Thank you for taking the time to read these updates from our church planters. I hope you will be encouraged by their stories.
Recently our Network was featured on MNA’s Church Planting webinar because of the unique work God is doing in our state. Right now, we are planting among the Russian speaking population in Northport, the Haitian community in Polk County, the growing Hispanic demographic in the Kissimmee area, and in the Villages. The Gospel continues to bear fruit and grow all across Florida. Jesus is building His church.
At the beginning of the year, we set a goal of two new church plants, three apprenticeships, and four internships in the network in 2021. I am pleased to update you that we have met and even exceeded each of those goals. We have initiated three new church plants this year – Chris Knaebel in downtown Sarasota, Heath Zuniga in Kissimmee, and Frank Cavalli in Winter Garden. You can read about what’s happening in their churches in this newsletter. At the same time, we’ve funded a number of apprenticeships and internships that are creating a pipeline of future church planters. We continue to make strides towards becoming a genuine church-planting ecosystem in Florida. This is important, given the emphasis on regionalization within Mission to North America.
To that end, there are a few dates I want to make you aware of: On January 25-27, we will host the MNA Church Planting Assessment in Lakeland. These assessments are now held regionally, with Florida being one of those regions to host annually. On April 1-2, we will hold a Ministry Readiness Seminar. If you have any emerging leaders or ministry candidates that could benefit from a comprehensive assessment of character and competencies for ministry, please let me know so that I can guide them through registration. Then, in August (dates and place TBD) we will hold a Church Planting training event. Similar events are also being held regionally throughout the country, in the absence of any centralized training by MNA. We will be inviting all of our planters, and planters from across the country, to gather with us for this multi-day training.
One last thing to mention. Our Annual Network Meeting will be held on Thursday, February 24 from 10am-1pm (location TBD). Please mark your calendars and plan to join us in-person. After the holidays, I will send a reminder with more details on location and programming for that meeting. I look forward to being able to gather together to celebrate the Lord’s kindness and faithfulness to us, and to look and pray towards the future.
Thank you for your continued support of the Florida Church Planting Network. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season.
Drew Bennett | Executive Director
1410 Dundee Road
Winter Haven, FL 33884
(863) 298-9849 - work
(863) 286-2310 - cell
drew@redeemerwinterhaven.org
Seven Rivers Villages Church began public worship on October 3 with an initial group of 150 in attendance, composed of short-term volunteers from our sending church in Lecanto, our local launch team of 24, friends and family of our launch team, and curious people from the community. As with most plants, the intervening weeks have seen a drop in numbers, but our “real” numbers have increased. By that I mean that our ratio of volunteers to regular attenders is shifting. During our first month, we had many more volunteers from Seven Rivers Church in Lecanto attending weekly and fewer visitors. This past Sunday, November 28, we had 75 people in attendance, almost all of which were retirees and families from the local community. The faces in attendance change weekly because we have an active population who likes to go and do, but looking at attendance over the course of the month, we have some consistent attenders and new and excited guests each week who are planning to return. In addition to our worship attendance, we have seen growth in small group participation. Our first men’s small group has added participants over the few weeks we have been meeting, and we have added a second women’s study. We are making slow and steady progress.
Some items for prayer:
As I write, we are looking to hire a part-time worship leader, who may move cross country with his family to take on this role. He needs to find a full-time job and a place to live for his family of five. He seems a great candidate for this role. He led worship before Thanksgiving, and our folks loved him.
Pray for inroads into the younger population in our area. We have many regular retiree visitors but far fewer family visitors.
Pray for us as the partnership with Seven Rivers changes and we become more independent.
Pray for likeminded leaders to commit to the church and for younger men to be discipled and become established in our community.
Christ CHURCH BEACHES
JAX BEACH | Kevin Bigelow
LAUNCHED: September 2019
EMAIL KEVIN
The Lord has continued to show us his faithfulness in the mission to Jax Beach. At the end of the summer we hosted a meet up at the Hannah Park splash pad and in the beginning of September we launched four new community groups. Other than Kevin & Jenn Bigelow, all of those groups are led and hosted by new families that are from the mission to the beach. This fall those community group leaders began meeting as men and women led by Kevin & Jenn respectively as the beginning of a new gospel leadership community for the mission.
