Planning to REBUILD

Hello Everyone,

We have been thinking about you and praying for you. The Lord is sustaining us all by His grace and He will provide what we need at this trying hour. We look forward to worshipping our great God with you all very soon! It will be a tremendous blessing to get together and share our stories as to how the Lord has watched over and cared for us, His people. There are so many things to tell you about and we are anxious to hear from each one of you as to your whereabouts presently since we seem to be moving around from time to time! Do you feel like the Patriarchs or Moses trekking through the desert sometimes?

I wanted to let you all know that our meeting (Staff & Elders) last Saturday was a good start as far as planning for Berean’s near future. We were able to begin a strategic recovery plan that involves a number of teams. The response has been overwhelming so we really needed to sort of eat the elephant one bite at a time! We divided the teams by focus and decided to use the theme of “rebuilding” for obvious reasons! We hope you will consider on which team you might serve to help us get back on our feet as a faith family.

The teams are as follows…

R (Resources). Supplies and services to help our families and the community get in and get to some semblance of normalcy.

E (Evangelism/Outreach). There are going to be incredible opportunities to share the gospel!

B (Business/Finance). This is really going to be a need because everything is up in the air at this point but once we get all the generous offers from churches coordinated it will be amazing how the Lord is going to provide in the year ahead! We believe our ministry staff, missionaries and mortgage obligations are going to be provided for in ways we know only God could have put together.

U (Undershepherding/Ministry). We will have to do a great deal of counseling, comforting, caring and praying as we depend on the Lord in the months and years ahead. Our ministry staff will need your ministry gifts to be operating in the body at the fullest capacity!

I (Intercession). A team committed to prayer and intercession for the church families, the community, and the great city of New Orleans!

L (Links/ Communications) We hope to stay in touch and keep you informed in every way possible so this team will be invaluable as it already has been during our hiatus from the city.

D (Discipleship/Direction). The Lord has called the church to make disciples, so as we are providing physical relief and aid we will be focused on our discipleship task. We certainly are going to be a different church so we are going to be doing a great deal of future planning and vision casting. Well, that’s the summary of our first meeting “after the storm”. Where can you plug in so that we can do the best job of rebuilding for the glory of the Lord?

From Texas,Pastor Brad