Praise report
Posted: November 14th, 2011, 4:33 am
We had our inaugural Radical U service this past Friday night. 20 people were in attendance. A guy who has spent years talking to his friends about their need to put down the bottle and come to Christ has been like a man on fire as we've trained our volunteers and, although he's never lead a small group before or anything like it, he is serving as our first "challenge group" leader to mentor other men. A lady who is a prayer warrior and lover of the Word who never dreamed she'd be leading a group said that she'd been sensing God's call for her to be a mother to other ladies, and now she's going to do that and lead ladies in discipleship. Hopefully, both of these folks won't see their groups stay the same for long and we have other ladies (one being my sister in law) and guys (one an engineer at a nuclear plant) who are preparing to take their own challenge groups once we are large enough in number to do that.
We had V, who you many remember me telling you about earlier in the year, present after she had all but disappeared for months (except she texted my wife often, as well as our pastor's wife). She was there and has been working on our curriculum over the weekend -- pray for her, she's still not committed to living in the way of the Lord BUT we're far far from giving up on her. Another gal, named Amanda, who had also dropped in out of the blue and dropped away from us just as quickly appeared -- again -- out of the blue yesterday morning in church at the end of the pew where my wife and I sit. We jumped up and welcomed her -- but she got a text about 15 minutes into service that her babysitter (her baby was not well) needed her to come get her baby. But, she got info while there about Radical U and our meeting times, big encouragements to come, etc.
Now, dropping back to another area of this ministry. You may recall -- or not (I don't know how much detail I went into back in July) -- that the Reformers Unanimous folks at the training we went to in Illinois had been sort of cool to us since we were pentecostal. They were nice enough, but they also made no bones about it that they thought COG was the "wrong kind of church". We smiled and thanked them for having us anyway. Well, fast forward to last week. The guy over the whole ministry called my pastor and they had a very cordial conversation. The end result is this: We are to call them if we need anything at all, we will be given all the help they can muster, they are going to provide us a contact list of all the other non-chapter (think: pentecostal or allowing women preachers or some other pet issues) churches doing their curriculum, and we are to enjoy the same discount on curriculum as full "chapter" churches.
(On a side note, I had told my pastor back in July or August that I don't know if these people really know what they've got hold of. There are more than 900 churches, mostly in America, that are chapters of Reformers Unanimous; more and more non-Independent Fundamental Baptist churches are learning of this ministry and there is a demand for it that I don't think they'll be able to ignore for long.)
We re-branded it as "Radical U" for our church, and the folks at Reformers Unanimous have had no problem with it. We've discussed it with them and we were told, "That's very good." (It allows us to use their informal reference to the ministry as RU, which appears throughout their curriculum and the culture of that ministry.)
So, we're up and going. And, we're also reaching out in terms of marketing and invitations. That part is and always will be a work in progress. Still, 20 folks who will come to church on Friday night with a desire for more discipleship and helping addicts face and overcome sin --- that's a pretty strong core. Pray, please!!!
We had V, who you many remember me telling you about earlier in the year, present after she had all but disappeared for months (except she texted my wife often, as well as our pastor's wife). She was there and has been working on our curriculum over the weekend -- pray for her, she's still not committed to living in the way of the Lord BUT we're far far from giving up on her. Another gal, named Amanda, who had also dropped in out of the blue and dropped away from us just as quickly appeared -- again -- out of the blue yesterday morning in church at the end of the pew where my wife and I sit. We jumped up and welcomed her -- but she got a text about 15 minutes into service that her babysitter (her baby was not well) needed her to come get her baby. But, she got info while there about Radical U and our meeting times, big encouragements to come, etc.
Now, dropping back to another area of this ministry. You may recall -- or not (I don't know how much detail I went into back in July) -- that the Reformers Unanimous folks at the training we went to in Illinois had been sort of cool to us since we were pentecostal. They were nice enough, but they also made no bones about it that they thought COG was the "wrong kind of church". We smiled and thanked them for having us anyway. Well, fast forward to last week. The guy over the whole ministry called my pastor and they had a very cordial conversation. The end result is this: We are to call them if we need anything at all, we will be given all the help they can muster, they are going to provide us a contact list of all the other non-chapter (think: pentecostal or allowing women preachers or some other pet issues) churches doing their curriculum, and we are to enjoy the same discount on curriculum as full "chapter" churches.
(On a side note, I had told my pastor back in July or August that I don't know if these people really know what they've got hold of. There are more than 900 churches, mostly in America, that are chapters of Reformers Unanimous; more and more non-Independent Fundamental Baptist churches are learning of this ministry and there is a demand for it that I don't think they'll be able to ignore for long.)
We re-branded it as "Radical U" for our church, and the folks at Reformers Unanimous have had no problem with it. We've discussed it with them and we were told, "That's very good." (It allows us to use their informal reference to the ministry as RU, which appears throughout their curriculum and the culture of that ministry.)
So, we're up and going. And, we're also reaching out in terms of marketing and invitations. That part is and always will be a work in progress. Still, 20 folks who will come to church on Friday night with a desire for more discipleship and helping addicts face and overcome sin --- that's a pretty strong core. Pray, please!!!