Whew! We’re almost there. 2020 will soon be in the rearview.
Despite all of the challenges, there have been many wins this past year. We hosted a Church Planting Readiness Seminar in February that is bearing fruit. We initiated two new churches – in the Villages and also a Russian-speaking congregation in North Port that already has an international ministry. I was trained by nxtGEN to begin cohorts for our planters, interns and even potential future planters. Our Executive Committee has been working hard to develop a strategy for addressing the growing diversity of our state and our desperate need for minority ministry leaders and church planters. Our network is financially whole.
Looking ahead to 2021, there is much to be excited about. Three of our church plants are scheduled to particularize in the first half of the year - City Church in St Petersburg, Christ United Fellowship in Orlando, and Waypoint in Nocatee. A new work in downtown Sarasota. A potential work among second-generation Hispanics in the Hunter’s Creek/Kissimmee area. We are hosting the MNA Church Planting Assessment in Lakeland on January 26-28. A church planting training in February/March. And then, another Church Planting Readiness Seminar on October 1-2.
I am most excited about the signs I see of a developing regional church planting ecosystem. Two of the candidates from the Church Planting Readiness Seminar this past February are going through Assessment in January and, Lord willing, will be starting an apprenticeship later this year. We have expanded our capacity to help churches with internships and church planting residencies in order to create a pipeline for future ministry. The pre-planter cohort I lead has ten RTS Orlando students in it. All of those men are considering church planting in the future. There is much to be excited about.
Still, there are a lot of unknowns in front of us. For this reason, we are going to hold our annual meeting in a virtual format on Thursday February 4, 2020. I hope you will plan to join us. You’ll hear reports from the church planters. Plans for the future. We’ll spend time praying together. There is also some necessary business that we have to take care of. Each member church is asked to send a representative to that meeting. Your presence would be a huge encouragement to me and to our planters. There will be more information about the annual meeting coming after the first of the year.
Until then, thank you for your continued support of the Florida Church Planting Network. We are pushing forward, not shrinking back (Heb 10:39). Your faithfulness and generosity make that possible.
Drew Bennett | Executive Director
Christ CHURCH BEACHES
JAX BEach | Kevin Bigelow
LAUNCHED: September 2019
EMAIL KEVIN
We continue to be encouraged by what the LORD is doing in Jacksonville Beach. This fall the LORD has brought several new families to Christ Church Beaches. We had two groups of discovery classes this fall and added over thirty new members. One encouraging story within the mission is the growth of our Neptune Beach men's group. In our footprint there are four beaches - South Jax, North Jax/Neptune, Atlantic to the north, and Ponte Vedra to the south. When we launched no one lived in Neptune Beach, and only one family lived in North Jax Beach. Today several of our newest families are from Neptune Beach/North Jax Beach. The men's part of one of our community groups now meets in Neptune Beach and has been growing steadily.
The COVID season has been tricky, but we've seen the LORD's faithfulness. As a family, our youngest was 7 weeks old when everything shut down so we went through the early baby days while also making the COVID turn. But we're beginning to get some sleep again and through everything the LORD has used Parakaleo as an incredible gospel influence in our lives - our marriage, our family, the church.
During COVID we flipped our groups from whole family community groups to become men's and women's groups and took the opportunity to work through the "Gospel Fluency Handbook". This study was both good and hard. It caused us to dig deep both into the person and work of Christ and into our own hearts to apply Christ to our day-to-day. This was so good but this level of heart work is heavy lifting at times. Nevertheless, a leadership core is beginning to emerge from within the mission itself, new families to the church who are quickly forming gospel community and loving and leading one another.
Since June we have been worshipping outside in the courtyard of the Beaches Historic Chapel. This is the same location we've always used and just run the cables from the soundboard out the front door. Worshipping outside (just a handful of blocks from the ocean) has actually been a real joy. Currently, if it rains, we just head into the chapel and do our best to social distance.
As we move into Advent and winter you can praying with us that:
1. The LORD would continue drawing new families into the community and closer to himself.
2. The Bigelow's find a sustainable rhythm of rest as we begin to emerge from the newborn year.
3. The LORD establishes a leadership community of emerging elders and group leaders who love Jesus, one another, and the Church.
NEW CITY CHURCH
PALM BAY | BEN HARRIS
LAUNCHED: October 2019
EMAIL BEN
New City has been so encouraged as we make our way through the book of John this year in a sermon series focused on discipleship called, “Follow Jesus.” The words of Jesus in John 16:33 have been a deep source of strength during challenging times: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” We are committed to continuing to follow Jesus and to invite others to follow him even in uncertain and unusual times. In September we launched 8 new Discipleship groups that are meeting weekly in groups of 3 for what we call the “Up, In and Out” of discipleship. We were blessed to serve meals to the entire staffs at our 4 partner schools in October and are partnering with these same public and private schools to provide Christmas gifts for 8 under-resourced families at these schools.
