What is a Church Planting Cohort?

Us with Pastor Reuben from Solid Rock Church

As we have been working in Cru City the past 3 years the Lord has done some amazing things in terms of helping churches grow in their evangelism, discipleship, leadership development and multiplication.  One area we have seen a need for is more training and encouragement to those starting out as pastors and planting churches. Joseph and Pastor Ruben, from Solid Rock Church, have developed an 8 month interactive training for people who desire to plant a church.  They reworked it from the Gospel Coalition and Acts 29 organization.  It is a seminary level training including videos, coaching, discussions, articles, field assignments and textbook readings.  The heart behind this new cohort is to help church planters and planting teams with practical steps on how to start a new church.

Ranji and Joseph at his 60th Birthday Celebration!

Two of these new church plants we are helping are with a husband and wife (Ranji and Neela) who have a call to start a church reaching out to the Sinhalese speaking people of Sri Lanka. This will be the first Sinhalese speaking Sri Lankan church in Los Angeles.  It will also be bi-lingual to have a place for the younger generation of Sri Lankan’s to come to know the Lord.

The other plant we are helping to start is with a husband and wife (Hunter and Gabby) who desire to plant a multi-ethnic church in the Pomona area. Pomona is a very diverse city with only 12% of the population being Caucasian.  Pomona faces high amounts of poverty, crime, sex trafficking, gangs and foster care needs.

A recent Church Cohort training time! (Hunter is on the far left and his wife Gabby second from the right) Ranji is to the right of Joseph

Both Ranji and Neela, as well as Hunter and Gabby are from Solid Rock Church that we helped plant 3 years ago. We love seeing churches not only have a heart for their own congregation but also to reach out with the gospel to the cities around them.  To send out their own members to begin churches in different cities reaching those who are far from God, so they can hear about the love of Jesus.

 How do you stop sex trafficking with children?

We are beginning to plan and connect with local schools in sharing our trafficking prevention curriculum.  The Lord blessed us with the opportunity to share with schools throughout the Los Angeles area the past couple years—being a part of sex trafficking prevention.  The average age girls are trafficked into prostitution in the US is 12-14 years old; and boys is 11-13 years old.  Those are devastating statistics and as we work with survivors here in Los Angeles those statistics now have real faces behind them.  Survivors that Michelle meets with started out at this young age and that is why we feel it is so important to be a part of the  prevention of what is happening—to stop the evil and pain before it happens.

We are partnered with an organization, EveryOne Free, in Pomona. Joseph is on the leadership team there and has helped developed the trafficking curriculum we utilize in the local schools.  This year EveryOne Free has two interns, Yemi and Vintsy, that Joseph is training to help him do the curriculum at South Junior High again this year.  We have a longstanding relationship with this school and speak there every quarter to over 800 7th graders on sex trafficking prevention. Yemi is finishing her Masters of Social Work at Azusa Pacific University and Vintsy is finishing her Bachelor Of Social Work at the same school. Joseph will be training Yemi and Vintsy, who will also begin to speak at additional junior highs and high schools in the Los Angeles area.   Please pray for them as they speak at these schools—that the Lord would use them to help children understand what trafficking is and to be aware of the signs  – to prevent this evil from growing.

FAMILY UPDATE….

School is in full swing, Luke is adjusting well to the College Life. He tells us he enjoys having classes beginning after 10am! 🙂  And we are still blessed to see him once in a while and recently spent a family day at the Fair!

Aleeya just celebrated her 4 year “hearing birthday.” She received her 1st cochlear  implant at age 2.5 and is doing amazing in her listening and speaking, she works so hard.