Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! We are so excited to be able to celebrate our Saviors birth and His unspeakable gift of salvation this year with our church family in Lawrence. We are reminded that as He came to be Light to the world, we are called to be light in our city. Please pray for us as we pray for you during this Christmas season to be light to the lost in our community. 

It has been awesome to watch the Lord build His church here in Lawrence! He is the Lord of the harvest and the One who gives the increase and we praise Him for how He is working. Two weeks ago a young man with whom I have been meeting weekly trusted Christ as His Savior. Please pray for him as he grows in his walk with the Lord and for me as I disciple him. 

Please pray for two other teen boys with whom I am meeting regularly for an evangelistic Bible study. Please pray that they would understand the gospel and trust Christ soon. 

We have several folks in our church who have recently trusted Christ and are meeting regularly for discipleship. We are now seeing some of our more mature believers get involved in discipling the new believers in our church. This is such an exciting sign of growth in our church!

In our last letter we were praising the Lord for record attendance and first-time visitors. We certainly want to be careful to praise Him for times of increased attendance and opportunities for ministry. However, we have found that church planting and church growth is not a constant ascent. We can point back to times of numerical growth when the Lord brought us more people than we felt that we could minister to. We praise Him for those exciting times and depend on Him for the energy and strength to minister to those He brings to us. However, there are other times when the growth is less numerical and more personal. Looking at our attendance since our last prayer letter, one might be tempted to think that the Lord stopped building His church. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have seen spiritual growth in those who have recently been saved and in those who have been saved for a little longer. The Lord is building His church! 

It is hard to enumerate spiritual growth in the lives of others in a prayer letter. Let me share some observations that are just as exciting, if not more exciting, than a full auditorium. Recently during one of our Wednesday evening prayer meetings a group of ladies continued praying together even after I had dismissed the service, not because there was some sort of major issue, but simply because they wanted to continue praying together. Several times in the last few weeks I have heard of members texting one another about what they are reading in their personal devotional time to encourage one another. Spouses are sharing with us how they are memorizing Scripture together, and “it’s actually a lot of fun”. A couple of teen girls have recently started teaching some of the kids in our church on Sunday night during our discipleship time and we are regularly hearing our kids talk about things they were taught from the Bible by these teen girls. 

I must be honest, there have recently been Sundays when I was discouraged by the attendance, but the Lord is still working (as He always is) and for that we give Him glory and strengthen our resolve to continue serving Him.