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From the CFO: He is Faithful

I am not sure where the year has gone, but it is already time to wrap up the 2022 budget planning season at the GCI Home Office. As we look at 2022, we also look forward an additional three years to see how to sustain the path where Jesus is leading. We know that unless he builds the house, our work is not effective.

We also look back to see what is and isn’t working from this year and make prudent adjustments looking forward. Wow, what a year it has been! We expected to have been looking at Covid in the rear-view mirror, but here we are still planning around its impact.

Looking Back

As I look back on the impact Covid has had on GCI financial operations, it is evident that our Lord has been faithfully providing for GCI in unanticipated ways. It is easier to see his faithfulness looking back sometimes and connecting the dots where his hand is evident.

During the Covid pandemic, my prayer has been with those who have been affected by loss of loved ones and jobs. My heart goes out to those affected, and my prayer has also been that GCI could maintain operations in the face of Covid-caused financial challenges.

Despite concerns about how Covid would impact donations and the ability of GCI to carry out its mission of sharing the gospel, he has provided. Let me reflect briefly on how our heavenly Father has been faithful to GCI in the financial area.

God has been faithful in unexpected ways. Members who maintained jobs and congregations have donated more to help offset losses. Previously donated trusts have helped provide stability. The federal Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was expanded to include churches, and GCI was able to receive funds from that program to help continue operations and employment at the pre-pandemic level. Investments have provided positive returns and helped bolster the church’s balance sheet. Reduced travel and the expanded use of Zoom have reduced expenses and taught us how to use technology more effectively. Looking back, we can see that God has provided for the church, as he always does. Through this provision, we expect to end the year on or above budgeted income projections and under budget in the expense category.

Looking forward

Through God’s provision during Covid, we have also been able to start construction on a new facility! The church and Ministry Training Center near Oklahoma City is nearly complete (see attached photos). This exciting $3. 95 million joint construction effort between the Home Office, Central Region, and the local church in Oklahoma City (Surrey Hills) is nearly complete, and it will be a blessing to the local church and GCI well into the future. Members have been serving the neighborhood for years in preparation and have developed deep relationships with those they serve. Local leaders have focused their efforts on sharing the gospel through the love, hope and faith avenues, even while face-to-face meetings have not been possible. I look forward to the completion of this facility near the end of the year and seeing its impact for Christ in the years ahead.

The Board also recently approved the purchase of a church facility in Eugene, Oregon, where GCI started in the early 1900s. Much has changed since that time, but this purchase will provide a secure foundation for an already thriving congregation to better reach their neighborhood and community. We hope to finish the acquisition and start some improvements before year end.

The Home Office Operating Budget for 2022 projects income and expenses near 2021 levels at approximately $4.6 million. This does not include income and expenses processed at the Home Office for local congregations of approximately $3 million.

Through the challenges we face corporately and individually, I pray we always see that our Lord is faithful and is walking with us. He is not surprised by our struggles and will lead us faithfully in his plan for us.

I encourage you to pause and read the Psalm 23 passage below from the New International Version and thank him for his daily faithfulness. What a blessing to participate with him in sharing the good news of the gospel. In him, we lack nothing, and he is faithful.

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.
2 He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
3 he refreshes my soul.
He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
6 Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.

Thank you, friends, for your continued support and faithfulness in support of GCI as we strive to follow our shepherd and share the good news of the gospel.

 

Mathew H. Morgan, CFO

Laser Tag Party and Carnivalfest

This summer, our congregation hosted two Love Avenue events: our second annual Carnivalfest and a Laser Tag Party.

I came up with the idea for our Carnivalfest a couple years ago inspired by the desire to bring back local events that had stopped happening in our community. There used to be an annual 4H Carnival and a Community Fest in town and those just slowly went away, hence the name Carnivalfest. I had lots of fond memories from them as a kid. I knew we needed to reach out to our community and thought this was a great way to make this happen as a congregation. As a congregation we are committed to involving every age group in the planning and hosting of these events. We need everyone to make this work.

The first year, our theme was the Armor of God. It was a huge success. By the time participants made it through each game or station, they were taking the whole Armor of God with them home. After the first carnival, we were sitting at the GCI conference in Dallas and the theme for our next carnival came to my mind: Mysteries of God, which turned into the Miracles of God Carnival. Even though I love the miracles from the Old Testament, I wanted people to see the whole picture of what Jesus had done for each person.

