Here's What Happened in July!
The month of July was humbling and incredible. While the world has continued to seem chaotic, God has faithfully provided for us. God could have sent anonymous checks to our mailbox, had a rich billionaire randomly decide to give us a couple million dollars, or had Publishers Clearing House show up at our doorstep, but instead, He chose to use you! And for that, we have been so grateful! While random money dropping into our accounts is never a bad thing, if that is the extent of how God provided for us financially, we would have missed out on the joy of being joined with you in ministry.
I wanted to take a few moments and thank you for some of the ways you have been generous in partnering with us.
You’ve been Praying!
In these months leading up to our move, we can easily become distracted with our to-do lists and miss the most important thing we should be doing: praying. We asked for your help and sent out about 60 prayer cards! Many of you have shared with us that you received our card and are actively praying for us. We can’t tell you how encouraging that is!
You can pray along with us by checking out this previous blog.
You’ve been Generously Giving!
Last month, we shared where we stood financially. God had already provided for us in tremendous ways. We prayed and asked you to pray that God would provide even more in the month of July.
In the month of July alone, God led individuals and churches to commit over $70,000 to this church planting work!!! This money has allowed us to be fully funded for our first 12 months of ministry in the city! Additional money raised now will go toward moving up to NYC earlier, ministry opportunities in the city, promotional materials, and gaining new partners. While we still have a ways to go, this month was a huge step forward for us!
WE ARE BLOWN AWAY by God’s faithfulness and your generosity. Thank you for supporting our ministry!
Your Partnership is Helping us get to Queens Sooner than Expected!
Our COVID-Adjusted plan was to move up to NYC in January. With these additional resources, we believe that we can move up sometime later this Fall. By moving up earlier than January, we are able to begin our training residency with the SEND Network and North American Mission Board when we move up! We are so excited to be partnering with New Hope Church in Jamaica Queens! Pastor Jonathan Nason leads New Hope and is a dynamic leader in Queens. He has led New Hope to begin an initiative called City Engagement. City Engagement is an initiative committed to multiplying and mobilizing leaders to engage Queens, New York for the sake of gospel saturation. You can find out more information about New Hope Church by clicking here and find out more information about City Engagement by clicking here!
Prior to moving up, our plan is to take the next couple of months and fully focus on building partnerships and raising support. We hope to travel to a few places to have face to face meetings with Pastors and individuals where we’ll be able to share about the vision God has given us. We would also love to be able to host vision nights where you help by inviting friends and family to hear about how they can invest in the work God is doing in Queens. We will never again have this opportunity to be able to fully focus on support raising so we want to take advantage of it. BUT, we need YOUR help!
Your Continued Promotion Will Exponentially Increase our Ability to do ministry in the city!
We’ve talked about what partnership looks like before. Primarily, we ask for our ministry partners to join our work in four ways:
Prayer - Committing to pray daily for God’s work in Queens
Provision - Committing to give financially to support the needs of the work in Queens
Participation - Committing to come and join us either on a short term mission trip or by relocating and finding employment in Queens
Promotion - Committing to share with others about what God is doing through us in Queens
In this season, we need people like you to promote what we’re doing in Queens to the people you know!
Let me give you a real life example of what that might look like:
We have a friend who was already praying for and encouraging us regularly. She thought through people and churches that she knew who might be interested in investing in NYC Church Planting. Through her reaching out on our behalf, we have been able to partner with a couple who were very excited about the Gospel being proclaimed in NYC! We are thankful for this friend who promoted what God has called us to do and for our new friends who are committing to pray for and financially support us!
How can you help?
Think through your network. . . Has God placed people in your life who would get excited about a new church being started in a place like Queens, NY: a place where there is currently 1 Bible believing church for every 38,000 people; a place where of the 2.5 million residents, 51% were born outside of the United State; a place where people are open to spiritual conversations? Maybe you know a fellow church member, relative, or neighbor who would also get excited about being part of what God is doing to reach people in Queens. If so, we’d love for you to connect us to them! We’d love to share with them our vision for this church in a low pressure setting!
Introduce us to your church’s leadership . . . Chances are, if you’re passionate about church planting in Queens, NY, you probably attend a church that is also passionate about the Gospel going to the nations! Quite a bit of our resources have come from mission-minded church who see value in investing in ministries like ours. Along with these financial resources, most of our mission teams who will help us reach our neighborhood will come from these church partners. These teams hold a really special place in our hearts because it was on short-term mission trips like these that God burdened our hearts for Queens. We are praying that through our partnership with mission teams, He would call others to the mission field!
Share our website on your social media. . . You can quickly connect us with your network by sharing our website and putting a personal note about why you’re excited to be partnering with our church plant in Queens, NY. Posts like these can tremendously increase awareness of this work and can help connect us with even more partners.
So again I say, thank you! We have been blessed and encouraged by how God has used you to partner with us in this time. We are humbled and grateful.
The best is yet to come!
Jordan, Melissa, Annie, and Judson