Land and a Building?

In light of our recent emphasis on the steps toward another church plant, some of you have wondered if we are abandoning any hope of getting our own facility for GBC Menifee. Should we be putting such a strong emphasis on more church planting when GBC Menifee’s facility situation is still very tenuous?

I’ll be the first to admit that this is a hard question! Here are some scattered (and sometimes conflicting) thoughts:
1) We are fearful that if we wait to plant another church until we have everything we need at GBC Menifee we’ll never get around to church planting. There will always be something else to take our resources, “one more thing” we need to get or do.
2) We know that in most urban areas, the traditional model of buying land and building a building will not be possible. We welcome the challenge of pursuing alternatives to that model.
3) Purchasing land and building a facility in a strategic area of Menifee would probably cost at least a million dollars, if not millions.
4) We know that God could work a miracle and provide land, a building, or a large financial gift to make a purchase possible; we want to pray for this and expect God to do great things.

Practically, what are the possibilities right now?
1) The most likely possibility is that we could find another rental facility in Menifee that would be a more stable, long-term situation.
2) The public school facilities are ideal, with restrooms, several classrooms, etc. They may allow us to continue to rent there for some time to come – there is no way to know.
3) There may be another more unusual option, such as sharing a facility with another church, using modular buildings, etc.

These issues are in my prayers nearly every day, and I would be thrilled if you would join me in praying: “Lord, give us the wisdom to discern the next step in our facility situation that will bring glory to you; give us the courage to take that step; and give us the provision we need for that step.”

The “new” www.lahope.org

If you haven’t seen it yet, go over to www.LAhope.org and click on “ministry updates” on the home page. You’ll see a new updates page where we are now copying the posts that we put on this blog. You’ll also find a new video explaining some of our burden for the future.

Amazing

Today’s local paper reports that in our county there were 21 bank repos in August of 2006 – and 1,198 in August of 2007.

Cooling off and calming down

The temperatures are cooling down in Southern California (our girls are having to get used to pants and shoes!), and the Lovegrove Bed-and-Breakfast should also be calming down now. In the past two months we’ve had my sister Cindy, Jarre Radcliffe, Elijah Wilcott, Paul & Karen Jachimiak, Tim & Eileen Sneeden, Dr. & Mrs. Bud Bierman, Kristalyn’s parents, Eric & Alicia True, Mark Lehman, and Lewis & Ruby Kong with us. It has been a blessing to be able to host and learn from each of these.

Here are some of the current challenges in the ministry here:
It’s been an unsettled time with (too?) many unusual things at church: missionaries, guest speakers, schedule changes, etc. I think our people are a little worn out by all of it, and they are ready to get back to a more consistent routine (and having their pastor preach once in a while?!). Attendance in August was very good but has dipped in September.
We’ve had very little fruit from our outreach efforts this summer and fall.
We’re also making our new budget and really feeling the financial pressure of being a self-supporting church. 2007 has been an expensive year for us, and the new budget is very tight.

And some of the blessings:
We have some men who are interested in being developed for leadership. It’s a delight to help these men mature in the Lord and pursue God’s best for them. In the next 6 months to a year we may add 1 – 3 deacons to our leadership team.
We have a new couple that is ready to start a new-believers discipleship study with me.
We had a wonderful Sunday (Sept. 16) with Lewis & Ruby Kong. They did a great job of sharing about their ministry and sharing the Lord’s grace in their salvation and call to ministry. On Sunday night we packed more than 40 people into our living room and spent an hour and a half learning more about ministry in Hong Kong. It was a wonderful time.
The Lord provided for Adam & Kristi Lee to be able to purchase a new home about two weeks ago. They are very excited to be in their own home and have baby #1 on the way.
Lord-willing in October I’ll be beginning a new expositional series on I John. I’ve been having a great time doing the background preparation for this series.

For obvious reasons I can’t share specific prayer requests on a blog like this. But we would love to have you praying with us. If you can email us (lovegroves@findhope.net), we would be glad to send you more specific prayer requests.

Labor Day, Lehman, and Lost Scrolls

We had great attendance on the 4th of July weekend. We had terrible attendance on Labor Day weekend. : – )
Mark Lehman was with us this weekend. I always enjoy being with him and hearing him teach. He overviewed Taosim / Buddhism / Confucianism for us and then shared some principles for witnessing to Chinese people. It was very helpful. We were disappointed that we didn’t have any Chinese people attend, but I think we were faithful to do what we could to spread the word and invite people.
Monday morning I had the privilege of seeing the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition at the San Diego Natural History Museum. It was really a blessing. Twelve scroll fragments form the heart of the exhibition, including a portion of Isaiah and a large Psalms scroll. But there is much more: beautiful photography of the land, flora, and fauna from the area around the Dead Sea; archaeological remains from Qumran like combs, plates, and very rare inkwells that they probably used to copy their scrolls; displays to help you understand how they put the fragments together, date them, and preserve them; very old Hebrew manuscripts that are stored in Russia; many handwritten Bibles from the last 1500 years; and more! It’s an amazing testimony to the preservation of God’s Word over thousands of years through the “labor of love” of making handwritten copies.