In addition to groups launching, we hosted a discovery class in September and October and we received new members in the beginning of November. Attendance has begun to increase as new families have begun to worship with us this fall and regular attenders and members get back into normal rhythms after the summer.
After a couple weeks of returning to worship inside, in August we returned to worshipping outside in the courtyard. We anticipate returning into the chapel for worship sometime this fall.
You can pray for Christ Church Beaches by:
Praying that Christ gives these community groups favor with their neighbors, that these groups multiply, and that the Lord raises up leaders and officers for his church.
Praying for the provision of the church both financially and in space. We will soon outgrow our KidMin capacity and are pursuing options to help us expand that ministry but do not yet have obvious solutions. In addition, several of the next opportunities we will have will require our financial provision to grow.
Praying for our outreach. A large Catholic Church just opened a new sanctuary adjacent to us and we worship outside while they arrive and depart from worship. As a result they hear the gospel by way of the call to worship, parts of the sermon, and see us coming to the Lord’s table. Also this winter we’re planning to do a New Year person of Jesus outreach to Jax Beach by inviting people into our community groups using Gentle & Lowly.
Praying for the Bigelow’s that our prayer lives, our marriage, and our nurture of our children all continue to deepen in the beauty of Christ.
NEW CITY CHURCH
PALM BAY | Ben Harris
LAUNCHED: October 2019
EMAIL BEN
We are grateful to God for the opportunity to witness to our city about the good news of Jesus Christ. This fall we finally re-launched our City Groups which went on hiatus during covid. We currently have 3 City Groups meeting and praying for more to begin. Youth group is growing like crazy with about 25 kids, 5th-12th grade, meeting twice a month for Bible Study, games and discipleship groups. In addition to holding Sunday morning worship services at Bayside High School we have been able to add a 1250 square foot office and ministry space down the street that we are lovingly referring to as "New City Central.” This second space was thanks to a very generous gift from within the church. This month we were able to make use of this new facility by offering to the city an event we called, “Share and Swap” in which our church donated household items that overflowed into the street from our new facility and was all given away to members of the community who came and shopped for free. We literally had nothing left after 7 hours! We celebrated our two year anniversary on October 17th and had 29 new members join the church that day. Please pray for us as we are actively searching for a full-time "Worship and Youth Director" that will help us multiply New City’s kingdom impact here in Palm Bay.
GREATER HOPE CHURCH
MULBERRY | Stan McMahan
LAUNCHED: December 2017
EMAIL STAN
This year has been an encouraging one in Mulberry. Many folks have returned to regular in-person worship and new families have joined in. Our building has been a blessing to our ministry, opening up new opportunities for teaching, prayer, and fellowship that have been bearing fruit. A new hunger to follow Jesus has been spreading through the church. We’re holding two morning services and an evening service each Sunday to accommodate the needs of the congregation. Praise God!
We’re excited about what’s ahead in 2022 for Greater Hope Church! Our officer training is wrapping up and we hope to work towards particularization during the first part of the year. We’re also in the process of renovating the church house for more office and meeting space. We hope to acquire the property next door in order to build a bigger meeting space in the near future.
Please pray for
more opportunities to share the gospel with our neighbors, coworkers, and friends
for the launch of new evangelistic Bible studies
our officer candidates, that they would love God, the gospel, and people well
our ongoing building projects and opportunities
WAYPOINT CHURCH
PONTE VEDRA | James Brignac
LAUNCHED: SEPTEMBER 2016
EMAIL JAMES
This fall we’ve gotten back in to the full swing of ministry following the slower pace due covid and the summer months. Over the past couple of months we have launched two new community groups, added new members, and re-launched our Men’s and Women’s bible Studies. We are excited to say we have over half of our congregation engaged in our new studies. In the midst of this we’ve also seen our attendance numbers steadily increase and this has included several new visitors. Our primary focus has been on getting these new visitors and members connected to the church in settings that allow for spiritual development and serving opportunities.
