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