Hello Church Family,
I hope you’re having a good week so far. August is officially here and with it comes the scent of the fall season of ministry at Broadview. Things start firing back up on Monday nights, Tuesday nights, Wednesday nights, and so on. Preparations are made for things like Sunday night equipping classes, the 2020 Vision Celebration, and other big church-wide events.
As I mentioned in last week’s update, our church is again hosting the Abilene Perspectives class from August 28th to December 4th. It’s a 13 week experience that helps participants discover how to use what’s in them to bless the world around them. You were made for more than just living an “ordinary life.” The Lord wants to use you for something extraordinary. Something that will glorify his name and grow your faith.
You can register online. The price is $250 but there are scholarships available. Just let us know if you want to take the class. (you can just reply to this email) You can also attend the first three weeks for free. If anything, just try it out for a few weeks and see if it’s something you may be interested in! I’ll be teaching week five of our course this year. I was really impressed by the course last year when we hosted it.
Speaking of living a life on mission, We had a mission team leave for Lesotho/South Africa on Monday.
It’s a three man team: Pastor Vernon, Jeff Hinton and David Hogan (not pictured). As you can see from the photograph, it’s going to be a long plane ride.
As you may remember, in 2014 we voted to adopt an unengaged and unreached people group called the Guidya. After several trips to India and God’s sovereign leadership in connecting us with some great partners there, we have a ministry now targeting and reaching peoples from that group. (contact Les if you want to be on the email updates for that ministry project. Some really amazing things are happening.)
One of the things we discovered during that effort was the fact that, as a people group, they are pretty well impossible to locate. They have essentially disbanded their group status and assimilated themselves into the wider Indian culture of West Bengal. Nevertheless, there were still several identifiably Guidya people on the ground and so we are committed to keeping a ministry presence there.
That said, our heart for unengaged and unreached peoples has not changed.That’s why we’re taking this trip to Lesotho/South Africa. We believe the Lord has led us to engage an unengaged and unreached people group there on the mountains of Lesotho.
Lesotho is actually it’s own sovereign country but it is completely surrounded by South Africa. While much of the country has already been reached with the Gospel, there are villages of unreached peoples in the mountains and valleys of Lesotho that have no Gospel witness and nobody trying to reach them.
We are heading to one such valley.
The work will be difficult. Getting there and back will not be for the faint of heart. The trip is physically demanding but you can believe with confidence that the Lord is already working in the hearts of the people we are going to see.
When Broadview first got started with International Missions we took trips to South Africa. Now, it seems, the Lord is leading us back that direction to explore the feasibility of targeting the unreached peoples of Lesotho.
If you’ve been keeping up with us during our journey through the book of Acts you know that the Gospel is for everyone. No one, anywhere, under any circumstances is beyond God’s reach in the Gospel. No one is so lost that God can’t find them. No one is so hard that God can’t break them. No one is so evil that God can’t save them.
There are people God intends for us to reach in the uttermost places of the world. The question is, will we be ready and willing to go and tell them the good news of how they can experience eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.
You may not be able to go but that doesn’t mean you can’t be part of the work. One of the ways you can participate is through giving. Every year we put forward a special offering called the World Missions Offering. Now, you even have the possibility of sending individual missionaries through our online giving platform. We have a page on our site that lists out all the upcoming mission trips. Just click “learn more” on each trip and you’ll see who all is going on the trip.
From that page, you can give towards specific individuals. Or, if you’d rather, you can choose to just give a general donation towards the work that will go on during that trip. It’s just an added way for you to see how your generosity really does make a difference in sending missionaries and reaching the unreached around the world.
Here are some of the upcoming or ongoing trips.
Lesotho Mission Trip
Brazil Mission Trip (Fall)
Nations Church Trip
This feature just went live. So, if you’re going on one of these trips but you see $0 raised next to your name, don’t fret. We are still assigning past gifts to the proper names in our online giving framework. This should give you a landing page that you can share with your friends and family if you want to give them an easy way to support you on your upcoming trip.
Technology can be a great thing! (It can also be a headache!) haha. I think that’s it for now. I hope you have a great rest of your week!
Blessings,
Pastor Wes