I don’t know if you have seen any information about our church plants in St. Louis and Fayetteville or not, but I wanted to pass on what I have received concerning their first public meetings.
Wentzville, MO
March 23, 2008 will be a day to remember for Jubilee Church. It was the day that we launched public meetings in a second location . The result was a good one – 109 people attended that launch, which means that Jubilee as a whole was nearly 300 that day! Moreover, in both locations, four people for the first time proclaimed belief in our resurrected Jesus!
As I have reflected on Sunday the past 24 hours, I’ve come to realize that we are living in the good of Ephesians 1:19-20 that says that the same power that raised Christ from the dead in working in us! This supernatural power of God is with us and is the reason why we were able to launch this second location. And through these two gospel outposts of Jubilee, four people’s lives were changed forever – this lifetime and the one that follows.–Bryan Mowrey
Fayetteville, AR
Jack wrote that they had about 85 people in their public launch meeting. Many of those were from Christ’s Church of Joplin, but they did have 9 bona fide guests. They handed out a copy of the book, Blue Like Jazz for their guests to take home and read.
I think this is very good news for us here in Fort Scott. We are a part of a family of churches that are on a mission together. We are with them in their successes and failures. The other side of that is also true. The other churches that we relate to share in our successes and failures. What a privilege to be part of God’s mission in the earth to reconcile all men to God.
I just read the following clip from a blog that I subscribe to. I found it incredibly encouraging. Mark Driscoll pastors a very large church in Seattle, WA called Mars Hill. Here is a report of what happened there over the weekend. Mars Hill is not a Newfrontiers church, but Mark will be speaking at the leadership conference in Brighton, England in July. Thanks to the generosity of others, I get to go and hear him in person. Here is the news.
Something broke this weekend, spiritually. I’m not sure how to explain it, but God’s favor was evident everywhere. We had 8,070 people attend on Sunday, plus however many could not make it into the Eastside Campus or stand up outside the building to listen on speakers because there was no room in the parking lot or on the sidewalk. We had 3,648 for Good Friday services plus however many hundreds got turned away from the 7 p.m. service at Ballard. We had at least 11,718 people altogether this weekend, somewhere near 200 baptisms yesterday alone, and are still trying to figure out how many people got saved. My children loved seeing all the new converts and baptisms yesterday and my two-year-old son Gideon cracked us all up by calling them bath-tisms and asking if he could take a bath in the church too. We told him he can have a bath-tism in a few years when he gets a bit older.
Yesterday while singing with the congregation at each of the five services I preach live, I could not stop weeping. People were singing loudly with their hands in the air. They cheered all day as people came forward to give their lives to Jesus and be baptized. The pastors were up front laying hands on people, praying over them, and leading them to Christ by the dozens at every service. I stood off to the side during the singing to watch what God was doing and multiple people walked up to me weeping and asked me to pray with them to become a Christian.
Going back a week, our downtown campus launched on March 16 with 750 people whom we praise God for. It was super cool to see the launch on the cover of the Seattle P-I along with some great television coverage. The building is a former nightclub that previously dealt with drugs, gangs, shootings, and such. We replaced the condom dispenser in the bathroom with a baby changing station and reused the go-go dancer cage as a coat rack.
That is awesome news indeed. We serve an amazing God who still does remarkable wonders!
