Urban Church Planting

This past year Joseph has been partnering with a friend, Chad, a regional director from World Impact. They have been praying and meeting together to form a partnership to train church planters in the urban areas of Los Angeles and Las Vegas. They recently held a 2-day training event with church planters from throughout Los Angeles and Nevada. They are starting an LA/Urban Church Planting Network to reach out to the under resourced communities.  They are beginning in Los Angeles and then plan to begin more urban church planting networks in Las Vegas, Oakland, Houston, Portland and Seattle. These are metropolitan cities that have very little gospel initiatives in their neighborhoods.
 

 

After the 2 day training in May Pastor Chad and Joseph will lead a 12-month cohort beginning in June.  They had desired to have 2 cohorts—one in English and one in Spanish, but the lack of Spanish trainers means they will instead do a bilingual church planting cohort in English and translate it into Spanish. The   purpose of the cohorts is to coach the church planting teams as they create their mission, vision & values; how to engage the culture; plans for discipleship; plans for engaging their community missionally and their plans to develop leaders in their church plants.
 

Partnering with EveryOne Free as a case manager Michelle and her team recently graduated another set of survivors from their 24-week program. It was so encouraging to hear the words of the survivors as they shared how much they have grown and healed. “On the weeks that I needed something inspiring to work on, I received it. This class changed my life. It gave me more openness about learning. This journey is not linear. There are ups and downs. Some days we felt good and other days we felt bad. But this class changed my life. I came in with anger. A lot of my charges hindered my nursing licensing. Michelle was helping me through that process. She gave me a great resource to seal my record. I want to encourage everyone that no matter what is holding you back, you can get through it!” (recent graduate)

Please pray for the 2 new classes we have running for survivors—with over 50 new survivors enrolled in the program. Pray for Michelle as she connects with each woman and alumni to support, encourage and serve.

Thank you for your continual prayers, support and encouragement to us! We are so very thankful!