We also have some wonderful outreach opportunities during the fall. We recently hosted a lallapalooza at the church and we had several hundred people on the campus. We have started our our second class covering the book titled Godspace which helps people learn how to seek out and have “gospel conversations” as a regular part of life. The other outreach opportunity is the Advent season. We are planning an Advent event for families in the community and have a Christmas Eve Service planned which has been one of our highest attended services over the past couple of years. Our hope is that the church will be equipped to take the message of the gospel to their friends, family, and neighbors!
Prayer Requests:
Pray for our upcoming outreach opportunities.
Pray that God would continue to raise up new leaders as we grow and have more ministry opportunities.
EL SHADDAI COMMUNITY CHURCH
WINTER HAVEN | Dony St. Germain
EMAIL DONY
COVENANT OF GRACE CHURCH
NORTH PORT | Aleksey Zhuravlev
LAUNCHED: Fall 2018
EMAIL ALEKSEY
Covenant of Grace welcomed a new family at the beginning of September. Roman, Luda, and two of their children Simon and Jacob, were a great addition to our church family. We have baptized Simon according to his profession of faith and Jacob as a covenant child of Christian parents. Luda, Roman, and Simon immediately got involved in the church's ministry and became an excellent help.
We continue to improve our outreach efforts. This month we designed and ordered outside banners with church info, flyers, and business cards that we will distribute in Russian grocery stores and restaurants. Our YouTube channel has gained 30 new subscribers in the last three months and totaled about 780 hours of watch time.
Also, we continue to develop the MTRW (Mission to the Russian Speaking World) project. One of our elders presented information to the Suncoast Presbytery last time we got together for a scheduled meeting. Our main goal is to raise funds for the educational expenses of potential pastors and church planters in Belarus. Currently, we have eight students enrolled in the ERSU (Evangelical Reformed Seminary in Ukraine).
Our goal as a church is to develop a network with Russian-speaking Reformed and Presbyterian churches around the globe. And this month, we hosted pastor Arman and his family from Kazahstan. He delivered a lecture in our church concerning ministry in the Islamic context in Muslim countries. Those are a few highlights of our church life and ministry.
We are thankful to God for our partnership with FCPN because, without its support, we would not be able to do even half of what we are capable of doing now.
LA VINA - UPC HISPANIC CHURCH
ORLANDO | Pablo Torres
LAUNCHED: APRIL 2018
EMAIL PABLO
I wanted to let you know of some very encouraging things that are happening at La Viña during the fall. The Lord has been merciful with us, and has blessed us with beautiful worship services, new people and more. Things like these help us to keep going.
In spite of still being with the pandemic, we have added 4 new members to our congregation who have been faithfully coming weekly, and are participating fully in our activities and Bible studies. We have also had visitors regularly, and 3 people have contacted us through Facebook. We hope they come to visit us soon. On October 10th we celebrated the Hispanic Heritage day, and we had a beautiful worship service. All our congregation attended the service, and we had a couple of visitors. This created an issue, but a good issue to have. We maxed out the room! We had people standing in the back. The room was packed. Once the kids left after the worship songs, the adults who were standing up had a few chairs to sit down.
One of the visitors who came this past Sunday is a lady who attended the ESL classes that UPC started offering just a few weeks ago. Many people of our congregation are attending the ESL classes not only to learn English, but also to meet new people and invite them to our church. When we started La Viña in 2018, many of our core group came from the ESL classes, so we hope and pray, we can join forces with UPC and be an instrument to share the gospel and bring more people to God through ESL classes or any other ministry or event.
Last but not least. On Sunday October 31st, we celebrated the sacrament of baptism for the first time at La Viña! The Paz family got baptized! (2 adults, 2 children and 1 infant), 5 baptisms total. This is wonderful news. We are very excited seeing how the Lord has been sustaining us through all these years. Little by little we are seeing a few fruits of our labor.
