Jeff Adams

Today we had a very solid meeting of the Be_edini K_rd Alliance, a group of local churches in the United States and Latin America dedicated to being God-sent friends of this group of people who have been objects of tough times and horrible persecution. Our little group is less than a year old, but we have already seen some very encouraging developments.

Here are a few of the blessings of the past few months:

• Three each of us from KCBT and Grace Church in OP have been able to be on the ground this year in northern Ir@q and see a bit of what is happening with our own eyes.
• A little team of several church planters continue to mature and bear fruit in their individual outreaches.
• A few months ago in an Armenian village in northern Ir@q, a number of Armenians who have grown up speaking Be_edini as their mother tongue have come to faith. They are growing as disciples of Jesus and gaining a burden to share their faith with their neighbors.
• A small group of “secret” believers have been discovered in a village among a sub group of Be_edini speakers in another village.
• At least one of the Bible studies begun by the church planters over the past couple of years has recently shown signs of developing into a church in the not too distant future.
• A young lady from Grace in OP is studying in the university in Ir@q, making friendships and having great opportunities to model the life of a Christ follower.
• For three men who await sentencing having been captured carrying Bibles into a neighboring country.

What is our objective? To see a church planting movement among the Be_edini speaking K_rds.  There have been 43 known church planting movements in history and 19 of them have been carefully documented. In each case those who have been part of such a movement credit prayer as a major factor. Extraordinary prayer is the first of six commonalities of church planting movements.

With that said, here are some very important prayer requests that come to my mind for our BKA:

• That a church planting movement would take place in northern Ir@q.
• That God would continue to connect us with the K_rdish community in our own city, many of whom speak Be_edini, and that we would show ourselves to be their friends.
• That the Lord Jesus Christ would reveal himself in his supernatural power to those in northern Ir@q.
• For the wife of church planter who has been a solid, faithful woman for many years and is now in the grip of a horrible depression/oppression.
• For financial resources for these church planters, some of whom are transitioning into vocational employment even as they continue their ministries.
• For financial resources for our alliance of churches and for Epic International, the facilitating agency with whom we partner.  Staff have taken massive pay cuts in light of the current economic climate, including Randy, our field coordinator who is invaluable to this work.
• For our dear friend Roscoe, founder of Epic, that God would completely heal him of cancer.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 1:16 am and is filed under Ministry Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.