Thanks to our Incredible Launch Team

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Grateful

It's Thanksgiving and there's so much we have to be grateful for.

Last Sunday was our seventh week of holding our worship gatherings. The spirit has been great and it is apparent by both the new faces that we’re seeing and the comments we are receiving that God is moving and building His church. A week ago, we had 82 people (our highest attendance) so far. We have had 30 new visitors and several have asked how they can get involved.

Last Saturday, we delivered 27 Thanksgiving meals to 27 different needy families living near our meeting place. It was amazing the opportunities we had to build relationships and share God’s love with these people.

Last Friday, I had the final meeting with our finance team and we put together a working budget. Money is going to be extremely tight! We still have several items that we need to have donated or purchased before we can move forward with our public launch that we are tentatively planning for March. Yet God, shows His faithfulness as a couple of weeks ago, a church planter that I didn’t even know, happened to “by chance” look at my website and saw that we were trying to find a trailer. As it turns out they are no longer in need of their 16-foot trailer come January. They told us we are welcome to use it. I was moved by their generosity and Kingdom-mindedness! God is so Amazing and continues to show His faithfulness!

I’m currently in the process of thinking through starting small groups. I want to be wise about doing this right. Please pray for me that I will do this in God’s timing and with His wisdom. Also that all of the components and people needed would come together to make this happen.

On December 6^th, I’m excited to have Jennie Kintner, one of our launch team members share her first message with Epic. Jennie is a very gifted communicator and I'm looking forward to hearing her share! We are planning to have her join the speaking rotation once a month. On December 13^th we are planning to have a special Christmas Worship Gathering and this should be a really wonderful time.

Prayer Requests:

· God’s Financial Provision and Wisdom in Stewardship. We need about $50,000 worth of capital expenditures.

· God will continue to use us and expand our impact in our community.

· I need God’s Wisdom and Strength as I lead the church.

· I need God’s wisdom, timing and effectiveness as I look to start small groups.

· God will continue to build His church and that we wont get in the way.

· God’s provision and protection will be on our families.

· Endurance as we recognize that this is a marathon.

This Sunday!

The time is finally here! This Sunday evening we will officially begin holding our first worship gathering. This is our first stage of our 2 stage launch. We are so grateful for the people of First United Methodist Church who allowing us to use their facility. They have been an incredible blessing to work with and they really have heart for the Kingdom. We will be meeting in their Fellowship Hall on Sunday evenings starting this Sunday...YEAH! They are also allowing us to use their equipment and children's ministry space. Thanks for all of you who have been praying with us to find this place. God is Faithful!

Below are some other praises and prayer requests:

Praises:

• We have a place to store our trailer (when we get a trailer). Answer to prayer!
• We have a great location to meet for our services. Thanks for praying about this.
• We have an incredibly committed launch team!

Prayer Requests:

• We have our first official worship gathering (Soft launch) this Sunday Night! Please pray that God will move in a mighty way and that He will Glorified and the lives will be changed.
• Pray that we will remain wise stewards with our resources and time.
• That people who are far from God, will become fully devoted followers of Jesus as a result of this ministry.
• God will continue to protect our hearts, bodies and minds.
• That more and more of the right people will come to join our team over the next several weeks.
• God will give me His words this Sunday as I preach.
• We need people with a passion for children to come and help us out (like most churches:)
• That we will continue to build relationships and meet needs of those living in and around South Mishawaka.

Thank you for all of your prayerful support!

God's Hands

I want to give you an encouraging update.

We are really close to declaring our official meeting sight for our October 11th launch. This Wednesday I will be able to officially make that location known. Please pray as we make this final decision.

This morning I met with a local business man and he knows of someone that may have a place that could work for an office space for us. It is not currently being used and would need some handy work done on it, but it would have three rooms and a conference room space. It would be an ideal location if it works out. Please join with us and pray that this would work out for us.

This is a portion of an e-mail sent out to our launch team from Kim Selis one of our launch team members and local outreach coordinator at Epic:

“We were able to deliver 24 packs of groceries to families in need. Each "pack" contained one bag of frozen food, one bag of non-perishable items, one bag of bread items and one gallon of milk! It was truly amazing to see!

Many opened their doors to us and shared prayer requests, some, while it seemed they had need, felt that their neighbors needed the food more and sent us there, some were just thankful for the food.

There were doors opened for us to return. We were able to take prayer requests from these homes and we prayed together as a team for those requests and will continue to pray and follow up with them.

The group also loaded up, after the delivery and went to one of the homes to help a woman, who had fire damage. The men worked to unhook her stove and get it out to the trash and the women (and children) wiped down walls and the bathroom.”

I drove away from this neighborhood overwhelmed with emotion as I was just so proud of our team and the way they are allowing God to use them to “get their hands dirty” and Live Out His love to this community.

From there I drove to one of our other outreaches that one of our launch team members was leading that afternoon. Peter Metzger who is a senior at Bethel College was hosting the Epic Skate Invitational at Bethel College. People from all over drove in and were able to take part in this event and then were made aware of a new church coming to South Mishawaka. They were given our information and it turned out to be a great day.

The details are coming together in God's timing and we are remaining dependent on His leading. Please continue to pray with us for the following:

• God would use us to meet needs in our community and develop ongoing relationships.
• God would give us discernment on a location for our stage 1 launch this Oct.
• God would would provide us with an office space and storage space for our trailer.
• God will protect our hearts and minds and that we will continue to abide in Him!

I remain humbled to reflect on God holding us in His hands, while inviting us to be His hands.

Abiding in Him!

