Church Stories and Updates – Fall 2012
Bob Hyatt
Nov 22, 2012

Cyd Holsclaw, Life on the Vine
 We’re pretty excited about ‘resurrecting’ our old practice of sharing stories of wonder every time we gather for worship. Each story of wonder highlights a way that God is working in an individual’s life, family, neighborhood or workplace. As people tell stories, our community hears concrete examples of what the inbreaking kingdom might look like in their own lives. At first, it was difficult to convince people that they had a story to tell… now, we run into the problem of having to tell people that our next available date is in the new year! We post the stories on our website each week:   http://lifeonthevine.org/stories-of-wonder/

Amy Graham, The District Church
 The District Church baptized 10 people this past September. The stories of change were wide and varied. Some of those baptized have struggled with addiction, sexual orientation, skepticism, atheism, and even prostitution. All of them have now experienced the love, grace and restoration of Christ Jesus in their lives. Here are testimonies from three of those people whose lives have been changed:

“I sought salvation by worshiping everything but the Lord. My doctrine of moral relativism (“seek and never find” was my motto) led me to drug addiction, alcoholism, sexual depravity, new age practices and more.  Self-sufficiency failed me and I ended up in a literal hell of depression and isolation.  I sought God like only the dying can, willing to abandon my opinions and “beliefs” in exchange for absolute truth. He was the last house on the block I knocked on! Jesus Christ answered and showed me, opened my eyes to the error of my ways and the fallen nature of everything, revealed there is such a thing as the Truth!  Jesus pulled me off of the titanic I had been bailing water on and brought me to life. I trust Him completely today because he is the Truth that set me free in a very real way.”

“Before I knew Christ, I trusted in the streets and my addiction. It led to nothing but hardship and hard times. Through getting to know people from church at the dinner fellowships, I decided I wanted a piece of how these people were living. I wanted God, because He is our Creator and I know He wants me to know Him. Trusting God has changed my life because I’m starting to see many blessings from obeying and trusting in God more and more. I don’t need the things I used to do or rely on. And because of trusting in God, I have more friends. I have more friends who are really there for me.”

“I’m from a Jewish background. Today is our New Year. It’s all about repentance. But this year for me it’s all about following Christ. I was fortunate to be raised by a bunch of different people. Two of the people who raised me – one was a feminist and the other was a gay man. So I was taught to be open minded. But I didn’t get the memo about the grace of God until I was 24. God has brought me from a place where I was agnostic. I was a very angry person. But now God has done a work in my heart. He has allowed my heart to un-harden and come to a place of humility. To come to a place to be able receive and give love. I’m thankful for the work He has started in me.”

These testimonies, and so many more, have demonstrated to us that God is absolutely at work and moving in our church community and in our city. We feel honored and privileged to serve in this community and witness what God is doing. It is humbling and powerful to see the ways God is changing lives here in DC.

Winn Collier, All Souls
One interesting thing that has emerged is Beer & Hymns, on the second Monday of each month at Trinity Pub. We do it with St. Mark Lutheran, and it’s an opportunity for those distant from faith to come and taste (literally).

Bryan Long, Agora Community
 We are in the infancy stage of planting our church, The Agora Community, in Rochester, NY. With everything so new, there are many things that need to happen. I often attack projects head on, and with my head down. However, my coach, J.R. Briggs, uses a phrase that has stuck with me over the course of this season: “If this is your church, you better hurry up and start. If this is Jesus’ church, you better slow down and listen.” When you plant a church, you begin to realize how little you have to bring to the table.  If this thing is to be fruitful, it will be because God is moving.

I had been given a number of a person in the area who might be interested in what we’re doing. I generally don’t like cold calling people as a first point of contact, so while I took the number, I sat on it for awhile. A week later, I was walking a path in the town we are starting the church, and praying for how we could break into the community. I was alone and felt comfortable praying out loud. As I prayed, a jogger snuck up behind me and certainly heard me “talking to myself.”  While I felt funny, in that exchange I also felt the Lord telling me that I needed to call this guy I had been putting off. Right there on the path I gave him a call. I left him a message and waited for a call back. A few hours later he responded and told me he owns a percussion shop in town and invited me to come by to talk. As soon as I walked into the store we both recognized each other.  He was the jogger on the path.  What followed was a conversation about a small group of people who were gathering at his home to explore what a fresh expression of church might look like in their community. This group had formed at the beginning of the summer and had been sensing that they needed direction. Just that morning he had been praying to provide the next step for the group – then he got my call. The result has been a weekly Sunday gathering as we are praying, worshiping, and discussing the potential of joining together. God is moving.

