The response from people is always so strong when we cover these topics, but the enemy really attacks our family every time we do a series or conference like this.  Justice and Rebecca are now well, but got really sick (emergency room sick for Justice) during the weeks of this series. 

Family News

Beniah keeps us on our toes…he is growing up so fast – every day there is something new he is aware of or doing.  He is now 8 weeks old.

Web Page Help

Do you know how to design or create web-pages?  Would like to donate your expertise to our church plant? We would like to get our web-site fixed up and running so that it can be another tool to connect us with more people. 

Please Pray with Us…

·      Bible Series – Our community is severely Bible-illiterate and so for the rest of the year we will be doing an overview study of the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation to help motivate people to read the Word, understand the Word and most importantly live the Word.

Pray with us that this would be a powerful time to connect with people; connect people to God and see His might and power revealed in this community on a daily basis.

·      Tutoring Graduation – June 1^st

We’ve been working with about 30 students and it is time to celebrate their progress. 

Please pray for our Awards Dinner, which serves as an outreach to the families that we are ministering to through this ministry. 

·      Summer Events – Please cover the following June/July events in your prayers:

o   Worship and Music classes

o   Sport’s Camp

o   WOW Jam

o   Summer Camps

o   Family outings

o   And much, much more….

Not all our dreams will become a reality, but God has given us some wonderful dreams – and since He is the Author and Finisher we know they will blossom into full-color realities.  It is wonderful to be able to share these dreams, these hopes, these deep purposes and directions with people.  Thank you for dreaming with us as God continues to minister life change in people all around us. 

Thank you for your prayers and support.  Really!

Chad, Fabiola, Rebecca, Justice and Beniah

Spring Showers

Probably the biggest part of empowering the urban poor is introducing each person to Jesus.  Without Jesus the training, education or encouragement that we give only takes them so far.  Many people do not know much about Jesus or the story of the Bible.  We have our work cut out for us.  Full transformation does not take place overnight, but as we continue to invest in the lives of people sharing the Story and Spirit we see real change – change we believe will effect generations and ripple throughout eternity. 

This spring it has been refreshing to watch the transformation in the people we minister to.  After three youth made a strong commitment to make Jesus their Lord, one of them said, “I feel like I just took a shower.”  A week later we got to pray with another young man who counted the cost and decided to follow Jesus.  That is just the beginning.

We have seen shy and timid people willing to be greeters and even find the boldness to go out and share their faith. A group organized an Easter outreach – something that took our church to a whole new level of empowerment and dependence on God.  New believers are inviting their friends and neighbors to come to church and to know Jesus – praying for them on the spot, sharing favorite Bible verses.  We have begun to see more sacrificial giving of both time and money.  People’s vocabulary is changing indicating how they see this church as theirs and not as “Pastor Chad’s” church.  Individuals are taking time to make phone calls to check in and ask how things are going or report and give updates with one another.  People are loving one another…and even loving those that previously were the ‘unlovables’.

Speaking of new life….thank you for rejoicing with us in the birth or our son, Beniah Benjamin.  What a joy he is – and what a month this has been learning to be a family of five.  Continue to lift our family (and our rest) in your prayers please.

Please also be in prayer for our Mother’s Day service and outreach this month. There are so many single-mothers and other women that need to know the love of their Father and be empowered through the grace and love of Jesus. 

Thankful for your prayers that lift up the unlovable and cause true transformation,

Chad, Fabiola, Rebecca, Justice and Beniah

New Life, Next Exit

Updates…

Reaching Ex-Prisoners: The Unwanted & Despised

Please be in prayer with us as we continue to pursue God’s will for a potential amazing way to continue training-up more leaders and planting more churches.  We are considering obtaining a house near our church to create a men’s home where 3-4 handpicked ex-prisoners could come and be mentored, trained-up and then empowered and released to plant more churches.  This would be a 2-year internship type program and we would partner with other agencies, such as Prison Fellowship, to help us with the administrative and other practical sides of things.  These men will have already been identified and begun their Bible school studies while inside the prison system. 

For the men’s house to be set up we’re looking at probably a year out, but there are a handful of men to be released as soon as this summer that Chad will be visiting with during the next month at the state prison. There are a lot of details and questions that still need to be worked out, but we wanted to include you in the prayerful process to discern what God would want to do through this ministry and through the church we are currently planting. 

Thank You!

·         T.V. Last month we asked for help and we received a great new large screen TV for one of our children’s classes at the church.  It has already been used a lot and really helps as they now can all see the screen when they do their worship videos and other teaching and fun material that they use there.  

