4 Crazy Weeks! by Tim Kernan
Well its been an incredible month! God has blessed us with an incredible four more brothers through the waters of baptism and one more fired up young man prayerfully will get soaked this weekend! Above are pictures taken over the past month!
Four weeks ago the church finished our six week “consolidation campaign”. We had all our members read the Lion Never Sleeps, the Master Plan of Evangelism and our six part follow up bible study series on discipling, devotional life, purity, persecution, evangelism, leadership & mission. This has helped build even stronger convictions in the disciples about we need to live our Christian life. We also hit the streets evangelizing in teams so that everyone was taught how to share their faith effectively! Going forward all baptized, restored or otherwise new members will also go through the same initial discipling with their mentor to refresh their convictions and help them get off to a good start in their discipling relationships.
Three weeks ago nine disciples from London flew to Kiev to encourage the church there during thier conference entitled “RISE UP!”. It was an amazing time of encouragement for everyone. Our dear brother and sister Maxim and Natasha who lead the church there did an incredible job and everyone left so inspired and encouraged. I would live in Kiev no problem! DJ and Kasie Commisford were the keynote speakers and their preaching was incredible! Not only that but after the main conference event they treated us to a rock concert at a local venue. Anyone who was not touched by the convicting lyrics and performance, and especially by the impact on the guests, has a heart of stone! From the bottom of our hearts I want to thank DJ & Kasie, Maxim & Natasha and the whole Kiev church for the incredible time we had with you. It won’t soon be forgotten!
Two weeks ago came the cherry on the cake! Kip and Elena McKean, our parents in the faith, came and spent the weekend in London with the church. We had a packed service, dinners, house churches, walks, a trip to the British Museum, times of serious prayer and bible study and times of laughter and celebration. Elena did an incredible job leading the women’s day and the womens ministry came out of it renewed, encouraged, and equiped for the year to come. Its always great to have your parents in town and we were certainly blessed to have Kip and Elena here with us. They inspired the disciples and made them feel pulled into the greater movement. I am very grateful for them and the incredible work they are doing around the world. We also want to thank, from the bottom of our hearts, all the churches that so generously financed their trip. We are blessed to belong to such a great family.
One week ago the leaders, at their own expense, went to a lodge near Brentwood Essex to have our leaders retreat! The food was awesome, the fellowship was amazing, and the confessions, prayers, convictions, bible study and planning was intense. After Preaching a lesson on “Being Fishers of Men” we were able to actually go fishing and see what we could learn from it. The insights were halarious and touching. After preaching a sermon about “Preaching with careful and patient instruction” we were able to go to an archery range and see first hand how hard it can be to hit the mark. The church finally joined us on the sunday and we had an amazing service together.
This week we had a very encouraging house church service. It was incredible that in such a short time so many new brothers and sisters could be added to our number and so much could be accomplished. We did have to roll with the punches since my passport was stolen and my trip to Africa was set back… however you need to be able to take hits in this mission; we quickly changed our plans, rescheduled the flights, got back into evangelism and this sunday a new brother will prayerfully be baptized into the faith as a result.
I want to say thank you to all the people who made this incredible month possible! We are encouraged that we still have 5 months left before the Gathering to crank!
Love,
Tim