When you started through our Carnival, you walked in and were met by a huge rock mound, with a stone that was to be rolled away as they entered the tomb. The next room was dark with a bright light in the corner with a tomb with the words written “he is risen” and the cloth laid upon the tomb empty. This room had a fog machine to give it the full effect. They then went through the black plastic to an open room with bright colors and a display of taking a walk with Jesus. This is where the parents signed them in, with phone numbers and signed our waivers, received a crown of their choice, received their “God is especially fond of you” bags and our church information. Then Pastor David set them in our crowning chair and crowned them a child of God with: “Know that you were formed a child of God, placed in his heart and placed in this world for a purpose.” At this point they could play laser tag or walk through our Red Sea, welcomed by Moses. We had a photo booth, with take-home pictures with the name Carnivalfest 2021 Community by Grace. We had many games, a face painting booth, handprints (laminated with a magnet), Donut Bobbing, Cake Walk, Balloon Stomp, Cave walk to the Fiery Furnace and a Maze that brought you through to the Big Room. Each one of our booths had a miracle attached to it. The maze was dark and long. It took a good five minutes to get through it, and halfway through they changed it up. Everyone had a great time.

One of the highlights was seeing all the teens and adults coming together to work on booths. The hardest part for me was letting go and being ok with kids and teens taking creative license—things didn’t have to be perfect; God is not looking for perfect people. I had to be ok with whatever they produced for me! I knew it was in God’s hands and from the beginning I had to remember that. Too many times kids do things and get a “that’s fine,” or “that will work,” instead of a “Yes, great work! God would love it! Thanks so much for being here to help.” We have to meet them where they are instead of expecting them to do things exactly as we would. As a congregation, we live that, no judgment, none of us are perfect. God loves us and meets us where we are, and Jesus is present in our lives whether we accept it or not.

Several members of our congregation shared photos, insights, and highlights for weeks after the carnival on their Facebook pages, Snapchats and Instagram. We have had one new family start coming since the carnival, but when we have a game night, laser tag, or bonfire, everyone from the neighborhood shows up, whether they have been attending church or not. I feel this is great–we are meeting them where they are.

Even though our regular attendance is low sometimes, we have about 75 to 80 attend our church when they can or an event is planned.

My sister, Niki Katzenmeier, has been a huge asset to our church, since she moved here in June. She came up with the idea of laser tag and we planned it together. We purchased 32 guns and batteries and started gathering big boxes, used our half doors from the maze and put black plastic up and turned off all the lights. We used our whole church area. In our eating area, we had the laser gun table set up with waivers. While the first bunch played we would get the second bunch set up with the rules. Anyone who was not playing still could enjoy visiting with the parents, or the visitors. During the first event we had a make-your-own-pizza station, which was a huge success as well. Thanks to Niki’s help we were able to make this event happen.

Niki has also completely revamped our bulletin board, so we have sign-up sheets for all the events, church service, anything we do! It’s bright and pretty. We also have included a spot for prayer requests, and all our upcoming events are added to the board. People want to get out and need to see who we are!

Heather Ferguson
Love Avenue Champion
Wheatland, Wyoming

Ordination of Rebecca Johnson

Elizabeth and I had the privilege of participating in the worship gathering at Grace Communion Tallapoosa (GA) on August 22 to ordain Rebecca Johnson as an elder. Rebecca serves on the church’s pastoral team along with her husband Dara and the former pastor and faithful elder, Tom Mahan. Because Rebecca and Dara are dear friends (I once attended and served in a previous iteration of this congregation) it was particularly joyful to lead the ordination ceremony.

GC Tallapoosa has a good plan for engaging their downtown neighborhood. The Johnson’s are well known in the community – it helps that they live in the one square mile around the church building. The Johnson’s invested in a downtown building space (they call it The Union) where the church meets. They prayerfully hope it will become a center of community activity; they are starting to see traction in that regard. Let’s pray for their efforts to join God’s mission of love and grace to their community.

Rebecca, thank you for saying yes to God’s calling to serve his church. We will be cheering you on in prayer!

I am grateful to be a part of a denomination that values women and their contributions as ordained leaders in the church!