Gary Alloway, Redemption Church of Bristol
 Here is a link to a blog post I just wrote about Hurricane Sandy and Redemption:  http://garyalloway.wordpress.com/2012/11/07/149/

Melba Miller, Crossroads Church
 Like all of the churches in the Ecclesia network, our heart at Crossroads, and our commitment, is to equip our people to live on mission, showing and sharing Jesus’ love in our community and our world. When a church family makes that commitment and sets out to live that out, it’s always a lot of fun to watch how God works to put together partnerships that give a local church the opportunity to be a part of helping build God’s Kingdom is ways that are so much better, and so much bigger, than we could ever come up with on our own!  For Crossroads, one of those God-given partnerships is giving us the amazing opportunity to help make Jesus known in the Haryana state (surrounds Delhi) of India, where fewer than 2% of the millions of people who live there know and follow Jesus.  If you and your church are praying for a partnership that will give your people the opportunity to be a part of building God’s Kingdom and changing lives, please consider joining us in this partnership!

Our partners in India are Karsan and Melia .  Karsan and Melia stepped down from their 22 year ministry with Campus Crusade for Christ in India to answer the call to church planting that God has given them. The ministry is training bi-vocational pastors and their wives and equipping them with both biblical and theological training and practical training in a variety of trades that will help them start a business in the village where they seek to start a church. As the ministry has grown and has been blessed to be part of the establishment of almost 2500 new church plants, Karsan and Melia have also sensed God directing their hearts toward the children who live in the slums around Delhi.

The ministry   started out taking children who had never been to school and couldn’t pass the entrance exams to enter the local public schools and put small local schools and teachers in place to work with the kids to help them pass the exams and go to school, and share Jesus ‘ love with the kids and their families.  Over the past several years God has given Karsan and Melia an increasing burden for starting a completely new work- a school that would take the place of the poorly staffed and funded public schools where the children they’ve been helping get in won’t get a decent education with opportunities to go to college, or to hear about Jesus. The potential  this new school would have to help break the cycle of poverty that children from the slums live with, and to send Christ- followers who are eager to share their faith out into the universities and into trades and businesses through-out the region and the country is simply staggering.  Not to mention the impact the school could have on each child’s whole family.  Definitely a God-sized opportunity!

Crossroads is so excited that God has given us the privilege of partnering with their ministry   to help them with the finances for this new ministry!  It’s hard for us who live in America to believe that $20 could go so far in India, but Karsan and Melia tell us that $20 will pay all of the expenses for one child to attend the new school for one month. In addition to the money we budget each quarter and send to India to help this ministry with church planting, our church family is working together this fall and winter to raise money for the new school and we’d love for some other Ecclesia churches partner with us to support this new ministry. We’re also in the early stages of planning a mission trip to India to help our partners with church planting and in the new school, and we’d love for your church members to join our mission team. If you’d like contact information for Karsan and Milia or more info about any of the partnership opportunities mentioned here, we’d love to hook you up! You can email melba@cafecrossroads.com – we look forward to talking with you about how God might want to use your church in India!

How It Is Now Is Not How It Will Always Be

By Bob Hyatt • 20 Mar, 2024
One of the main tricks in life, I believe, is not to extrapolate current conditions and circumstances off into the future. However, that’s exactly the tendency we have as humans, and especially, I’ve discovered, as ministry leaders. We look at things now and think they will always be that way. We long to see landmarks in the road, mileposts that tell us either we have now reached the pinnacle, the place we always dreamed of being (even if that place is only “stability”), or conversely, the bottom has fallen out and now is the time to bail out. But the mileposts are merely markers on the journey, telling us where we are now, promising nothing of the journey ahead. And so, when things are good, we see nothing but success and good times stretching out in front of us. In the depths of despair, during the most challenging times of life and ministry we feel as though the darkness has become the new normal. The reality is much more complex: there are always better times ahead, and worse ones as well. During those dark times, when ministry becomes more of a weight than a joy, I tell myself, “whatever is happening now will not keep happening forever.” Those words have kept me through relational breaks in our staff that seemed unfixable, through budget woes when we didn’t think we were going to meet payroll, even a time when our community lost a third of its members because we had let a beloved pastor go. In this way I have found hope. In the same way, during the successful times when we were growing, budget was bigger than ever, and when new people were engaging with the church seemingly every week I continued to tell myself, “what is happening now will not keep happening forever.” In this way I have found a measure of humility. There’s another way to read this mantra as well, one that encourages us not to miss what is happening right now as we overly focus on where we’d like to be or what we’d like to see happen. The challenge of ministry, like the challenge of life in general, is to be present to what’s happening now . Too many single people miss the joys of singleness longing to be married. Too many young married couples miss the joys of the early years without children because they long to be parents. Too many parents of young children miss the joys of the infant years, longing for the days when their children are more independent, less dependent on them for everything. And on it goes. In the same way we in ministry can miss the joys of a small, close community by looking at larger communities and wishing we had their resources and influence. We can miss the inherent learning and even joy of being shoulder to shoulder in community with others through challenging times because the difficulties and pain we are experiencing mask the ways in which we are being brought together, the ways in which we are being formed and the invaluable things we are learning. In life, and in ministry, remember: How it is now is not how it will always be. Learn to appreciate how things are now, but also take comfort in the fact that if things are difficult, there are better days ahead. Stay humble because no success is forever. Stay hopeful because, in Christ, no failure is permanent.

