Hi prayer partners,
This is a big weekend for us all! Our church plant, City on a Hill Church in Boston’s most northwestern neighborhood, Brighton, will have its very first preview service on Sunday morning. Read below for updates from last month’s prayer requests as well as more ways to pray for this month.
Updates from Last Month:
1. Easter Egg Outreach
What a day! Even with a torrential downpour during the middle of the morning, we had over 250 families come by the Easter Egg Outreach. Brighton Main Streets did a great job putting on their event and we were honored to be asked to be a part of it. Our face painting booth was a huge hit and we got to pass out over 200 gift bags. Each gift bag included a clear explanation of the gospel and why celebrating Easter and Jesus’ resurrection is so important. We had at least 40 families express interest in exploring their faith and learning more about spiritual things. Me, Emily, and our awesome church planting team are excited to follow up with these individuals!
2. Good Friday/Easter Services at CoaH Brookline
Easter weekend was jam-packed but amazing between Good Friday service to the Easter Egg Hunt to Easter morning services and brunch with the church as a whole. We had over 100 additional guests at Easter services that were either out of town visitors or guests from the community. Each person heard the gospel clearly through the entire service from the songs, communion, and the sermon. We pray that some guests were even from Brighton, brought to the service through our personal invitation included in the gift bags we passed out at the Easter community event the day before.
3. International Justice Mission Prayer Gathering
Outreach events are great for meeting new people in the neighborhood that don’t know about Jesus, but it is also an awesome way to connect with other people serving in our area. While at the Easter Egg Outreach, Emily and I had the opportunity to meet with a woman involved in a global Christian organization called International Justice Mission (IJM). Through our conversation, I was asked to lead a prayer session in their annual Boston gathering the following week. These prayer gatherings specifically focus on the 40 million slaves that are around the world today. My portion of the prayer gathering was centered on the church and its role in ending slavery locally, nationally, and globally. Please be praying for the continued health of this organization and for God to move mightily through the prayers of his people from this event and many others like it.
What to Pray For:
1. Preview Service THIS SUNDAY!
City on a Hill Church (CoaH) in Brighton will have its very first preview service this weekend on Sunday at 10am. Our preview services will simply act as practice runs before our launch on September 8th. We will do everything we would normally do, but these services give us a chance to plan for all the big and little details that go into launching a worship gathering. These services also give us a chance to see what we can do better.
What this weekend looks like for us…
Friday (today): Moved chairs, pipe and drape, and miscellaneous supplies from 8am-10am to Brighton High School.
Saturday: Move items from our home (which has acted a little like a storage unit lately!) to Brighton High School and then set-up from 9am-12pm for Sunday morning’s service.
Sunday: Arrive at Brighton High School at 8am to make sure all details are covered for service, which starts at 10am. Have our very first service as CoaH Brighton (!!!) and then tear down all chairs/equipment so that everything is ready for the high school and its upcoming school week.
As you can tell, it’s a busy weekend! Please pray for:
1. Smooth set-up and easy transition as we get everything settled at Brighton High
2. Endurance and perseverance to handle any and all details that may arise this weekend
3. Most importantly, many to come to know Jesus in our community through CoaH Brighton
Emily and I are beyond excited to be at this point and we wouldn’t be here without your prayers and support. We are eternally grateful!
2. Speaking at Men’s Retreat
Next weekend I have the privilege of being a part of and speaking at our church network’s Men’s Retreat. I will be speaking on Biblical manhood from 1 Corinthians 16. This weekend will be a helpful time to be intentional in building gospel-centered friendships with other men and leaders in the church. It also is an intensive time of refocusing ourselves on how the gospel speaks personally to us as men in leading ourselves, our families, and within the church. Please pray for fruitful conversations, vulnerability and transparency among the men about our areas of weakness and need for accountability, and that the good news of Jesus would pierce our hearts in a fresh way.
3. Movie Night in the Park
CoaH Brighton will have at least one community event each month this summer and we are kicking our summer calendar off with a movie night in the park at the end of this month on May 31! We pray our movie nights become a welcome expectation within our neighborhood of almost 50,000 people. With 300 or more people coming to each of our movie nights last year, we plan these events with expectant hope of meeting more and more families in our area. These events allow us to have initial conversations that can then lead to future intentional conversations about themselves, their backgrounds, and what they believe about Jesus. Every time we have hosted one of these events, we have had the privilege of connecting with at least one family that has regularly plugged into our church. Our movie nights in the park are one of the best ways to meet a lot of people quickly, build a strong reputation in the community, serve those in our area, and tell people about our church and, more importantly, about Jesus. Pray for:
1. Our volunteers to continue faithfully serving our community and sharing Jesus with those around us
2. Families to get plugged into the life of our church from this event
3. Many opportunities to share the good news of Jesus with the several hundred people that attend our movie nights