A Note from John Roach
Green Acres Serves
Our church is a serving church. October 25-31 has been designated as Serve Week, where we challenged our Connect Groups to do something that would serve people outside of their group. We asked and you responded—over 70 Connect Groups across all campuses stepped up to serve! We still have many groups that will serve in the days ahead, so we are not finished yet, but many of you have already served our community well.
Here are just some of the ways our church has been serving:
- A 3-day prison outreach called Transformation Weekend, where volunteers prepared hundreds of meals and shared the gospel with men inside the prison walls. So far, we know of 12 men who have made decisions for Jesus!
- Our senior adults packed 800 hygiene packs that will be distributed at the same facility in December.
- Another group served the Miracle League, a sports league for adults with special needs. They came alongside players as a “buddy” and helped them play the game of baseball!
- We have had hundreds of volunteers throughout the week serve at the East Texas Food Bank.
- Two of our groups hosted pumpkin carvings for international students from TJC and UT Tyler. Approximately 40-50 students from around the world heard the gospel through these events.
- One group distributed meals to over 300 student-athletes at TJC. All the athletes heard the gospel that night!
- Our Espanol campus hosted a block party at St. Paul’s Children’s Services, engaging over 100 people.
- Several groups will be hosting block parties this weekend, where hundreds of people will be invited to church and sent home with the gospel in their candy bags.
- Our Flint Campus will be hosting a bed build for Grace EmBEDded, and several Flint Connect Groups will be hosting block parties as well.
Like I said, Green Acres serves!!! Thank you so much for your willingness to sacrifice your time and treasure to transform lives with the truth of Jesus in East Texas. God is using you, Green Acres, and your Missions team is humbled to lock arms with you in reaching East Texas with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
World Missions Offering (WMO)
Our World Missions Offering is a designated offering that highlights and supports the work Green Acres is doing around the world to advance the gospel of Jesus to the ends of the earth. The North American Mission Board said it well in stating, “The Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20 is essentially a call to plant new churches. We can say this because baptizing, teaching, and making disciples are exactly what churches are commanded to do…the dozen men who originally heard Jesus say the words ‘baptize, teach and make disciples’ responded by spending the rest of their lives planting new churches.”
For this reason, we prioritize partnering with church plants and churches that plant churches in areas around the world where there is a great need. We work hard to ensure all our work is connected to the local church. We want all our mission trips to be connected to or working alongside a local church. We believe all the ministry needs of the people of a city are best served when there are healthy, gospel-centered congregations engaging those needs.
Our Missions Team, Executive Team, and staff are very excited about what God is doing and what is coming. I’m especially excited to share just a few highlights from this past year. Our church planted 5 new churches in East Africa. We trained hundreds of pastors in India. We partnered with churches in Scotland and England, where the post-Christian culture is thriving, and it is estimated that born-again believers make up only 2-5% of the current population. We equipped churches in Brazil to care for and engage children with the gospel, while also coming alongside them to share the gospel with their neighbors. We ministered with a church in Colombia that was struggling to engage people outside the walls of their congregation, and now they are serving regularly in the slums of Bogota. We sent over 100 high school students to serve church plants in Colorado. We hosted a Women’s Conference in Maine, sports camps and VBSs across the country, trained pastors and missionaries in Mexico, and so much more!
This year, we are praying for $1.25 million from our World Mission Offering. You can learn more about where this offering goes and how it is allocated by clicking here for our WMO Digital Guide. We will also have printed guides available in the foyer over the next month.
We believe the best is yet to come!
John