Vol.

2 / Issue 3: May to July 2012

Armed with close to six-hundred pages of pre-reading printouts and two weeks worth of clothes and personal essentials, James left for Hong Kong last 25 July to attend Redeemer City to City Asias International Intensive. Having never had any formal training in church planting, this unique opportunity to be equipped and to learn alongside thirteen other church planters from dierent cities in Asia and Australia was truly a providential blessing from the Lord. The Intensive lasted for almost an entire month and was conducted by several seasoned church planters, pastors, educators, and marketplace leaders who s h a r e d a wealth of wisdom and knowledge from their own experiences of planting churches and doing ministry in d i e r e n t c i t y contexts. With forty-three dierent classroom sessions, eight church visits, twelve church case studies and debriefs, numerous sermons and project presentations, equally numerous post-evaluations, the participants were challenged to think through the deep implications of a robust gospel theology upon the task of church planting whilst travelling almost on a weekly basis from Hong Kong to Taipei to Singapore to Malaysia. Finally last 24 July, disarmed of erroneous assumptions about church planting and with a renewed and claried vision for church planting in Katipunan, James returned to Manila. By His grace, the Lord has brought His servant to many realizations and new learning. James is grateful for all your prayers for his training. He is now in the process of writing an action plan for the next phase of Pilgrim Communitys kingdom progress.

Learning to Plant His Church

Learning to Rely on God

Prior to leaving for the Intensive, both James and Keren were quite apprehensive about his potential four-week absence from the ministry. They were anxious that the Lords ministry might be hindered by his www.pilgrimcommunity.ph

Page 2 of 2 abolition of slavery in the lm Amazing Grace. Afterwards, James shared a short gospel talk from the second chapter of Ephesians. Aside from these two events, we also have the joy of having students join us for times of impromptu meals and fellowship. We thank the Lord for His innite generosity in giving His Son Jesus as a substitute for morally bankrupt sinners like us. We count it a privilege to be able to love like the Son and to be generous with the blessings we receive from Him.

temporary departure. This of course was a foolish thing to think. As the ministry is the Lords, so does He order and preserve it according to His wisdom. We have seen this in the past month as the Lord continued to sustain the ministry. By His grace, a former seminary classmate of James came over and helped out with the weekly Wednesday night Prayer Meetings. As well, Keren has been meeting regularly with ve dierent Bible Study groups with ladies throughout the week. We now have weekly Bible studies from Tuesdays through Saturdays and we thank God for the joy of seeing these young lives touched with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We thank God for gently reminding us by His providence that He is in control and that the ministry that we do is His and not our own.

Prayer Points

Learning to be Generous like the Son

In the past three months, the Lord has a l l o w e d u s t h e opportunity to host two major informal events, which have e n a b l e d u s t o practice gospel shaped generosity. The rst event was an Independence Day dinner gathering where we hosted close to twenty ADMU students at our home for a simple time of fellowship and meal sharing. Apart from the food, we also had the chance to pray bless these students by praying for them. The other event was a lm viewing that we had at the function room of a dormitory close by. It was a great time of movie and merienda as we watched about one godly mans (William Wilberforce) ght for the
PilgrimCommunity PilgrimComm

James is currently in the process of drafting a contextualized philosophy of ministry and an action plan for the next phase of our church panting initiative. Please pray for wisdom and the leading of the Spirit as he does so. One of the biggest realizations that weve had in the ministry is the need to involve other people in what we do. As such, please join us as we pray for volunteers who would share our vision for Katipunan and assist us as we proceed with our ministry. James and Keren are expecting a baby girl! Keren is now in her 7th month of pregnancy. Please pray for a safe and easy delivery, Lord willing, on the rst week of November.

, Unit H, P es 1108 ess: No. 6 n City, Philippin Addr , Quezo ts 89 a Heigh 2) 502-85 Loyol ndline: (0 La eren 990-1571 -0544 - K fax: (02) 0917) 300 Tele es / ( 689 - Jam 17) 898-1 09 h Mobile: ( munity.p ilgrimcom www.p h Website: munity.p ilgrimcom ntact@p Email: co

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