Rancho Update & Facility Hunting

Praise the Lord for a very generous gift from the Arch Ministries golf tournament at the National Church Planting Conference last week! With these funds, the gifts from the people of Grace in Menifee, and a few gifts from others, we have close to $20,000 for startup costs in Rancho (part of this we will need to use to supplement the True’s salary).

The Rancho team is busy looking at facility possibilities for the launch of Sunday morning services this fall. Pastor Eric sent me a note about the interesting comparison between the Rancho/Menifee search results from loopnet.com. As of today, if you search for available industrial / office / special purpose lease space, you get:

• Menifee: 8 results
• Rancho Cucamonga: 241 results

This does not make it simple to find an (affordable!) facility in Rancho, but it does highlight the challenge in Menifee. Thank you for interceding before the throne of the One who rules and owns it all. His way is perfect!

Miracles of God’s Provision

Praise the Lord for two couples that are following His leading to come west and invest in lives for Christ’s sake here!

Tim & Lisa Smith are planning to spend the summer with us in Menifee, helping out especially with the Rancho church plant. They are currently part of Faith Baptist Church in Taylors, SC, and Tim would like to be involved in pastoral ministry in a church planting setting in the future. Tim & Lisa have three children.

We are thrilled for the Lord’s provision of the Smiths to help the Trues through a very busy summer.

Eric & Heidi-Jeanne Rea are planning to move to Menifee in the fall of 2010. Eric is on the music faculty at Bob Jones University and serves as an assistant to the pastor at Grace Bible Church in Greenville, SC. Heidi-Jeanne is also a musician and writer who currently works in the testing department of BJU Press.

We knew that this fall we would need significant help in both music ministry and pastoral care. Once again, the Lord has amazed us with His provision by burdening Eric & Heidi-Jeanne to come serve here.

If you know either of these couples, I hope you will do all that you can to encourage them as they take these steps of faith!

Church outdoors!

Esther Grace decided to be born on Sunday morning, so of course I was not at church. The Wilkinsons were also gone, and Pastor Eric was sick. Then they arrived to setup, and no one ever showed up to let them into the building. So the church family jumped in to help, and they did church outdoors! Not exactly ideal, but there were some positives:

• it was a good chance for the church men to help out
• it was good practice for Pastor Eric – they’ll have a few of their own surprises at GBC Rancho
• we had several visitors, who stuck with us
• we’re in Southern California, not northern Michigan!
• this is a good reminder to pray for the Lord to provide us with a more permanent facility

Following GBC Menifee sermons online

If you’ve used our sermonaudio page to access our teaching online, you know that we don’t have an especially consistent posting schedule. Some weeks the sermons are posted on Monday, but sometimes they are one or two weeks late. If you want to know when new audio is posted, you can enter the address below into your feed reader or simply follow our twitter feed. A quick look at the download stats shows that recent sermons on anger, divorce, and adultery seem to be popular. Is “popular” the right word?

Feed address: http://www.sermonaudio.com/rss_source.asp?sourceid=gbcmenifee