New church chartered

Grace Communion Fellowship (GCF), a GCI church plant in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, recently was officially chartered as a GCI congregation.

GCF was planted by Angie and Sadie Tabin—a missionary couple from the Philippines. With financial, legal and immigration assistance from the GCI home office, a GCI Church Planting Network in Southern California, GCI Philippines, and several GCI-USA churches, the Tabin family came to the U.S. about two and a half years ago and started connecting with the Eagle Rock community. After a year of gathering new contacts, GCF now averages 35 people in attendance, fulfilling GCI’s requirement to be chartered as a full-service congregation.

The charter document was officially presented to Angie and Sadie by Glen Weber (picture at right). Glen, who is a member of GCI’s Church Multiplication Ministries’ team and senior pastor of New Hope Fellowship (another GCI church in the Los Angeles area), challenged GCF members with these words:

Always think of yourselves as a church plant. Now that you are an official church it’s easy to let down and go into “doing church” mode instead of doing what a church plant should do. Ask yourselves, what have we done in the past that got us here? All the things that you have been doing to get new people to come—keep doing those things. In order for a church to continue to grow, you need to stay in church planting mode for at least another five years. A year from now, if each of you prays for and brings in three new people to church, next year you’ll be four times the size of what you are today.

In addition to providing weekly church services and other church planting tasks, the group is focusing on providing a full range of disciple-making ministries and completing formation of a finance committee to provide prudent stewardship of finances in compliance with relevant tax laws. The congregation is also developing its own website at http://gracecommunionfellowship.com. Your prayers for their continuing journey of development as a new church are much appreciated.