BEFORE

AFTER

·   Yard Sale. We also received some donations for our yard sale – thank you to everyone that participated.  We had a very successful yard sale – the first one run solely by our emerging indigenous leaders.  Yeah!!!  They were able to welcome everyone into our property and invite them to come out for our services and Easter programs. 

·        Lobby/Youth Room Transformation.  Currently we’re still waiting on everything to come together for the couches and other elements to transform our youth room into a more comfortable and versatile space.  The goal is that the youth who meet on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays have a nice space that can also be used for our pastoral counseling times, prayer times, as a reception or lobby space after service and for the parents of our tutoring program to have a nice place to be while their children are in classes.

Also we will be starting an ESL (English as a Second Language) class for adult in this same space in May with or without the transform! 

Web Page Help

Do you know how to design or create web-pages?  Would like to donate your expertise to our church plant? We would like to get our web-site fixed up and running so that it can be another tool to connect us with more people. 

Family News:

Our son Beniah is here!  We are so blessed to have Beniah Benjamin in our lives.  Rebecca and Justice love to hold him and give him lots of kisses.  They have great plans for what they will do with him when he is a little bigger.  He was born on March 21^st – so he is just about 1 month old and seems to grow every single day.  We’re taking lots of pictures so you’ll probably see at least one in the next few updates.  J

 
 

Fabiola’s Birthday….is just around the corner!  [March 26^th to be exact.] 

Please Pray with Us…

·         Pray that we may effectively engage, equip and empower our church while we do outreach and ministry in the park, community and during our special services this weekend.  Pray with us that we would see our church engaged, matured and trained-up in God’s love to reach more people for Him. 

Good Friday service

Easter outreach at the park (Saturday)

Easter Sunday service

·         Please pray with us for salvations! We had a great evangelism training time last Sunday after service – the majority of the church stayed after for the training!  Pray that we might effectively share our faith with friends, family, neighbors and even people we've never seen before – so that God might get the glory. 

·         Family Series  - One of the biggest needs in our community is teaching, guidance, help and healing for the families.  God has such a great plan and purpose for us through the family and we will be teaching about that for the next few weeks.  Please pray for a lot of new visitors and for families to be healed and transformed by the Word and the Spirit. 

We are excited about this season, the Easter season, where we are able to really focus on what Christ did for us.  We have new life!  We have left the old and embrace the amazing new life that He has given to us….now let us pray together and labor together so that more people may exit their old ways and encounter this amazing life!

Happy Easter!

Chad, Fabiola, Rebecca, Justice and Beniah

Unity – Partnerships (God’s Our Drug)

While you pour into this ministry and our family we wanted to share how this fountain of blessing continues to extend further.  We have been pouring not only into our own community and church, but into other churches and communities as well.  We want to support others.  We can do more together—unity is powerful.  We are reaching out to see these new partnerships develop so that more people can know Jesus and grow in Him.

We have hosted prayer meetings with other area pastors. We have visited other churches and offered trainings to churches much larger than our own and even worked with some of them to put on outreaches in the park. We have had prayer and strategy meetings with Christian teachers that taught at the public school a few blocks from our church.  These teachers already know hundreds of the high schoolers that walk by our church every day.  We have opened the doors of our church so that through these partnerships we can reach more of these youth and help build a bridge in this community between cultures, languages, ages, and even rival gangs.  Together we can reach more youth for Christ. 

“That’s like your drug, huh?” said one of the youth with eyes wide open as he observed a prayer time.  “You guys just got high, didn’t you!?” he shouted out – amazed at what he had just witnessed.  This youth was trying to contextualize that peace that passes all understanding and that inexpressible joy that comes with being with Jesus.  The disciples were accused of being drunk after their prayer meeting in that upper room and now our youth are witnessing the internal change that takes place when our real, living God comes and meets with them.  We want more people to observe and experience that God is real and get to know and grow in Jesus. 

Lastly, we wanted to thank you for praying with us for marriages and families. As you may already know three couples from our church have gotten married in the last few months.  We held our first wedding at our church at the end of February (see picture in the last post) – it showcased powerfully the transformation that the Holy Spirit is causing in our community.  This couple was also baptized on the same day as their wedding!  It was a great day of celebration for our church family. 

Please pray with us for more baptisms and salvations – especially in this strategic Easter season.  We will be starting a teaching series on the family after Easter, so please pray for that to have a lasting impact as we penetrate deeper into enemy territory to proclaim that “Jesus is Alive!” 

We are thankful for Jesus giving us life and that He has given us you to partner with so that together we can reach even more people for Him! 

The Wolyn Family