An update by David Del Castillo, Pastor of Iglesia Gracia Soberana, Santa Cruz, Bolivia

This has been a time of growth for our church. Although we have already started conducting pastoral interviews for the group that finished the last membership process, we have many waiting to start the process because they arrived once it had already begun. They are very encouraged to be part of our church!

So much so, that our place is already getting too small. We added 15 more chairs which is the capacity limit and after worship time we have to wait for the children to go to Sunday school so that people have a chair to sit in. Every Sunday we have between 80 - 90 people in attendance and so we pray that God guides us in what to do, since the place we have is very low cost compared to the increase we would have to pay for a new meeting place.

An update from Jeremy Hetrick, Lead Pastor of Redeeming Grace Church, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania:

On Sunday, August 27, 2023, Ben Kreps and Living Hope Church in Middletown, Pennsylvania (PA), commissioned and sent out my family and I, along with approximately 100 other adults and children to launch Redeeming Grace Church in Mechanicsburg, PA. It was a joyous yet teary occasion as members and friends who, for years have done life together at Living Hope, said their good-byes for the sake of Jesus Christ and the gospel mission in the Mechanicsburg region. While we still live within about a half hour, we all recognized the cost of going on this church plant and being on mission for Jesus.

We (Redeeming Grace Church) held our inaugural meeting the following week at Elmwood Academy in Mechanicsburg on Sunday, September 3rd, with 190 in attendance. Now, after two months of meetings, we have seen many new guests from various cultural backgrounds and walks of life, and our attendance has hovered around 140.

Wissinoming Park, Northeast Philadelphia,

Recently on the Mark Prater Podcast, Ben Kreps & Mark interviewed Dan Birkholz, Senior Pastor of Mercy Gate Church in the Wissinoming section of lower Northeast Philadelphia, known for its’ challenges and brokenness. Watch or listen below to learn how the Gospel is reaching the diverse population and hearts are being cared for through Grief Share, a Jesus Club and more.

Mission team members from both Greentree Church (New Jersey) and Covenant Fellowship Church (Pennsylvania) in the US.

A recap of a short term missions trip to London, England:

From September 8th-18th our church sent out a short-term mission team to do Muslim evangelism with a church plant in central London, England. You can find people from much of the world in London, where over 300 languages are spoken. This church is located in a neighborhood where there are dozens of unreached people groups, and so we had an amazing opportunity to proclaim the gospel in a place where it is really not understood, where secularism and many false religions like Islam abound. 

Our team members were very effective in engaging with Muslims as well as other internationals. A main goal for this trip was to come alongside this church’s members (most of whom are converts to Christianity from an unreached Muslim people group), and to help equip them in evangelism so that they would be encouraged to continue reaching out to friends, family and even strangers after our team had gone. 

While there we also had the opportunity to help lead in Sunday worship services. One of the highlights was seeing seven former Muslims be baptized in the name of Jesus! Many of these new believers had to escape their home country because of having converted to Christianity. They have faced much loss and persecution in embracing Jesus and remaining faithful to Him, and yet they are filled with joy because of God’s rich mercy to them in the Gospel! 

We are hopeful to see this church become more involved with Sovereign Grace in the future. We desire to see others within our denomination consider participating in this strategic ministry in order to strengthen that church, and to see other Sovereign Grace churches planted throughout London and even other parts of Europe. Please continue to pray for this ministry. 

~Pat Tedeschi, Pastor, Greentree Church, Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey

Recently on the podcast, Ben and I spoke about sound exegesis and our complementarian convictions. Once again I recommended a valuable resource: Eikon, A Journal for Biblical Anthropology by CBMW.

Here is an excerpt from the podcast on why I highly recommend this resource. I’m very grateful for CBMW to publish a journal that is so solid exegetically to defend and even prove complementarianism from scripture.

First of all, we as pastors have to be able to teach and to show and even protect our complementarian convictions biblically. We just don't want to say it's a value that we have. We have to be able to prove from scripture the complementarian values and the theology that we embrace.

So the main point there is we've got to know our Bibles, we've got to be pastors and men and women, members of our churches, who understand why we embrace complementarian theology because that's what the Bible teaches. So that's very, very important. Let's have sound exegesis.

In the podcast, I recommend three specific articles in the Spring edition of Eikon that are responses to trends in flawed exegesis with the egalitarian position that begin to embrace same-sex relationships and marriage. I hope you will read them to better understand our biblically-based complementarian convictions:

Misunderstood Mutuality: Responding to Ronald W. Pierce and Elizabeth A. Kay, “Mutuality in Marriage and Singleness” By Denny Burk.

Yet Another Attempt to Justify What God Forbids: A Response to Cynthia Westfall, “Male and Female, One in Christ” By Andy Naselli.

Rejecting Gender Essentialism to Embrace Transgenderism? A Response to Christa McKirland's article, "Image of God and Divine Presence" By Colin Smothers.

This summer we held a Youth Camp experience for 83 of our sponsored children in Ethiopia. The camp was organized by about 20 older teens and adult leaders from my home church - Covenant Fellowship in Pennsylvania - where a summer Youth Camp is an eagerly anticipated annual tradition. We asked the American team to give our sponsored teens a similar experience, with our in-country staff and church partners helping us adapt the Youth Camp concept for the Ethiopian context.

Throughout the 4-day camp, our sponsored kids participated in games and activities, enjoyed growing in relationship with one another, and encountered the Gospel daily in sermons, songs, and discussion groups. It was a beautiful expression of partnership as well, with about half the messages preached by visiting pastors from America and half by our Ethiopian partners. 

Please join me in praying that the Gospel seeds planted in our Ethiopian youth will bear much fruit in the months and years to come as lives are being changed for time and eternity.

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Doug Hayes is the Executive Director of Covenant Mercies in Glen Mills, PA.