We just had our first ever new member celebration and receiving 44 new members. Our youth ministry also continues to grow and thrive, meeting in homes and averaging 20 students who are studying through the life of Jesus. Please pray for us to be bold and loving as we seek to reach the city of Palm Bay with the gospel of Jesus Christ. Please also pray for us to successfully re-launch our children’s ministry and our City Groups in January if the Lord so leads.
GREATER HOPE CHURCH
MULBERRY | Stan McMahan
LAUNCHED: December 2017
EMAIL STAN
God continues to bless the work in Mulberry. We’ve gone through significant challenges this year—being displaced from our facility with the high school, several families moving away, and the tragic death of one of our core members. But God has been good to continue blessing His church. We’re receiving 11 new members over the next two months and will be starting our next inquirer’s class at the first of the year. We’ve seen a few folks who’ve been around Greater Hope for a while finally “get” the gospel and commit to the church during the COVID days. Praise the Lord! Also encouraging is God’s provision of a new facility to meet in. Our church plant is purchasing the old Episcopal church property in the heart of Mulberry. We started services in the building in November and are preparing to begin “Phase 1” renovations after the holidays. We’re holding two services each Sunday and are very encouraged. God is good!
Please pray for the next steps at Greater Hope Church. Ask God to continue to make us faithful (that we would use this time to grow deeper in a sincere relationship with Him) and fruitful (that we would be creative and energetic in loving God and our neighbors) for the sake of Mulberry. Pray that God would raise up elders and deacons to share leadership in the year 2021.
GOOD SHEPHERD CHURCH
LAKELAND | Jeremy Kemp
LAUNCHED: January 2018
EMAIL JEREMY
It has been so good to worship together again! Good Shepherd Church has been worshipping in person since August and have been consistently picking up momentum since then. Another church in town has allowed us to use their worship facility since we lost our space in the school, so we currently worship at 4pm on Sundays. We now average around 40 in person worshippers per week with another 3-5 households online. A consistent stream of visitors has been an encouragement, many of whom have come due to our small size and provisions for COVID safety. In addition to Sunday morning invites, we have refocused our efforts on personal gathering and evangelism. We hosted a joint evangelism conference with Grace Community, another church plant in town, and trained 20 GSC congregants in relational evangelism. Fruit has already come from this conference as a congregant has shared Christ with a co-worker who then accepted an invitation to attended a worship service. Gathering has certainly been difficult due to COVID, but we are thankful for all that God has done!
Here’s a few things to pray for:
1. We are hopeful to begin renting a church facility in the new year that would allow us to leave our things set up and move back to Sunday morning worship. It will require some sweat equity to get it operational, but will have plenty of space to host socially-distanced worship services and other events. Pray this will all go through to begin worshipping there on our 3 year anniversary, January 17, and will be another momentum push for our gathering and evangelism efforts.
2. Pray for our discipleship groups that are in the process of launching. Pray they will be healthy places for our members to grow together with Christ and each other.
GRACE COMMUNITY CHURCH
NORTH LAKELAND | Josh Floyd
LAUNCHED: September 2018
EMAIL JOSH
Despite all that is going on in our world, the Lord continues to be faithful to his people. He has continued to sustain Grace Community Church as we have continued in-person worship since August. We are gathering in Trinity’s fellowship hall on Sunday afternoons at 4pm. And (like most churches) we are live-streaming our services, too. We have enjoyed seeing some new people come and stay at GCC during COVID but we’ve also been saddened to say goodbye to some of our friends, as well.
I’ve personally been encouraged by several things. One of our three community groups had 25 people attend the week before Thanksgiving, we hosted an evangelism conference with Good Shepherd Church last month and we recently had an outreach event where we had four different neighbor families join us for some delicious Thanksgiving-style food and hours of conversation and laughter afterwards!
My prayer is that we as a church would eagerly desire to: spend time with the Lord, share our lives with one another and befriend our neighbors for the sake of the gospel.
WAYPOINT CHURCH
PONTE VEDRA | James Brignac
LAUNCHED: SEPTEMBER 2016
EMAIL JAMES
We continue to be amazed at the grace of God towards us as a church in the midst of this crazy year of 2020. We are grateful to have been able to worship in person for worship since late summer and have not had to stop worship since then. We have started live streaming our service and that has been a blessing for the many families that are not able to join us for worship. We look forward to the day when our full number will begin meeting in person again.
We recently had our Children’s Christmas Program at the church and were delighted to have three families that have recently been visiting join us for that program. They all had children that participated and they were excited to be part of this simple ministry. This was not meant to intentionally be an outreach event, but we’re delighted to see how God will use it to connect families to Waypoint. We’re also looking forward to our Christmas Eve service which has historically been one of our most well attended services.
