Going ahead to Ghana

Posted by Bill on February 26, 2011

Courtesy of Life.com

Victoria Maamooro Garshong completed her cell pastors’ training at Maadi Community Church a number of years ago. During the training I was attracted to her genuine love and passion for the Lord, and admired her desire to serve Him in Ghana through establishing a new Christian orphanage for children. Before her “going ahead to Ghana”, Victoria honoured the Lord through the sharing of her testimony. She said:

I am a young Christian woman – a Ghanaian undergraduate student enrolled at the University of Ghana in Accra. I have been in Egypt for the past nine months on Government of Ghana Scholarship to study Arabic language, literature and culture.

Before I came to Cairo, I was a confused person, torn apart from all angles by various circumstances beyond my control. I had so many questions in my mind with no clues as to how they could be answered, especially when God seemed so far away. I was ready to give up on everything because there seemed to be no way out and it seemed that God did not even care. However, I was in for many surprises.

God led me to Maadi Community Church … a place I will always refer to as my ‘water in the desert.’ God began at once to refresh my soul, healing me of all bitterness, brokenness and pain. Through MCC God showed me His great love and faithfulness. Through many challenges, pressures and stress I have learnt to trust in Jesus, my faithful God. I am now able to confidently say that I am at peace with Him, and His peace and joy floods my soul.

I will be returning to Ghana shortly and I look forward to going home with new hope, joy and strength. Friends, I’m going ahead to Ghana – to complete my last year in university, and to serve the Lord. I know I am equipped to serve Him in His sweet harvest field!

Though the road ahead may at times be rough, I know that when I fall I will fall right into His unfailing arms. Like the torches of fire tied to the tails of the foxes (Judges 15:4-5), so is my heart set ablaze with the love and tender care of Christ to share with deprived and broken people in Ghana, especially the children”.

Where ever you are, if your heart has been touched by Victoria’s courageous faith, please take a moment and support her in her quest to care for and serve the people in Ghana through offering a simple prayer.

Bill

Belated new year news from Trinidad

Posted by Nick on

What is it that makes us go to our spam box? Usually I never bother, I just rely on Google getting it right again and again – but then sometimes it doesn’t!

Anyway, whatever it was made me check it out this morning was a good thing as I discovered a little nugget from our friends in California, Trinidad & Tobago – where Sandra Jahoor and her husband have planted an Open Bible Church, and also where CCI has been privileged to be able to support them in starting to set up small groups in the church.

Early in the New Year (yes, I know – too long not looking at the spam) Sandra wrote to us to share the Lord’s faithfulness in providing gifts for their little Sunday School. Sandra wrote:

“I am sending you some photos of our Sunday School kids,taken on Sunday last when we were giving out some Christmas boxes sent to the kids from True Life Fellowship Church, Austin Texas.

We thank the Lord for his faithfulness to us and his church, and for your love, support and prayer. Our desire for 2011 is for more souls to be saved and added to His Kingdom.

God bless you all, Sandra.”

Sandra – thank you for sharing with us God’s faithfulness and the generous support of True Life Fellowship Church – may God continue to bless you, your husband and your ministry; all of us on the CCI team are with you in praying that we will see His Kingdom grow in California, Trinidad!

Sticking to plan

Posted by Bill on February 23, 2011

Early into my season of ministry at Maadi Community Church in 2000, Dave Petrescue (senior pastor) arrived at my apartment building in his car to take me with him to the Palmera Hotel, our Red Sea retreat. Dave thought it would be a good idea to get away from the “busyness” of ministry to get to know each other better. Days leading up to this time, I remember “packing death” from the thought of Dave asking me to share my game-plan with him concerning the development of small groups at MCC. That’s why they hired me!

Dave Petrescue

As we travelled easterly along the desert road, my fear was soon realised when Dave said to me, “Hey Bill … do you have any thoughts as to how we can encourage small groups’ growth in our church?” Immediately, I felt exposed and cornered! What could I say that would give confidence to my new boss that they had not hired a fraud? It was still fresh in my memory that several weeks earlier at a small groups’ presentation forum I road-tested my ministry plan on fifty members of MCC. How did it go? It didn’t! It bombed-out, and I felt that I had crashed and burned, along with my plan.

I confessed to Dave that I had no idea how to tackle this new challenge. I admitted that I didn’t have a plan, and I felt I was way-out of my depth of experience. Dave’s response surprised and comforted me. He said … “Well, that makes two of us. I had no idea how to tackle my challenge when the Lord called me to Egypt … and, I still don’t have an idea as to how to lead the church forward from here.” With a warm smile on his face, he continued … “I guess your feet are made of clay … like mine”.

Dave was a dear friend, and the best leader I had ever partnered with. In the seven years we ministered together we witnessed the Lord’s miracle working power in countless situations. The Lord grew MCC from 400 to 5,000 members and expanded His kingdom through the addition of 1,600 new believers! Early into our partnership, we would often say to each other, “It doesn’t get better than this!” However, it wasn’t long before we had to change that saying to, “It gets better than this!”

Why were we able to experience such amazing happenings? For me, I experienced the Lord’s perfect peace the moment I abandoned my plan for the adoption of His plan. My mistake had come from the wrong belief that it was up to me to develop a small groups plan for God to rubber stamp. Achieving purpose came from a right belief that the Lord is the Master Planner … He has a perfect plan for me to follow. The moment I dispensed with my plan, the Lord began to reveal to me a new and exciting plan that resulted in 413 small groups! My life and walk with Him would never be the same.

