Lives Changed & Transformed By The Gospel

An update from Jim Donohue, pastor at Covenant Fellowship Church in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania, USA and Evangelist in Sovereign Grace Churches…

God has been doing some great things in our churches and regions over the last year. We are seeing God move. We are seeing the lost saved and added to the church. We are seeing churches move from being insulated and isolated to fulfilling their calling to reach into the darkness with the light of the gospel. We have more churches doing something and the temperature for growing in evangelism is rising, which is just so encouraging.

One of the things that the US regional evangelist team has been encouraging me to do is to create resources that serve small churches. So, over the last few years, together with the help of the evangelist team, I have been working on redoing the Bridge Course. It’s a tool that we have tried to invest with our values, our gospel centeredness and faithful exposition of scripture.

I got to write an update about it a couple of months ago (article here). But encouraged by Dave Taylor, our Director of Global Missions, I wanted to share with you some of the stories of God-given fruit that we’re enjoying hearing about…

Ryan Chase at Emmaus Road in Sioux Falls

We have now run the Bridge Course a handful of times at Emmaus Road Church. While each time through the course has been met with God's grace, it feels like this last year in particular we have begun to gain some real momentum. Our fall course had 10 guests and this Winter course that we just begun has been very encouraging. 3 days before the course, we had only 2 people registered. Then, the Lord opened the flood gates and people started pouring in. We now have 25 people involved in this current course. This is our most “lost" Bridge group yet (someone from LGBTQ background, several with no Christian background, a number coming from serious suffering). We are 2 weeks in and there are many people with broken lives who are leaning in and hungry to learn. It is incredible! I am excited to see what the Lord will do!

Last year a young couple living in sin came to our Bridge course and the wife, Torrie, got saved. They began to regularly attend our church gatherings for the next year. Seeing Torrie's newfound love and desire for God as well as her heart for lost friends and family, I asked her to help with the next Bridge course. She brought 3 people. Torrie and CJ are growing increasingly connected to our church community and are both walking through steps to become members.  

One of the things that has been particularly encouraging to me has been the cultural shift I have observed in our church. I have never seen such a momentum shift for evangelism in our church. I have had numerous people come up and ask me about how to invite their friends to Bridge; ask me to pray for friends they are reaching out to; ask me for advice on how to interact with lost friends or coworkers; etc. I see so many people in our church really leaning in (introverts, stay at home moms, and the like!). It has been so encouraging!

 Jeff Schlieder at Cross of Grace Church of Santa Ana

The Lord has been working in wonderful ways at Cross of Grace Church of Santa Ana. We’re a small neighborhood church in an urban area, doing ministry in a cross-cultural context. We planted in 2017 and just celebrated 7 years together. We have 67 official members, have around 100+ gathered on Sunday mornings, don’t own a building, and only have 1 full-time elder on our team of 3.

We’re an ordinary church but God is doing extraordinary things among us as we labor to spread the joy of Jesus in our city. Since embracing a renewed commitment to evangelism (in our case, moving from informal church-plant “organic approaches” to strategic, ambitious, and programmatic approaches) which coincided with the beginning of the Regional Evangelist initiative, we’ve celebrated baptisms and welcomed new members like never before. Just last year, we had the privilege of baptizing 7 new believers and receiving 16 new members.

Brendan Willis at Sovereign Grace Church, Wahroonga, Australia

We’ve only just started using the Bridge but have already seen the Lord at work in some exciting ways. Our church is based in Wahroonga, a leafy suburb on the North Shore of Sydney, Australia. We’re a post-Christian nation where on any given week only 7% our people attend some form of church service (including Catholic, Orthodox, Evangelical etc.). What’s more our neighborhood is amongst the wealthiest in our country and as a result many people have hard hearts towards God. Since our church was planted in September 2010 we’ve consistently struggled with seeing fruit in our evangelistic efforts. A good year for us would be seeing 1-2 adults come to Christ. Some years we would see no one saved at all.

We had Jim Donohue visit us last year and introduce us to the Bridge course and we ran it for the first time in February of this year. The church did a wonderful job inviting their friends and in the end we had 18 guests attend the course for 1 or more evenings. On resurrection Sunday we then had the privilege of baptizing 2 participants!

There is now an excitement in the air about the power of the Gospel and the way God is working in our community. Just a few weeks ago we had another lady who had been visiting our church and who is a friend of one of the people on the last Bridge course, give her life to Christ during the service. It’s not even halfway through the year and we’ve already had 3 people come to Christ! Our next course starts in August and we couldn’t be more excited to see what the Lord will do!

You don't have to use the Bridge Course, and there are other tools out there, but the Bridge Course uniquely reflects who we are. We have packaged it so that anyone can easily use it and in a way that works for smaller churches. We’ve also now translated the course (subtitles) into 6 different languages with more to come. (Amharic, Chinese, English, Spanish, Turkish and Vietnamese. With Italian and Korean in the works). And we just launched our Spanish videos featuring Abelardo Munoz (www.bridgecourse.org/spanish)

We hope it can serve you too.

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This testimony was shared on Easter at Covenant Fellowship Church, and is one of the best I have ever heard. Give it a listen!