Dear Saints,
By the grace of God, we bring you greetings from the families of the Community Church Ministries. God has been so gracious to our families and has been blessing the field of work He has called us to do in the midst of diverse challenges. Having said that, we are overwhelmingly thankful to you for your prayerful and financial support partnerships.
Transformation stories
Over the past months, the Lord has been gracious for us to baptize 39 new converts at Hilltop, Palmview and Forestland Community Churches in the last three months. Palmview has secure an additional property near their church that will be used for other ministry purposes in the future. Forestland has also recommence her Awana kids activities and due the new growth among these kids, the church now has an intermediate church. This church is exclusive of the Teens and Children’s Church intentionally for kids only. These churches divisions will serve as human resource for future ministry gifting a calling.
The ministry ran a three-day orality training for 11 of our churches with 39 representatives learning how to evangelize using true stories from the Bible. Bigboy Sunday a local pastor who can’t read or write is now ably preaching to his congregants by telling new true stories weekly in his vernacular and it’s a blessing to his members at the Mulbah Town Community Church. Shadrach, Zhayun and Stephen from the Island Community Church has organized themselves in a team that goes from their community telling trues stories from the Bible every Wednesday.
A new church plant began in Compound, Lakota District by Pastor Tiawo. This church is the second daughter church of the Bong Mine Community Church and was started by a Nigerian who joined our ministry because of his passion for missions. It began in July with 18 members and is currently meeting on a porch for church activities. He is testing this new church plant in order to visit his home land to begin CCM church plants in Nigeria.
The Bong Mine Community Church is working hard as the host church as the timing for our annual convention comes up in February 2017. The church has now been able to raise all the walls of her church building and has installed the doors. She also recommence her Awana kids activities weekly and is having an average of 99 kids in worship service per Sunday. That church also introduced a week long prayer service during the first week of every new months and God has been using that to draw new members to that church.
Three days of revival meeting was held at Jon-kao-kolay, German Camp #5, and Blomue led by Pastors Leon, Masua, Morgan and Duyour. This revival was held to help awaken and strengthen the New Hope Community Church members in Jon-kao-kolay who were giving less time to church activities due to the peak of their farming which serves as a major means of sustenance for their families. During the revival, a total of 401 persons attended the revival on aggregate with 217 persons making decisions to follow Christ. From that number, 11 new persons joined that church including the town chief who visited for the first time and promised to bring his family through next Sunday. On Saturday, a leadership training was conducted for all of the five newly planted churches in the Gibi belt with four of them sending leaders to be trained.
This Saturday our Jesus Film team moved into camp #5 to show the Jesus film. We had 127 persons and attendance with 8 persons accepting Christ as Savior. After the film show, we invited those without church to visit us at New Hope Community Church and we had 7 guests responding to that invitation.
Two of the newly planted churches in the Gibi belt, Menata and Karnga Town Community Churches were able to get 17 bundles of zinc and roofing materials for the construction of their churches roofs. This will help provide shelter to their congregations during the raining season. The church at Karnga Town has now discipled 16 new converts through their discipleship classes and are set to be baptized on the second week in November.
The Kakata Community Church has been able to put up three class rooms structure to host the students that were holding classes in the church edifice since last year. The church is also growing in membership through the leadership led by Pastor Masua.
The church at Cotton Tree also began a primary school to help educate the high number of kids from the village who cannot read or write or have to walk long distances on the risky car road. Richard Konkon, the passionate evangelist who serves as the lead is really doing well with the new church plant spiritually as well.
The church at Kandakia Town, a predominant Muslim village has been meeting, but lost lots of her members due to the challenge of having a secure place of meeting to worship. As you may know this church started under a tree, but the rain seasons has been challenging them.
Gracefield Community Church has been very intentional about her evangelistic exercises and is scheduled to baptize 10 new members in the next month.
Ministry constraints and challenges for prayer
As we approach the dry season, this is the time we take advantage of the weather to run all our Jesus film activities for new church plants. The amount of Jesus films and locations we have earmarked are intentional for the new church plants we envision to start in 2017. We now have at least 7 new church plant sites awaiting us. We need 5 projectors, 5 generators, more assorted wires, 25 flood lights, gasoline and 25 pieces of evangelistic DVDs to run a successful outreach for 5 teams. A projector will cost $500.00 apiece.
We need at least 10 pieces of digital cameras to be placed at strategic church plant locations to captures pictures of most of the stories we tell in our mission updates. With these cameras, I won’t have to be there before the pictures can be captured. A $150.00 can purchase one of those cameras here through a one-time donation.
The church in Buchanan is experiencing a tremendous challenge. The land on which the church was purchased is a swampy land and the congregation had been having challenges in holding worship services thus scattering the new converts. A one-time donation of $1000.00 to purchase cement and steel rods will help raise a concrete foundational walls to prevent the water from entering the church and to enable the church to keep meeting there.
The churches at Compound, New Hope, Light House, Karnga, Meneta, Baota Community Churches are having challenges meeting their congregations during the day due to their farming activities. They have now strategize to hold all their bible studies, prayer meetings and midweek services and trainings at night when they all return from their farms. The need for a portable solar lamp to lighten the meetings at night is dire. A solar light with four bulks can lighten each congregation costing $150.0 per set. A total of $750.00 can cover the total cost and those light will be used to help provide sustainable light all year long during night church actives for these new congregations.
The need for study bible to be given to each new lead church planters cannot be over emphasized. Since most of these church planter have since been to theological schools, we intend to train them on the jobs through our mobile training centers in Monrovia, Kakata, Gibi, Bong Mine and Cotton Tree respectively. We need at least 35 pieces of study bibles at the cost of $25.00 each. Running one training center cost us $350.00 per training. This is an ongoing training designed to keep equipping our new church planters to lead healthy churches as we go on planting new churches and sustaining the older set ones. Training these new church planters will help to grow the church numerically and spiritually.
The need to still provide roofing materials to new churches that we normally start underneath trees and porches is a challenge. We can begin a church anywhere, but when numerical growth begins or rainy season starts, the churches need secure meeting place.
A motor bike being placed at a strategic church planting site for transportational and evangelistic means for church planters to attend some of our trainings is very crucial. A donation of $1000.00 can purchase and document the legal papers for a bike. We need at least four pieces to empower the evangelistic movements of our church planters visitations in the surrounding church plant sites.
Our intentional outreach activities targeting kids attract a lot of them. At some of these gathering we have 250 kids coming. We usually run them through games exercises and make the tire. Therefore, need to provide snacks for them after the Awana activity is necessary, but it is a huge challenge for our ministry. A $150.00 donation can provide snacks for one Awana club for a month.
Upcoming Events
- Local churches discipleship activities
- Our Jesus Film Evangelistic team begin outreach this week.
- Pastoral Retreat schedule for November 3-5. A gathering of 40 Pastors and church planters, for sharing new best practices mission strategies, reviewing strategies and planning.
- Monthly mobile training center leadership training
- Weekly Awana kids outreach activities.
- Baptism ceremonies at Gracefield, Karnga Town, New Hope churches.
- James Gant, Morgan Mulbah, Tuyour Harris and Micheal Kpolar are all undergoing marital counseling in preparation for marriage in December
