UPDATE ON FRESH START MAY 13, 2018
Dear Congregation,
We just finished a 5-week Fresh Start Vision campaign to meet a 1.1 Million dollar goal. A sizable goal for a congregation our size. And we needed enough raised to gift the PCUSA denomination $833,000 by the end of this year so we would be free to transfer to ECO and move into the mission to which God is calling us.
Two Sundays ago we made pledges.
Sunday May 6, we received our first celebration offering.
Sunday May 13, we are going to announce where the pledges received to date, before this morning’s offering, have brought us. You want to know don’t you? I did too!
But first!… A reminder where we’ve been.
We made a pledge of a sort back in October when so many came we parked cars on the lawn and came standing room only to say with one voice that God is calling us to a new season and a new mission with ECO. We had a significant threshold goal then and God sort of literally blessed us pressed in and flowing over.
Remember when Rob preached on the parting of the Jordan? How God parted the waters when the priests went first, the people passed on dry ground, and a representative from each tribe (family) shouldered a rock from the middle of the river and stacked it on the shore so that in the future, when the children ask, what’s with the rocks? You can tell them what great work of provision God did here. (Joshua 3:14-4:3,6-7 )
Well, do you think God has done it again? Praise to the Father Son and Holy Spirit! May we see the slide?
CPC Fresh Start
117 Families participating so far have pledged $1,881,622 over 3 years.
$569,511.80 has already been received to date!!!!
“Bring the full tithe into the storehouse… put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need… you will be a land of delight, says the Lord of hosts.” (Malachi 3:10-12)
Church specialist, Paul Borden who is currently consulting with us and other churches in ECO says, “When a lot of people pray something great will happen, usually something great will happen.”
Look around you brothers and sisters! The Holy Spirit is a foot! This overwhelming financial provision is a symbol of what God is doing and will do in and through us. Rejoice! Tell your children!
Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert…to give drink to my chosen people, the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.
Session will be meeting to seek the Lord’s direction for how the Lord will lead us to use these resources. Seek Him with us. Join us in pledging, praying and moving into this new thing He is doing.
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)
Jean Hartman
Elder
Centreville Presbyterian Church
