October 2019 Video Update

Wow, what a summer. We've enjoyed the warm weather in this holiday season and time together with family. We had a slightly slower pace of church life meeting over the summer mainly for picnics in the park. Some of the team attended Ashburnham the New Ground camp in the UK, and Pioneer a church planting conference in Malaga, Spain. Autumn has arrived and with it the shorter, wet and windy Berlin days. This autumn welcomes many exciting God adventures for us as a church. We have our first church camp, we're starting our charity (Verein), opening a bank account, and we're on the hunt for a meeting space. We continue to learn about life and mission in Berlin developing ideas for our church vision, name and communications. Whilst things start to become more and more visible, I'm keen we invest time and energy into the unseen groundworks. We've been producing Video Updates every month for the last three years! God spoke to me about doing this, as a way to share news for prayer, envision people, and to be an encouragement for church planting in general. Due to increased responsibility in starting a family and a church, we've decided to remove the pressure of having to produce a video every month. We'll continue to do these videos and prayer newsletters, however, it will be more like every second month. Thank you so much for your ongoing support. Please continue to watch, share, read and pray!

#NewGround #Berlin

August 2019 Video Update

Praise God, we've experienced the birth of two beautiful Berliner babies as a church plant over this last month. The safe arrival of Johanna Joy Benton and Janonsch Paul Cowell has brought much excitement (and tiredness) to the team. Both names mean "Yahweh is Gracious". In the sovereignty of God, both the Benton's and Cowell's had picked these names without each other knowing. I'm personally taking this as a huge prophetic encouragement. God wants to birth many spiritual and physical new Berlin lives. Children of God who carry the grace of God. The birth of these babies has brought a fresh revelation of the grace of God and a strong reminder of the message He wants us to share. "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6–8. He didn't wait for us to get cleaned up first. He died for us whilst we were still sinners, forgiving us of our transgressions. A Righteous sinless saviour stepped into the mess, not to condemn us but to graciously save us. We continue to prepare and learn about how to contextualise the gospel in our beautiful city, Berlin. As well as hosting local pastors in our mid-week gatherings we've enjoyed some great video calls with NF pastor friends from across the world. The process of choosing a church name continues as we've been carrying out some questionnaires and interviews with local Berliners. This has helped give us a better understanding of life here in Berlin. It confirmed how secular and atheistic Berlin is, presenting us with a great opportunity for the gospel. We also discovered a sad and visible statistic that 52% of Berliners live in single residence premises. God is calling us as a family to share his welcome to many Berliners.

#Community