Prayer Update - May 2, 2012

For more information about our presbytery, please visit our website.

Featured Church/Mission: First Presbyterian Church (profile), Concord, New Hampshire (Pastor Doug Domin)

1.       Please give thanks for the covenant family at FPC.  We have good elders, 2 potential deacons in training, a great spirit among us, good ministries among the women, and often visitors each week.  We see God at work at FPC.

2.       Please pray for new families and individuals to become a part of FPC and that as members we would share Christ with others.

3.       Please pray for our facility needs.  Part of the building we are in will be torn down and we and all the tenants have to be out September 1.We at this point do not know where we will go.  We thought we would have to be out July 1 but have been able to stay until September 1 at only $600 a month rent with no utilities.  So, we have seen God provide for us and we give praise.  We need a 24/7 facility as this facility is sometimes used 6 days a week.  This is a serious dilemma for us.

4.       Give thanks that we have a purchase and sales agreement for our church property.  We concluded it has become to cost prohibitive to build and purchasing an existing building makes better sense.

5.       Please pray for our finances.  We have been down about $2,000 a month and our general fund balance is very low. 

6.      Please pray for God’s direction as we seek with the involvement and support of Presbytery about Ted planting a church in Hooksett, NH. 

Featured Potential Church Planting Site: Montpelier, Vermont (profile)

1. Pray for the work of God’s Spirit among the people of Vermont’s capital city. 

2. Pray for the leaders of the Vermont government including Governor Peter Shumlin.

3. Pray for God’s blessing upon the church in northern Vermont.

Featured Potential College Ministry Site: University of Maine (profile), Orono, Maine

1. Pray for the students, faculty, and staff at the main campus of the University of Maine in the summer ahead and for the town of Orono.

2. Pray for the campus ministries at the University of Maine, including Campus Crusade for Christ, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, and the Maine Christian Association.

MNA Committee work:

REDEEMER BURLINGTON

Please continue to pray for our work to establish a new PCA church in the most unchurched city in the most unchurched state in the U.S.--Burlington, Vermont! It is our joy to serve Christ's church here in this beautiful but broken city, and we desperately need your prayers. 

STATUS OF THE CHURCH PLANT

As you might expect, planting a church in Burlington is all about the LONG VIEW. We are encouraged to have six families involved in our launch team. These families have been regularly attending our weekly Wednesday night Bible study in our home for over six months now. Praise God for providing people to help us in this difficult work.

We also meet once a month together at our downtown art space once a month for singing, prayer and teaching.

Please pray for continued momentum as many families travel in the summer. We will be scaling down our events and activities during summer months as we focus on planning and preparing for a potential Fall launch date for our first worship service. 

PRAYER AND PRAISE

• We have all six families (and some singles and college students) signed up for our first church retreat on Lake George in Silver Bay, NY, just across the Vermont/New York border, June 1st-3rd. Please pray that this time would be a fruitful one as we grow together as a community and make plans for the Fall. 
• Praise God for the wedding of Anjanette Decarlo and Joel Salvador Paulino, our first ever event in our new worship space, the Burlington Greek Orthodox church. Our core group put on this wedding as a gift to Anjanette and Joel, and the party and reception afterward were held at the New City Galerie (our art space and church offices). Anjanette told me that I had just preached to the toughest crowd I'll ever preach to--most of her friends and collegues at the University of Vermont and St. Michael's College were "Jewish intellectuals, atheists and agnostics" (her words)! It was a wonderful way for our growing church community to serve and witness to the great love of our great Bridegroom, Jesus! Many of those who attended commented on a specific point I made in the sermon: that our natural tendency is to create a mental list of how our spouse has wronged us and use it to prove how they now owe us! But the gospel is different: Jesus takes the list of the ways we have wronged God and applies it to himself, absorbing the cost of it. So that's how Paul can say in 1 Corinthians 13, "love keeps no record of wrongs." It's because of Jesus that God, who is LOVE, can tear up our list and embrace us as we are. Praise God for his open-handed and costly love for sinners such as we are!
• I have been invited to speak at a regional Vermont youth conference of 200 students in New Haven, VT the weekend of June 30th. Please pray that God would be at work in the messages and the time of fellowship. 
• A team from the Presbyterian Church of Coventry (our former church during our time with RUF at UConn) will be coming up to help us put on an outreach camp to the Nepalese refugee community in Burlington the last week of June. This team is raising funds to attend and I will be working together with Dan Raut, the pastor of a church plant among the refugees to put together this five day outreach. Please pray for much fruit!
• Pray for upcoming events at the New City Galerie, our art space/offices on historic Church Street in downtown Burlington. Redeemer's own Bech Evans and his friend Erik Rehman will be presenting 'VESSELS AND SEMBLANCES: NEW WORKS IN CLAY", an exhibit of their pottery and sculpture, this Friday, May 4th, 5-10pm at 132 Church Street.  On Friday, May 11th, my friend Josh Stamper, a jazz musician based in Philadelphia, will be playing a concert with a three piece woodwind ensemble. Photography and film inspired by music from Josh's latest album will be on display from Amherst, MA artist W.R. Cooley and Ben Stamper (of the band Ben & Vesper). 
• Praise God for a four day time of rest for our family this past week on Lake George, NY. Provided for free by Silver Bay YMCA's pastor's retreat ministry. Thank God for these folks!
• Pray for time fundraising, attending RUF's church planter training, and visiting family this summer during the month of July. 

NNEP:

Herb Shipman: Please keep Herb in your prayers for physical healing, that he might soon return to his ministry to the dairy farmers of northern Vermont.