What a summer this has been! From visiting and hosting out of town family, to traveling too much for business, this has been a very busy and crazy summer. I’m looking forward to fall in Arizona. Hopefully we can get some camping in.
That all being said, I apologize for my inactivity on this website. God has laid many things on my heart during this time, one of which is how to encourage the house churches in Phoenix in being more united in our mission of mutual encouragement, service, and outreach.
Thanks to the Kraemer’s for hosting a meeting in July where we got a chance to hear from a pastor of a very large church in Orlando. Their vision is to work together with other churches, institutional and home churches, in a variety of service and outreach ministries. They want to share their resources with any church that is interested.
After much prayer and thought, I could see how a united group of house churches with the same vision for our local neighborhoods and city could reach a lot of people for the Kingdom.
The fact is that as a collective group of house churches, we have not been doing a very good job of encouraging and working with each other although individual house churches have done some great things. Out of that feeling, I sent out an email with a simple idea.
My idea is to work out some plan for regular meetings or gatherings. I suggested possible conference calls to save money on gas. This could be a starting point to start planning for gatherings that could be ministry related. I asked for any interested individuals to reply to my email.
Thats been about a month and during that month God has taught us some lessons. These lessons are all around waiting on the Lord.
You may know our brother in Christ, John Rowden. John spent most of last year attending a very intense and concentrated course on how to run a food service business. This was part of a state sponsored program for visually impaired with the goal being to operate a grill or restaurant. In this program, you put in a bid for a location that would be available. John had one or two chances to bid since he completed the classes but felt that the location was not the place that God had for him. After so many months, he was a little frustrated.
When a small grill near the Durango jail became available, John looked to the Lord again. He bid on the location and won the bid. He began operating the location, he now calls the Durango Grill, on August 11. John will tell you that a number of prayers were answered with this location. One of them was his prayer that the location, wherever it may be, could be used by the house churches for meetings and gatherings. For the metro Phoenix area, you can’t get much more central than the Durango curve. It is only open during the week for breakfast and lunch.
Finally, we invite any interested house church leaders to meet Saturday morning, 10AM, September 13 at the Durango Grill, 3341 W. Durango, just west of I-17. We can fellowship, pray, and plan our next meeting or gathering. John is providing coffee and donuts and I have a limited number of copies of “The Man in the Mirror” by Pat Morley to give out.
If its important at all to you that we work together to reach the city for Christ, please join us.
Feel free to email me ( ljoh3106@cox.net ) or call me ( 602-524-9400 ) for more information or directions.
