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Dear
Eric & Cathy,
Thanks for all
your prayers about our move to Manchester.
We are all done, and it was one of the smoothest moves we've ever had!
Praise the Lord! We are all settled in the new place, and everyone is
enjoying the extra space.
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reaching teens
I've suggested
to the leaders of The
Plant that they consider starting a new work to target a more
radically non-Christian teenage group, focused around the football
teams that I coach. The vision is simply this. The teams need
corporate sponsors to fund the purchase of new equipment. And even
though The Plant doesn't have the resources to be this sponsor, I've
suggested that we look to our contacts to see if we could find
someone who could donate this money through The Plant. Through my
contacts with the teams, I could then encourage the boys (and their
families) to "pay homage" to their sponsor and attend on
occasion. If we could pull together something that would be relevant
at speaking into their world, the hope would be that we could begin
to build a church through these contacts.
This is a huge
vision, and would take a lot of resources. At present, we don't have
anyone to provide the £2000 in sponsor money. And beginning a new
work like this entails a certain amount of risk. At present, I'm more
interested in seeing how the leadership of The Plant responds than I
am in trying to push forward to make it happen. Having their interest
and backing (whether it happens now or not) is really more important
at this stage. So please be in prayer about all this.
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practice has begun
We just
finished our third week of practice this past weekend (in snow &
ice!). We have had 25-30 boys show up so far, with the major push
into the schools yet to come. And I'm beginning to get the help I
need to begin molding these two groups into teams.
Most
encouraging, however, is the number of contacts this door has opened
for me. From players on the senior team to folks in the community who
have responded to the newspaper articles, it's exciting to see the
many new folks this brings my way. Please continue to pray for me on
this. I sometimes feel a bit over my head!
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a seminary student interested in church planting
Well, if the
camera disk didn't crash, he would be there to the right! But Tom is
a student at Moorlands Bible College
on the south coast of England.
He's just finishing up a 5 week practical "rotation" in a
local church - which he did here at The Plant.
Like most of
his classmates at Moorlands, Tom has little expectation of finding a
job in the church after graduation. There simply aren't many
evangelical churches around. And the few that exist, tend to hire
from within their own churches. Young men like Tom are prime
candidates for building a church planting movement. And of course,
the key need here is for money.
The Northwest
Partnership has asked me to help them think about how to raise funds
for church planters like Tom. And we've just begun work on a fund
raising video to distribute to potential donor churches. Please pray
for this project...not only that it would get done soon and be done
well...but that God would use it to build many lasting partnerships
with churches that have the resources to help fund this kind of
church planting movement. And pray that when Tom graduates in 18
months, funds might be available to make planting a church a viable
option for him.
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