After much prayer and counsel we have decided to go with a 2 stage launch. Our first launch will take place in a church and we are still targeting that to take place on Oct. 11th. However, this will be more of a word of mouth launch that will be intended to help us build up the launch team and save up finances for a few months (we are trying to save up close to $60,000 to purchase portable equipment). On March 7th we are planning to do our public launch which will take place at Meadow's Edge Elementary School.

Last night I met with our launch team and it seemed important for us to stop and use our meeting time for prayer. We took time to remind ourselves that it is God who must build His church and that all of our strategies and planning are meaningless without His empowerment. John 15:5 has been in my mind all week long. "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." I challenged the team to double their prayer focus in the coming weeks prior to our launch. I shared with them that in order for us to be fruitful we have to be tapped in and know HIS power.

Despite the enemy's attempts to thwart us from the mission we continue to see God's Hand. Our team remains committed and we are continuing to grow. We now have 33 adults and 31 children on our launch team (and we are still seeking more)! We had $16,000 come in last month despite having several of our families struggling to find work. We are so grateful for our outside partnerships (churches and friends) that are faithfully giving towards this church plant. We can't thank you enough!

God is amazing and it is our deep desire to abide in Him and to walk in accordance to His leading. Please continue to keep us in your prayers. Below are some ongoing prayer requests:

• God will protect our hearts and minds.
• We will remain steadfast on our mission of living in and living out God's love as we seek to reach people that are far from God.
• God will provide us with the right meeting space for our Oct. 11th launch.
• God will continue to meet our financial needs (both for Epic and our individual families).
• Physical and relational protection on our families.
• That we will abide in Him and as a result He will make us fruitful.
• That we will have victory over the ongoing attacks from the enemy.

Josh...and stuff!

There’s so much to share with you. We have made an update video that I would invite you to check out at: http://www.epicmishawaka.org/Epic/Video.html

We have had a huge answer to prayer. As many of you know, I have been praying a great deal for administrative help. Recently one of our launch team members, Josh Yoder, quit his very good paying job in a management position because it ended up interfering with his commitment to the Epic Launch Team on Sundays. Josh is a recent graduate from Purdue University and has his degree in Business management. In hearing this, it seemed to me that perhaps God’s person for the position was already on our team. He has the skill, I know him and his heart (as a former student in my youth ministry), He believes and is deeply committed to the vision at Epic and he’s somebody I could work with. Finally, the big test was when I told him that he would need to raise his support and work a part time job, as Epic would be unable to pay him. After praying about it and seeking Godly counsel, he came back and said that he thought God was in this, and that he was ready to take another step of faith to become the Intern for the Director of Administration while raising his support to do so. As of late this last week we confirmed and finalized the decision and Josh is officially on board. This is a huge blessing and answer to prayer! Please be praying with Josh, as naturally a step like this can be unnerving and yet very rewarding. Please pray for God to honor his step of Faith and obedience and that Josh’s needs would be met.

Please be praying for the following:

· I am going tomorrow to meet with the principal for the school. We will be talking about ways that we can partner with the school. Additionally we will talk about a rental agreement in that school. Please pray that everything would go smoothly for this.

· Please pray for unity in our team and within our partnering churches.

· Pray that I will have incredible wisdom and discernment to lead.

· Please pray for us as we continue to try and be Christ to our community.

· Pray for God's hand of protection to be on our hearts and families.

 
· Please pray for God to bring more people to our launch team.

· Pray that God will supply all our needs. 

· Please pray that God will continue to build His church and that His will would be done and that He May get all the Glory!

Momentum

I'm very excited about our Launch Team. We are now up to 22 adults and 21 kids (mostly young children). Our Launch Team is very committed and it's awesome to have a team of people that have a heart for Living in and Living out God's love. We are humbled to be used by God to lead such an amazing team of people.

A couple of weeks ago, we partnered with the city of Mishawaka and a couple of other local churches in the community (River Valley and Vineyard) to help work on a home that the city of Mishawaka selected for us. It was cool to be tangible expressions of Christ's body and love. It was exciting to see various churches partnering together for the sake of the Kingdom.

Last weekend our Launch team did a prayer walk over a large section of South Mishawaka. It was incredible to be walking throughout the city and to actually see the needs. Over 46% of South Mishawaka is low income/poverty line. It was moving to walk the streets and to see those first hand (at a slower pace of walking vs. driving) as we sought to look with the eyes of God. Our prayer is that God would touch and bless the hearts and lives of those who are so desperately in need. Also, that we would be Christ to our community. It was an incredible day to be praying the needs that God put before us.

The Launch Team will be meeting again this Sunday for our next session where we will be covering vision, training, values and community. Please pray that God will give us incredible insight and unity as we go into this meeting. In conjunction with our meetings, the Launch Team is reading two books this summer (of which I highly recommend for any church) "Simple Church" & "Jim and Casper go to church." Thanks to the inspiration of the "Jim and Casper" book the launch team is planning to break into smaller groups and set up several dates to visit a variety of churches in order to learn and grow from our experiences. Please pray that God will give us His heart and mind as we consider what it's like for a "new person" to come to our future gatherings.

Thanks for your ongoing prayerful support. Below is a short list of prayer requests that you can pray on our behalf.

• Pray that God will bring more of the "right people" to join our launch team. We have a goal to have 42 adults on our launch team prior to our launch this October.
• Pray that God will solidify where we will be meeting. Our goal is to know this by the end of the month.
• Pray for God's protection on our hearts, minds and family.
• Pray for a heart and mind of unity and focus within our Launch Team.
• Pray for God's blessing and protection to be upon our Lead Team churches in addition to all of our partnering churches.
• Pray that God will give Ann and I wisdom to lead.
• Pray that God will continue to raise up more prayer and financial partners.

Blessed to have you partnering with us!