March 2020 Report

Greetings from quarantine. I look forward to seeing you and shaking your hand in the future or giving you a hug! I believe we all miss those personal touches. But for now I hope that this letter will give you some sense of personal touch.

This is an excerpt from Chris’s newsletter:

There has been great hysteria in our nation regarding the Corona virus, and there’s certainly reason for concern with a high mortality rate, especially among the elderly and those with poor health. We’re all trying to figure out what the best way forward is to protect our vulnerable members, but not give into a spirit of fear! Let us all pray against the virus and seek God’s wisdom in this uncertain time!

I had the opportunity to help train a church in evangelism in Nevada this past month. Pastor Nathan Lee, an EE fieldworker, and longtime college minister, invited me to learn another evangelism training tool, XEE, that he has seen bear fruitfulness among young people. While spending time with Nathan, he shared some very alarming statistics. According to Him, 85% of young people that go to college leave the church – a huge percentage. But another statistic that I hadn’t heard is that 85% of students who were in a church in college will leave the church once they enter the work force. If you do the math, that means that only 2 or 3 people out of 100 that enter college and then enter the work force will remain in the church! If this is true, this is more alarming than the Corona virus! Way more alarming! But thankfully, we have a spiritual vaccine for the “sin virus”! Of those college students who Nathan has trained in evangelism, 95% have stayed in the church! It’s almost a total cure!

If these numbers are accurate, then we should have a dead-serious urgency to train the people in our churches, particularly in evangelism, for is it not the gospel, after all, that we will stand in, and that we will be saved by if we keep it in memory through continual training? (1 Corinthians 15:1-2) Jesus said “ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain…” (John 15:16) The fruit that remains is faithful, available, teachable (and trainable) disciples!

I’m thankful that although our church is small in number, we have many people that are willing to be discipled! Also, I have found believers outside of our church that I have met in my apartment complex that have been faithfully attending my bible study in my apartment. I have asked one such individual, Gary, to consider evangelism training, but with all of the Corona virus concerns, these discipleship efforts seem to be disrupted! Please pray that the Lord would give us wisdom and discernment moving forward, that we would do our best to protect our most vulnerable members from this virus, while continuing to disciple them!

While our whole world is being disrupted by the Corona Virus, we continue to press forward in our ministry efforts by using the technologies that are available. We are using Zoom (a teleconferencing app) as a method of continuing our services online. We even had some visitors from Arizona with us in our services last Sunday. Many others are using other platforms and we thank God for the opportunities that all of these afford us. We have also moved our Bible studies on-line. I’m confident that more people throughout the world are seeing the gospel presented today more than before the outbreak of the Corona virus began. We look forward to see how God will bless us as we move forward.

Looks like to me that God is preparing to take us out of this place. That’s what I’m looking for, how about you? But, in the mean time we must be about God’s business, sowing seed. Looks like he’s breaking the hard ground up some to receive the seed.

Please continue to pray for us! We appreciate your support both prayerfully and financially.