SEVEN RIVERS THE VILLAGES
THE VILLAGES | Stephen Speaks
LAUNCHING: October 2021
EMAIL STEPHEN
CITY CHURCH SARASOTA
SARASOTA | Chris Knaebel
City Church Sarasota is a gospel-centered scratch plant in the critically under-reached urban cultural center of downtown Sarasota. For over a year, we’ve been amazed and astounded by the prayers and generosity of God’s people. During a global pandemic, we’ve seen the Lord raise a soul from death to life as well as provide for the foundation of the work with over 95% of our funding. At just two months into the gathering phase, God has brought together a core team of more than twenty people who meet weekly for a meal, prayer, and evangelism training. What a delight it is to equip hungry believers to gather the harvest that God has prepared in Sarasota city!
We are deeply grateful for the partnership of greater body of Christ and so thankful for the invaluable work of the Florida Church Planting Network. As we evangelize our neighbors and gather a team, we’re praying:
For more souls to find their place in God’s story through the gospel.
For 4-6 more believing individuals, couples or families to join our core group team.
For the Lord to provide the remaining 10K/year needed to reach Sarasota city with God’s love in Christ.
ST JOHN’S PRESBYTERIAN
WINTER GARDEN | Frank Cavalli
LAUNCHED: September 2021
EMAIL FRANK
What a glorious start to the ministry of St. John’s in Winter Garden! September 19th was a day of rejoicing as our gracious Heavenly Father imparted a holy joy to his beloved children. We experienced a measure of what is described in Nehemiah 12:43: on that day they “rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.” We are exceedingly grateful to the Lord for generous answers to prayer as well as for the support and encouragement from the FCPN and the Central Florida Presbytery. Though we have yet to advertise, new people continue to join us either through connections with members or from seeing our signage outside West Orange High School. Since our first service we’ve had an average attendance of 90. Collectively, our regular attendees exceed 100. The Lord is laying a solid foundation as we set out to reach our community with the gospel.
Having completed our first phase of getting established, we have moved into our second phase of ministry by forming avenues through which newcomers and the unchurched can begin to forge meaningful relationships. We have several informal home groups meeting throughout the area in addition to a men’s group which gathers at a local restaurant and a forthcoming group for women. Last week we began Sunday school for all ages. We are blessed with a number of covenant children and anticipate many more families will join us in the coming months through personal invitation and the creative use of social media targeting our zip code. The primary means of reaching the unchurched, however, is through personal evangelism and a ministry of presence and service. While the desire exists, most Christians feel intimidated when it comes to evangelism. That is why I am leading a class on practical evangelism Sunday mornings. Our passion for the lost and global vision is being strengthened through our preaching series in Acts. Since the Lord is the one who adds to our number, members are gathering weekly in Downtown Winter Garden to pray for godliness, grace, and growth for Jesus’ sake.
Prayer requests:
For a faithful and teachable intern whom I can mentor, able to assist me in worship.
For a natural assimilation of newcomers and increased evangelization of the unchurched.
For an undivided heart, personal strength, and wisdom in leading this plant.
KISSIMMEE FELLOWSHIP
KISSIMMEE | Heath Zuniga
LAUNCHING: Falll 2022
EMAIL HEATH
Our family moved to Kissimmee in June to start the first PCA church in Osceola County, the second fastest growing county in the state. We are planting in the middle of a large Hispanic community and will utilize both English and Spanish in our ministry.
One partnership, in particular really shows God’s creativity in building his church. Iglesia La Travesía is a church in our denomination located in San Juan, Puerto Rico and they made an announcement last month about our church and news has spread! The connection here is that Kissimmee is roughly 70% Hispanic and the majority of that Hispanic population is Puerto Rican. Some simply refer to Kissimmee as “Little Puerto Rico” and so the connection between the island and Central Florida is very strong. Many folks in Puerto Rico have family (a tío, tía or primos) that live in Kissimmee or in Central Florida. This was the case for Tamara and Jake who heard about our church through this connection and they are excited to be part of our church!
Please pray for our church, Kissimmee Fellowship, as we continue to gather individuals and families for their core group. Pray for new belief in the gospel.
BRIAN MACDONALD | BARTOW
OAK CITY CHURCH
ANGEL ROMAN
LAKE NONA PRESBYTERIAN