We are seeing the Lord bless the teaching of His word at Alva Baptist Church!
Since beginning to serve in June and agreeing with the elders of this church about the calling to pastor in July and then the official induction in August we are seeing signs of life!
We have seen the Lord bless a weekly prayer meeting (with about 30% of the membership attending AND praying), a discipleship course called Christianity Explored, a youth club and a growing community on Sunday morning and evenings. Other churches are reaching out to us to help and plan for reaching the communities in little ways.
Somebody asked if we record sermons! Like anyone would ever want to hear me twice! :) Seriously, it exposed the false humility of presuming that I could somehow limit how God may choose to use the preaching of His word in Alva. I sort of cringe at the realization that it was I who cared too much about my preaching (good or bad; performance, as opposed to faithfulness), rather than being willing to share with people who cannot attend on any given Sunday.
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Alva Baptist Church will celebrate it's 125th Anniversary on September 23rd! God has contributed a man trained by serving at Metro Calvary Chapel, to an uninterrupted continuum of preaching the word in Alva that might have stopped. That is pretty cool.
We are so blessed to have folks with the collected wisdom of the better part of the last century as a part of our congregation. One might mistakenly think that the older generation would be somehow outdated in their outlook, but I find treasure! They represent the sort of life that is passing away from this world, if we continue to fail to pass on faith to the succeeding generations. Mind you, its not without its challenges, but God is faithful and we are blessed.
Our yout group has two or three people over 50 helping out who are totally cool and have 40-year-old stories about youth groups! Its amazing! And they are not uptight and they don't fail to reach out to kids. And we play sports and games and share a sermon on some memory verse every Friday.
We see about 20 kids coming each week. Its a kids club really 9-14. The older kids aren't so interested, though the range gets older and older. We have just opened the doors and minister to whomever comes, rather than turn kids away hoping for teens. The hardest kids have become softened and now more hard kids are coming around. We just keep praying and more and kids of drunks, fighters and Jehova's Witness are coming around; its challenging but its God's work and we shepherd sheep and watch God transform wolves. They all want metal camouflage bibles!!! We have lacked women helpers, but several women have expressed interest when we announced it on Sunday.
There is stress and challenge and trials, but it is the price worth paying to lead people to Christ and baptize new believers in waterfalls (BALTIC, ARCTIC WATER!)
Thats right we are seeing folks come to faith and ask to be baptized! Hallelujah!!!
I recommend stepping out into whatever crazy plan that God would seed your mind with. Its how He builds faith and assures of His leading. And then after you has seen God PROVE faithful we are able to depend on Him as entirely as His work requires.
Its not like we have arrived. (not by a long shot!) Please don't stop praying for us!
War in the heavenlies!
Light and Life!!!
Love, David Elizabeth, Daniel & Josiah
We would love to hear from you. (even if you just comment on this blog below)
5 comments:
It's great to hear from you guys, what a blessing about the youth group and the prayer meetings. We had LoveWorks at Metro yesterday, and I was reminded of our other missions family doing God's work in Europe. Know we're praying for all of you and we miss you. We're blessed to hear your stories and read of your faithfulness in the call God has on your lives, and hearing God's faithfulness to rekindle the flame for Him in the hearts of the Scottish people. Grace and peace, Christy Trabun
Hi David and Elizabeth. We are glad to hear of all God is doing in Alva, and thank you for the timely encouragement to follow God's leading in spite of our own inability to accomplish what he's called us to--He will do it! Blessings, our prayers our with you. -The Shelps
Dave, thanks for your update! We're so into gimmicks in this country to bring people into our churches--we have to be young, hip, and cool. But you're seeing that it's those who love God, regardless of their age or hipness who make a difference, and we don't need gimmicks. That IS a treasure!
beautiful news.
"How lovely on the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news. announcing peace, proclaiming news of happiness, OUR GOD REIGNS!"
blessings to you all.
we miss you and delight to hear of the Lord's work through you.
we also take to heart the exhortation to embrace the crazy plan God has for us... we're doing it and jumping out of the safety net.
Jay jokes that we were in the boat, saying, "Lord make the wind and waves be still" while God was saying, "Get out of the boat!"
Got it.
we're out.
It is SO AWESOME to hear the faithfulness of God through your obedience to hear and step out into ALL that He has for you! It is just like the Word says, that your faith increases our faith, and each time one steps out the faith of others around you increases! "Now to Him who is ABLE to do exceedingly abundantly above all we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen."
We miss you guys, but are encouraged by the faithfulness of God in your lives that we can ALL see, because you are holding onto His hand and going where He leads:) This is ETERNAL! We hope that sometime He will allow us to come and see you guys:) Until then we are praying for you! We love you guys!
God bless you!
Shane and Christina
2 Timothy 2:4
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