Praise for God’s Grace

Testing … 1,2,3 … testing … okay …

 Hi GG,

Just a quick praise report to say that by God’s grace we (Sofia, my mom and I) are doing well despite Sanjay being on a business trip this week to Germany and Annie’s (Sanjay’s mom) departure back to India on Tuesday. 

Please continue to keep us in your prayers … that God will continue to give us wisdom and equip us to decipher and meet Sofia’s needs even though she can’t speak them (well, besides through crying!). 

Also, please pray for Sanjay’s safe return from Germany and my cousin Mark who is a Marine in Iraq (on his third tour).  Pray that God will protect Mark physically while there and psychologically from the effects of war.

Thanks,

Kathy

Interview with Rick Warren

Here’s a great interview with Rick Warren, the pastor at Saddleback Church and author of A Purpose Driven Life. Includes fascinating comments on:

• the growth of Saddleback (87% of the church had no religious background),
• the importance of small groups in the world today,
• his views on the evolution of the church and the next Great Awakening,
• how he uses technology to network pastors around the world,
• the increasing unity between Catholics and Protestants
• and what it takes to check in thousands of kids at Saddleback each week.

I’ve uploaded a PDF of the interview (Myths of the Modern Mega-Church) in case the link goes bad or you want to print it out and read at home

Unexpected praise

Hello all,

Last night I spoke on my dad on the phone…in the middle of the conversation he mentioned that my stepmom (Sue) is getting involved in her old church.  She is Lutheran and my  dad is Catholic, so they attend different churches.  My dad is a very faithful Sunday morning Catholic, but Sue stopped going to church shortly before she met my dad.

Anyway, not only is she attending church, but she has also joined a Bible study!  This is absoutely CRAZY!

I’m hoping that she’ll eventually rub off on my dad, who is a baby believer.   But still, I am amazed at the way the LORD is working…even in unexpected places.

Michelle

Testimonies from the GG Leaders meeting

I just wanted to update you with some testimonies last Saturday at the quarterly GG servant leaders meeting.

 

1) One servant of the Lord decided she wanted to lead a GG in Oakland and so John Gorin (head of the GG ministry) had 10 sign ups ready to join. However, only 1 person showed up coincidently this person was also an unbeliever.  So for the next 8 weeks they met as a GG of 2 and finally this person accepted Christ. 

2) In a GG in San Francisco, a person came that only could not speak English, her husband was just deported.  For many months the GG was translated into Spanish, using the translation services provided by our church.  She and her 2 children accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior. 

3) One GG testified how their GG was going deeper and that the questions from the weekly sermons notes were really helping people to open up and be vulnerable.   This group testified how their GG is becoming a GG of prayer, encouragement and sharing.

ALCF will be pushing GGs for 8 weeks from January to March.  The challenge will be for prospective GG members to do an 8 week experiment with a GG near them. So we could get new people at that time.

 

Kirk

Thanks for the prayers for my sister Eva!

Just wanted to thank you all who were at GG last night and prayed for my sister Eva.

Amazing overlap between prayers uttered and stuff she has said–Praise God~! Here’s a picture of her just so you can, well, picture her.

Origin of our Website Name

“Exalted Manna” is a phrase taken from the following 17th century poem about prayer:

Prayer

by George Herbert

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;

Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner’s towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.

How To Post

Once you are signed up (i.e. you get your login going on wordpress, and Andy signs your login name up as an author), then:

-Go to the blog website (obviously):  http://exaltedmanna.wordpress.com/

-Check over on the right hand column to see if you are logged in–if it says LogOut you are good to go, otherwise click LogIn and do your username-password thing.

-Once you’re logged in you can go to the top left of the page–there it will say “New Post”–Click it.

-This will take you to a page where you can type in whatever you’d like. If you’d like it to be private (i.e. viewable by only us–who have been invited to the site), then click the radio button on the right column under “Post Status” that says Private.  You can switch this back and forth any time in the future even on previous posts.

-If you chose your post to be Private – then click save and you’re done. If you want a Public post, click the big Publish button (next to Save) in order to release it to the web site. You can edit or delete anything you’ve posted, so fear not! Nothing’s permanent

That’s it!

Canonizing the GG Charter

Dear Growth Group,

I just want to say that last Friday’s meeting was excellent as we shared how we can work to make our GG better.  As I reflected about what the major points of emphasis were from the many suggestions and critiques I believe the main take home points were:

1) We are all encouraged by the prayer times we have. Indeed this seems to be the strength of the group.  Having said that we must get to this aspect sooner in the meeting and have this take a more central role in the GG.  2 practical things we can do that can help facilitate our GG prayer

-Start our worship time at 7:30.  I will resist the temptation to wait an
extra 15 minutes until everybody shows up.   In this way we devote 30-45 min
to prayer time either before or after our lesson/study/sermon.

-Once a quarter/month we’ll have a night devoted to intercessory prayer.

-Prayer requests can be entered in our newly developing GG website, such that we can be praying during the week and also when we enter in to the GG on Friday night.  Right now Andy is putting together a website, I will say I’ve seen a glimpse and it looks fantastic.  This will be an excellent and fun way to be a GG (I hope to get Wanda hooked on blogging…).  It will also serve as a way to track God’s answered prayer in our Group over the years.

2) Drop the sermon worksheets questions, at least for the time being, and go
deeper in the word.   I communicated with John Gorin by e-mail and he says
this desire is not unique to our group, actually at this Saturday’s GG leaders meeting he will be addressing this very topic and will be giving us
ways in which we can do this.   He did say that we must do the following:

1. Everyone is agreed to what is being studied
2. There is a set format for the study or a study guide being used..
3. No one person is “the teacher”
4. The duration of the study is typically 8 weeks or less
5. All other components of the GG remain intact, e.g. sharing of lives, prayer requests, social events, etc.

The set format is what is most difficult to actualize. But I did appreciate the suggestions by Sanjay and Andy in that often ‘simple’ topics such as the 10 commandments or studying all of Jesus public sermons can be extremely rewarding and doable with limited time in our schedule. Of course if there is a sermon that we need to discuss then we will still have the freedom to do so. Whatever format we decide on we will make a genuine effort to focus on more of understanding God’s word.

I realize that this isn’t an exhaustive synopsis, but these I feel these were the common expectations held by the group.  Can you imagine how difficult it must have been to canonize the scripture?

O.K. So this will be an experiment and you guys will be my lab mice.  I want us to go over scripture covered in P. Poonen’s sermon specifically focusing on Revelations 3:21-22, Colossians 2:14-15, Hebrews 2:14-15, James 4:7.
Read these scriptures and also the preceding and following versus to gain context, learn as much as you can regarding the topic “Defeating the Enemy”.
We’re going to have a 2 week investigation into the matter from the Word of God.  Next week I’ll send out another passage of scripture that pertains to “Defeating the Enemy”.  Given the authority we have in Christ I would like us to spend some time in prayer telling the devil he has been defeated in his schemes against us and that “greater is he who is in us than he who is in the world.”  So also bring your stuff you want prayed for.

Finally, we’ll be meeting at our place 7:30 pm the worship music will be starting and I’ll try land the enterprise at 9:30

How to Join

To join you need to do the following:

1. Go to http://wordpress.com/signup
2. Make sure you select “Just a username, please”
3. Click “Next” and follow the instructions.
4. Finally – email your username and email address to Andy so that he can make you an author on the blog.

New GG Blog

Hey all – welcome to the new growth group blog. As you can see, the header still needs a lot of work. If you can’t see at least part of your face, please send me a high resolution photo of yourself so that I can add you.