“Sticking to His plan” was one of the many amazing lessons I learned in my time at MCC. The Lord worked in and through us beyond our wildest dreams. Sticking to His plan is not a new approach to achieving purpose in our lives (leadership and ministry) – its God’s universal and timeless principle that guarantees our success, according to His perfect will. Through Jeremiah, the Lord says, “For I know the plans I have for you. They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11).

Are you sticking to plan? Who’s plan?

РАЗВИТИЕ МАЛЫХ ГРУПП (get it?)

Posted by Bill on February 19, 2011

Well of course you understood the title of this post, didn’t you? But in case you didn’t it says “Small Groups Development” and “Striving together … Saving lives” in Russian!

Thanks to the faithful support of our friends, we have been able to get the CCI Small Groups Development manual translated into Russian. This has taken a few months but we are nevertheless very, very grateful to our translator in Russia for doing such a great job. We hope that this version of the manual will soon be distributed to churches in Russia who are interested in developing small groups – isn’t that fantastic!

If by any chance this is what you are looking for (or you know someone who would like to read the manual in Russian), simply download it right here.

As I said at the beginning, this work has been made possible by the generous donations of our friends and supporters – if you feel called to help CCI continue their work of providing free resources, coaching and mentoring around the world, please consider making a donation by clicking on the button below.

Off to Poland … again!

Posted by Nick on February 13, 2011

In May I will be travelling to Poland again – it will be my fourth visit – and I am looking forward to renewing old acquaintances but, more importantly, I am really excited to have been invited to lend a hand with the birth of a new small groups church!

For this visit I have been invited by Marcin Gochnio, who I’ve met twice before during earlier trips to Poland to facilitate small groups development workshops. Marcin is a member of Chrzescijanska Spolecznosc Warszawa Polnoc (Christian Fellowship Warsaw North) where Krzysztof Zaręba is the pastor.

So, as an encouragement to them, you and the CCI team, I would like to share with you Marcin’s invitation for me to visit their wonderful church again …

“Our church Christian Fellowship North has grown since your last visit: from about 200 persons to about 600 persons at sunday services, and I would like to share with you an exciting development that has grown out of the small groups’ ministry – as a church we have made the decision to plant a new church in the Eastern part of Warsaw, and Marek Sobotka (who is currently responsible for home groups in our church) has been chosen to be the pastor of the new church, which will be based on the small groups model.

They’ve had church services twice a month Sunday afternoon and social activites for about 9 months – about 80 people are attending and now the baby is ready to be born! In the middle of March they will begin holding separate Sunday services. It is a great moment and exciting thing for the whole congregation. As the church we pray for them at every service and Pastor Krzysztof encourages people to join the child church – of course some leaders and home groups will pass to the new church. Andrzej Jakoniuk will be responsible for the home groups in the new church. We really have on our hearts to support them as much as we can – Andrzej and some colleagues will be a part of our conference and we want you to spend some individual time with them.

The responsibility for the development of our home groups in Christian Fellowship Warsaw North has recently been assigned to Izabela Pazdyka, Agata (my wife) and me. We understand each other very well and feel very comfortable working together. Many of us in the church remember your visits to Warsaw, where we were trained to serve as small group pastors, using the 7-session, Small Groups Development course which was translated into Polish.

But as our experience is not extensive, we request your help. We would be very glad for you to be our small groups’ mentor/consultant as we look to developing our home groups ministry.

Let me tell you about our team and vision …

Izabela Pazdyka is a 35 years old woman. Her husband was a pastor who died in a car accident some time ago. Although emotionally crushed, Iza recovered well. She now serves the Lord with a grateful heart, thinking and doing His work every day. Iza works as a full-time art designer. She enjoys her work and speaks English with a moderate level of proficiency.

Agata (my wife) and I are in our early forties and we have two children (David 8, Emilka 5). For many years Agata served as a missionary in Moscow, Sweden and Poland. She is a very compassionate woman, with an amazing heart for people. She takes good care of our children and manages our home well. She studied in a Bible college in the USA and speaks English well. Agata and I are often preoccupied with our children because of recurring health issues.

I presently work as a consultant/project manager for a company dealing with organising and managing IT companies or IT departments within a company. This is basically a full-time job. Agata and I have decided to set aside time to oversee the development of small groups in the our church.

Ephesians 4:12 and 16 – that was presented by you as the basis for small groups – is the vision we want to follow. We love every word of this passage. So the first thing we want to do (we have already made a start) is to better understand the current state of our groups; to get to know leaders personally, and to assess the health of our groups. We also want to become effective teacher/trainers and coaches to teach and support others. We want to refresh our small group leaders with your small groups’ development course and be better prepared for the challenges that will come with the new church plant.

How do you feel about helping us? I am looking forward to hearing from you.

Marcin (Martin).”

Well friends, it will not surprise to you to know I said yes – and I am fired up and ready to go. I am grateful to God that he has provided the funding for this trip and I look forward to investing quality time with my Polish friends – and by the way, I am tagging this visit to Poland onto a scheduled trip to visit one of our other field partners in Africa, Dominion Impact Church, in Nigeria.

Please hold up Marcin, Agata and Izabela in your prayers as they take these courageous steps forward in developing their ability to lead, manage, guide, mentor and encourage the small groups development work not only in their own church – but in a new church plant too!

Small groups are alive and growing in Warsaw, Poland!