Overall we are grateful for being able to continue to worship and minister in this unique season. Our prayer continues to be to find new and helpful ways to engage our current member and the community around us with the gospel. We’re also in the midst of officer training and look forward to having some new elders and deacons to serve the body in the new year. Pray for these men as they go through the training and for their hearts as they look forward to serving!
BERAKAH COMMUNITY CHURCH
DAVENPORT | Dony St. Germain
LAUNCHED: Fall 2018
EMAIL DONY
Thank you so much for all you do to help us proclaim the message of the Gospel among the Haitian Community in Central Florida. Our ministry has grown into four groups.
The first church plant is in Davenport. We do most of our studies on Zoom and limited number attend our Sunday night service. we have developed small group and there are 20 mall group of prayer and Bible studies.
The second church is El Shaddai Community Church in Winter Haven. The Lord continue to add many families to the church. In October we received 15 families at ESCC. We have 12 new converts in the month of November. We praise the Lord for the building that we were able to purchase for ESCC. However, we do need some money to help with renovations to our new facility. Even with all of our growth, COVID has his our congregation hard and many have lost their jobs.
A third core group is in Poinciana. An average of 50 people attending the service on Sunday night. Now, we are in the process of starting a core group in the city of Orlando. A core group of 25 is worship on Sunday mornings.
COVENANT OF GRACE CHURCH
NORTH PORT | Aleksey Zhuravlev
LAUNCHED: Fall 2018
EMAIL ALEKSEY
It was indeed a challenging time for Covenant of Grace Church. This July, my father, Michael (the oldest member of our church), was diagnosed with COVID and two weeks later went to be with the Lord. Our church conducted only online services from March to June, and during the summer months, we've been on quarantine on and off. We had a few other cases of COVID among our people, but everyone was able to recover quickly. Starting from September, we got back to a regular schedule, and almost for three months now, we gather twice a week.
On Sundays, I am preaching through the Gospel of Luke, and during the week, we have started a new study on the Book of Psalms. It was encouraging for our people to see Psalms' Christ-centeredness and the whole spectrum of human emotions demonstrated in the relationship with God. Past Sunday, we celebrated Thanksgiving in the church and had a great time of fellowship during lunch after the service. From this upcoming Sunday, we will pause our exposition of Luke and enter into the Advent season. Back to the regular preaching schedule, we are planning to get after the New Year.
Since we've started our regular worship services, God blessed us with a few new church members. With the addition of these nine members, our church now grew to 47 active communing members and 11 non-communing members.
In the past three months, we have also communicated regularly with our sister church in Minsk, Belarus, pastored by our Presbytery minister Slava Vyazovskiy. There is still a dangerous situation, and it is hard to predict future development. I was invited to teach a seminar on Covenant Theology in Belarus, but we had to cancel that event because of travel restrictions and civil unrest. Lord willing, in the future, I will be able to go there. Meanwhile, we started a collaborative project to support the theological development and training of local leaders.
Overall it was a challenging year, but we have witnessed God's faithfulness and mercy even during turbulent times. Please, pray for our local church development. We see many Russian-speaking immigrants moving to our area from Chicago, New York, and other states. Pray for the Presbyterian church in Belarus and the safety of our brothers there. Also, pray for my continuous education, after a few months of the brake, I have enrolled in classes again.
LA VINA - UPC HISPANIC CHURCH
ORLANDO | PABLO TORRES
LAUNCHED: APRIL 2018
EMAIL PABLO
November was critical for the church, many in our church were affected by COVID-19, so attendance at this month's services has been relatively low. Fortunately, they all have recovered. Even though the attendance to the services has been very low, the attendance to the virtual services has continued to grow little by little.
It has been wonderful to see and hear how the new believers we have in La Viña, have been growing in their relationship with God and in their knowledge of the Gospel, and have begun to share their faith with other people, there is still no fruit from that, but every day they feel more confident to talk to others, to pray in public and to give their testimony.
In the months of October and November I had the opportunity along with two other people from La Viña to participate in a Catholic study group on finances, the Lord gave us the opportunity on some occasions to share the gospel and give testimony, from the comments of some of the Catholic people in the group we know that the seed was sown, the Lord will reap in his time.
Please be in prayer for the health of our church and the development of leaders. Also be in prayer for our financial situation in 2021 as well as for the residency process for our family.
STEPHEN SPEAKS | EMAIL STEPHEN
The Villages, Seven Rivers
We are in the process of establishing some prayer groups with people in the community. Pray for new contacts to attend, for the participants to grow in their faith, and for the study to help us become more established in the area. Our vision for what we need to focus on in the area is solidifying the more we interact with people.
Pray that God would open the necessary doors and provide the right opportunities to see this vision implemented. Pray for doors to open so that we might meet more young people, families, and professionals in the area.