In Joy,
Anthony Mullins
Regional Director, Southeast US

 

Hurricane Ida

In the wake of Hurricane Ida, I reached out to the GCI pastors in Louisiana and Mississippi. The response has been minimal, but I was able to reach two of our leaders.

Anthony Rice, our pastor in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, LA, sent this note:

I wanted to give you an update on the aftermath of hurricane Ida. I’ve been able to contact most all of the members in the Baton Rouge and Lafayette area. Lafayette received only minor winds. However, Baton Rouge was much closer to the eye. Most of our members are still without power and internet. Only two suffered damage. Thankfully neither one was significant to their homes. We are hoping to hold church services at both locations this weekend. Since the Baton Rouge church has power, many will appreciate being in an air conditioned space! Praise God!

I also spoke with Mike Horchak, the retired GCI pastor in Tickfaw, LA (just north of New Orleans). We lost phone connection several times as communications are still sketchy at this point. He and Pam are OK. They rode out the storm in their home, which was hit with 120 mph winds and 25 inches of rain. He said it was awful. The storm was much more powerful and scary than he anticipated even after going through hurricane Katrina. Two large oak trees fell in their yard but the house is fine. The neighborhood is full of downed trees, power lines and cell towers.

No word yet on former Tickfaw members living in the area, but he will be reaching out.

Lord, have mercy on our GCI members and those in our human family who are experiencing the devastation of this storm. Compel the church to be helpers and loving neighbors in the recovery effort. We trust you, Jesus. Amen.

With you in Christ,

Anthony Mullins
GCI Regional Director, Southeast US

New Life in Christ Backpack Outreach

New Life in Christ, the GCI congregation in Queens, New York City, joined with hundreds of volunteers in our Richmond Hill neighborhood in delivering thousands of backpacks to families in need. The River Fund, a neighborhood non-profit focused on combatting poverty and its effects on families, organized the event, and New Life was a sponsor. Our team, led by Florence Emerole, one of our Love Avenue Champions, joined in preparing backpacks for distribution to families in need as identified by the River Fund. As a result of our relationship with the organization, we were allowed to add a message of the hope of Jesus along with our congregational brochure to hundreds of backpacks, adding a real presence of Christ to the event while meeting physical needs. We prayed over many backpacks that our messages would reach the hearts intended by the Holy Spirit.

The mission of The River Fund is “to feed and empower those we serve to move beyond the lines of poverty.” Their slogan is “Taking Poverty Personally.” This matches a stated objective of our congregation’s outreach to make a difference in the community in Christ, especially in light of the pandemic, and we have partnered with this organization on a number of projects in the last few years.

New Life will have its own Back to School event on the weekend of September 11-12, utilizing sound principles of inviting and effective follow-up engagement.

John Newsom
Pastor, Queens, New York

Continued Prayers for Joffre Butler

Joffre is now out of the rehabilitation facility and receiving nurse and therapist support at home. He’s trying to build back muscle strength and continue the healing process. Your prayers and cards have been much appreciated, and we ask for continued prayer for motivation, pain control, and strength for all of us.

Rick Shallenberger
Regional Director US, North Central

 

 

Death of Isei Colati

Isei and Vasiti Colati at the 2017 Orlando FL GCI Denominational Conference.
Isei and Vasiti Colati at the 2017 Orlando FL GCI Denominational Conference.

It is with great sadness we report the sudden death Saturday, August 7, of Fiji’s senior pastor, Isei Colati, from complications associated with Covid-19. Known widely for his caring and friendly way, Isei and his wife Vasiti served primarily the Suva congregation but travelled extensively and regularly also to visit and encourage the smaller congregations and members scattered across Fiji.

Because of the pandemic lockdown in Fiji, Isei’s funeral service, led by Suva elder Jope Uqeuqe on Wednesday, August 11, was restricted to just five but was live streamed widely on Facebook and was watched also in the USA, Australia and New Zealand. Eulogies for the family were read by Isei’s grandsons, Jiuta Jr. and Jese Wainibuli, and for the church by long-time member Frank Boyd. The service, despite its restrictions, was a dignified and fitting tribute to Isei’s 40 years of service in the church, the last 15 years as Fiji’s pastoral leader.

