Ministry Reports May 2009

Monthly Report for Children’s Ministry May 2009 God is so good! The Children’s Ministry has been growing since Easter, and a few of the new families that attended that day have continued to come back every week. A couple of Sundays ago we actually had 38 kids attend our Sunday morning classes, and that was with missing 9 of our regular children. For several months we were running between 22-30 kids… so it is a huge blessing to see new children making it to church, many of which are not saved! Please be praying for these kids, and that we will be able to show them Christ on a weekly basis. We pray that they will start relationships with Him and that they too will learn to share Jesus with their friends. Please also pray for some of the outreach events we will have coming up, we are hoping that we will be able to bring even more new kids into the mix with each event… adding to the Kingdom on a monthly basis! Later this month on Saturday, May 30th we will have our next Family Fun Outing. We will be having a Kite Flying Picnic at Lido Beach. We hope that the kids and their families will get into this event and will invite their friends, and that maybe some people in the church who have family members who are kids and do not attend, may use this event as an opportunity to get their family together and fellowship with other Christians. It should be a really good time… please be praying that the weather will cooperate and that many kids will turn out for this event. The planning process is continuing for VBS, and God answered a major prayer by providing us a location in Molloy College free of charge!!! Sometimes God just chooses to surprise us with blessings, and this is a big one. It will be, God willing, our last big outreach to the Rockville Centre area before our big move, so it is vital that we make the neighborhood aware of this event. We do have some prayer requests though, apparently last year we had some fits meeting at Molloy in regards to security and unexpected room changes, so please join us in prayer that we will not have any of the same issues this year and that everything will run smoothly. You can also start praying for the recruitment of volunteers for this major event, and that God will move the right people to step forward and provide the service necessary to make this an amazing event in His name. We will need a lot of help to pull this off, and we know that God can help encourage people to jump in and help! I want to thank you for your constant support of our kids and Children’s Ministry at VS Church of the Nazarene. Thank you for your prayers, encouragement, and support! Please continue to pray for the spiritual development of the children in our church, and that we will forever be focused on bring new children to the Lord as well… there are too many kids out there who do not know the Lord, and they need to be our focus. God is going to do big things for these little ones and I pray that we will be striving to help in anyway that we can. Love and Blessings, Marissa

Report to the Board May 2009 Youth Ministry’s

District Assembly has come and gone, it was a good one. I’ve been working on service to the community projects that I pray will launch in late June, starting in Malverne, Lord willing. FNL had a poor start for the month of May in attendance, but the Lord is faithful and most of the issues that have come up have been addressed, and weather withstanding we should closeout the month focused. Kingdom Builders Bible study, Breakfast Club and Grapple are moving steady, choir, drama, are not working. I am weak in My relational skills to our youth and I am working on it, for it needs to improve, but without trying to make excuses or shirk my responsibility I’ve always wanted youth to connect more to Christ and his teaching more than me. Youth groups always struggle when they connect too strongly to the youth pastor, especially when the youth pastor moves on. Praise the Lord for he is always around. I am trying not to build my kingdom, but tossing as much seed as I can toward his kingdom. The lost in house or out of house that is my heart. Romans 11: 13, 14 “I am talking to the Gentiles. Inasmuch as I am a apostle to the Gentiles, I make much of my ministry in the hope that I may somehow arouse my own people to envy and save some of them.”NIV with the American Church on the decline and the World Church growing, my heart is not business as usual, but radical change, not for the sake of change but Jesus movement change. FNL by the numbers looks like this, 48% Jr. High, 52% high school, 13 no Church or ever been in Church. Means nothing without Jesus, 30-43 hears about Jesus every week, in hopes they will someday be called out by the Holy Spirit and give their life to him, and always teaching milk so they may begin to practice the milk so it may become meat. Lord willing I am called to leading them into their community to serve in the name of Jesus, this is my journey. Lord willing Randy

Report to the Church Board May, 2009 Spiritual Life Development

Good things continue to happen in the “life of the church” beginning with: Support Staff: While Erin is home on maternity leave taking care of Aidan, Jeremy Zoref is back filling in and is doing a great job on Tuesday afternoons and Thursdays. Diana continues to work on Wednesdays; Lani Halpin is folding bulletins and sending out prayer cards from our prayer teams on Thursdays. We have a new addition to our volunteer staff. Every Monday between 10am and 2pm, Lina Zeidan will be working in our church office handling special projects and assisting our department heads. Kathy continues to do an impeccable job keeping the books and keeping us on the straight and narrow (ha!) If you know Kathy, you can hear her saying, “get those receipts in”! Kate Barker continues to work full time for Pastor Brett and I, in addition to doing a wonderful job leading worship. Did you know that Thursday, May 14th Jeremy Zoref graduates with a Masters in Media Arts, while this Sunday May 17th, Kate Barker graduates with 2 bachelor degrees; one in Spanish and the other in Italian. Bravo!!! Let’s not forget to congratulate them!

Prayer Ministry: This is the most important aspect of Spiritual Life Development. Many people are praying in homes, lunch hours, on the jobs and before, during and after our worship service on Sunday Mornings. We are seeing the amazing work God is doing in our lives. He is faithful. I am in the process of formulating a few more teams for prayer walks in and around our communities, especially keeping the church family in prayer as we move forward to Malverne and other places on Long Island.

People: Will you continue to keep these people in prayer? Ernie Estevez, Jeanette Howard (surgery on May 15th) and Rose Butler. Many people in our church or connected with church family members are feeling the pinch of this economy. Please pray for those in our church who are currently out of work or soon to be laid off….David Oberdorfer, Ernie Estevez, Shad Melvin (soon to be unemployed).

Life Group/Spiritual Formation Classes: Continue to meet needs and touch lives. Making of a Modern Day Knight is a blessing to the men and is beginning to get firmly rooted. This Summer a few of the women’s groups will only meet once a month (due to the children being home, etc). , however we will continue to step it up over the summer regardless of people on vacation, etc. Thank God He doesn’t take a vacation from us! So…we will be offering various classes and training models…A book of the bible, a reading fellowship/discussion group and training classes for life group leaders and training for new and current ushers, greeters and hospitality people to be prepared to warmly welcome those currently attending and those God will send to us in our new location. Summer is the time to get prayed up, and prepared for the new semester!

Again, please keep the ministry of Spiritual Life Development in your prayers…the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few…pray that we would see the possibilities in others, come alongside of them and empower them to lead. Pray that we, the core, would continually remember that Disciples are made not born… we need to keep reproducing ourselves (Matt. 28), if we don’t we stunt people and His Kingdom.

In His Love, Pastor Christine