Exciting Announcement- Ecclesia is Joining Ascent!

By Chris Backert • 19 Feb, 2024
I’m writing to share some exciting and important news with you that we believe will be significant for Ecclesia in the days ahead! For the last few years, I have been engaged with other church and network leaders across the US and Canada about forming a new “connection” for the church in North America. The heart of the effort is around unifying, amplifying, and multiplying the kind of Christian witness that Ecclesia represents, for the sake of the gospel, over the next few decades. This new effort is called The Ascent Movement, and within the last 12 months, its momentum has picked up increasing speed. A few months ago, I was asked by the council of Ascent if I would help spearhead the development of the network in its next phase. I agreed to accept that task. One of the core goals of Ascent is to connect, coordinate, and collaborate with groups like Ecclesia so that we can do more together than we could in isolation. In many ways, it will function as a “network of networks” like Ecclesia functions as a “network of churches”. In addition to ministries like Ecclesia, there are also seminaries, mission agencies, and other ministry support organizations that are joining Ascent in these early days. For the last several months the Ecclesia board has been discerning whether or not Ecclesia would officially enter into a partnership affiliation with Ascent. We unanimously affirmed that decision at our recent board meeting. Since Ascent is in its early phases of formation, more information on the benefits and opportunities of this new partnership will be ongoing. However, we are happy to share some of the aspects of this new affiliation that we find compelling and will not only bless Ecclesia, but also all of the churches within Ecclesia. First, given the size of Ecclesia, there have always been areas of ministry that we believe are important, but toward which we have not had the scale to accomplish or contribute. Among these are concrete efforts around - increasing the witness of the Hispanic church in North America - supporting mission expansion to less-resourced parts of North America - increasing opportunities for disaster relief and response - and mobilizing prayer networks. Further, there are also specific and tangible benefits that are made possible through this partnership for any Ecclesia Churches. Some of these include things like - discounted tuition costs to Truett Seminary for any Ecclesia leader or member serving an Ecclesia Church. - discounted rate in utilizing the services of Chemistry Staffing for future hiring - access to a church-based missionary sending ministry for those Ecclesia Churches engaged globally, and more! Lastly, there is a specific aspect to this partnership affiliation that is particularly helpful to Ecclesia. Ascent has agreed to partner with Ecclesia over the next year to expand our church planting and multiplication reach in a way that benefits both Ecclesia and Ascent. Practically, this looks like Ascent investing a little over $1,000/month into Ecclesia over this next year and together working toward a set of mutually beneficial goals. As I think about this opportunity within the current moment of our network, it seems right for multiple reasons beyond the purely practical. At our Ecclesia board meeting in late 2022, we established a path for individual affiliation within Ecclesia to make concrete space for leaders who are outside ministry contexts that allow for our core congregational affiliation. The heart of this decision was a desire to increase the kinds of relationships that Ecclesia has within our scope of ministry. The decision to affiliate with Ascent is similar. Also, as I shared at our Ecclesia Gathering in January, this decision fits within the Core DNA of Ecclesia. When I look back at the founding of our network, three aspects were central then and have carried forward. First, our desire to extend the gospel to increasingly post-Christian, or more challenging, settings and groups of people. Second, a desire to exemplify a Christian witness aligned with the theological and missiological direction of affirmations like the Capetown Commitment. Third, our desire to provide a relationally rich journey of friendship for the churches and leaders who are part of our family. When I consider the affiliation with Ascent, we share in common those first two Core DNA. As for the 3rd foundational aspect of our network, I believe the time has come where Ecclesia itself needs “friends for the journey” in the same way that Ecclesia has provided a context of friendship for those within our community. On the other side of COVID, it’s clear that ministry in the days ahead is more exciting, while also more challenging and complex. We believe we need a greater community to be the most faithful to the gospel that we can. You can go to www.ascentmovement.org to get a quick glimpse of its vision. The current website is a placeholder for a more thorough site coming later this Spring. Ecclesia, of course, will have a seat at the table in its formation. We have also provided a one-page overview of Ascent on the attached document. We will keep you updated on this exciting development. Please feel free to reach out with any questions. - Chris
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