Isei’s loving way and care to detail, his rich base voice and booming, cheerful “Bula!” are sorely missed.

Dennis Richards
GCI Regional Director New Zealand & South Pacific


Cards and condolences may be sent to his wife:

Mrs Vasiti Colati
GPO Box 16697
SUVA
Fiji

 

 

 

 

 

Surrey Hills Neighborhood Block Party

Neighbors loving neighbors. It is a beautiful sight and one that was abundant in Surrey Hills last Saturday. We were not able to do Camp Surrey this year, but knew we wanted to do something to show love to our campers and neighbors and let them know we are thinking about them. So, we decided to sponsor a neighborhood block party in conjunction with our annual water balloon battle.

Events in the Love Avenue are a ton of fun, but also require lots of planning. It starts with a Love Avenue Team that came together, showed up, and put their hearts into this event. My Love Avenue team consists of 11 amazing people, from age thirteen to 75-ish (don’t be fooled, the 75-year-old works circles around all of us). The first step to the event was the prep-work which is a ministry in itself.

We do our annual water balloon battle at the neighborhood ball fields. To prepare for the event, we always clean them up really well. It’s often the only time of year the fields look spick and span. I always invite our neighbors to join us for a work party the Friday night before the event to mow, edge, and pick up trash. This year, I got a message on Wednesday from a neighbor I’ve gotten to know the past couple of years. He sent me a picture of the freshly mowed fields and let me know he took care of all the mowing so we could focus on edges and trash. What a blessing! Then, our crew got to work.

On Saturday afternoon hundreds of Surrey neighbors lined up with about 13,000 water balloons and had a total blast. If you’re wondering how we determine who wins a water balloon battle, we don’t. It actually makes for amazing debates and bragging rights for everyone all year long.

We were blown away by the number of children we had! We reserved the first 10 minutes of the battle for children only. Afterwards, it was at the parents’ discretion if their child would continue to participate. After about 30 minutes of water balloon mania, all participants took about 10 minutes going over the field, picking up all the balloons. We want to keep our neighborhood beautiful, and our policy is always to leave things better than we found them. The cleanup time is actually a great relational time. There’s something about crawling around on the grass, picking up thousands of tiny balloon pieces alongside your neighbors whom you were just pummeling with water balloons. Conversation begins to spark, laughter erupts, and relationships are built.

After the clean-up, everyone walked across the street to the Lion’s Club Park, where we had food trucks, live music, gaga ball, yard games, inflatables, a cornhole tournament – all kinds of fun!

We also set up a Camp Surrey kids table and gave away over 100 gift bags filled with goodies. These bags had Camp Surrey reusable water bottles, bubbles, giant pixy sticks, Camp Surrey pillowcases, and more. We also had a craft table for them to decorate those pillowcases. We got lots of inquiries about Camp Surrey and even had a QR code on the table for people to scan to join our waiting list for Camp Surrey 2022. We ran out of gift bags in the first hour because over 150 kiddos showed up to the event! What a great problem to have!

Camp Surrey provided ice chests full of water bottles and juice boxes as well as hand sanitizer and insect repellant. We decided to keep the fun going after dark and hosted a movie on the park lawn. A couple of months ago, we cast a poll on our neighborhood Facebook page and let them pick the movie (with the stipulation that it had to be G or PG). Zootopia won by a landslide! It was an incredible evening of neighbors loving neighbors.

We had between 400 and 500 people participate in this event. We had well over 150 children. We made a special announcement before the movie. Pastor Joe introduced himself and invited everyone to join us at the Surrey Hills Elementary School Gym the next morning for a special worship experience and blessing of the children. I’m thrilled to say we had SEVEN brand new faces Sunday morning. Praise God!

In the midst of so much sadness and chaos the past year, there was something amazing that happened this weekend in our neighborhood. It was a day without arguments, politics, or anger. It was a day of relationship, a day of love, a day of community. God is so faithful.

I often think of the old saying from the movie “Field of Dreams” when it comes to relaunching our church into this neighborhood. I used to always quote the line, “If you build it, they will come.” Weekends like this are a loving and gentle reminder from my Papa that I need to change that mantra in my head. The truth is that “God will build it, and we will love.”

Ceeja Malmkar,
Surrey Hills Love Avenue Champion