Monday, August 20, 2012

the mystery of ministry


ECWA church igoli, is located at ogoja off hospital road, behind victory secondary school, adjacent, RCCG, this church or prayer house as some would like to call it, is one of the first churches planted in ogoja land.  But ever since it inception it has not grown as expected due to mainly lack of a permanent place of worship. The Church has been striving a midst so many other denomination despite it years of establishment many don’t know much about the Church.
Beside ECWA are mainly Pentecostals, and Roman catholics.because of this evangelical Christianity is not given much prominence.
This Church has seen a lot of ups and downs, mostly for a place of worship, it was worshiping in a dilapidated borrowed car garage, and it was known as the Church where” two or three are gathered” this is because of the fact that the Church membership was just about a small number. As we continue to remain faithful consistent and persistent in prayer, the Lord is doing his work. From a car garage to small batched woods and to the present picture you see above, that is the work of consistent prayer.
Membership. Today the membership of this small Church has increased, as of last three to four years the membership was around 10-15. But today through the work of God himself this same membership is around 54, with constant comers to Sunday service of around 45, due to the nature of work of some of the members. It will also be wise to mention that ECWA igoli is a transitional church, what I mean is that most of the members are civil servant and police men, and are none indigenes, so most a time they are being transferred, but to the glory of the Lord the locals are now coming to join us, and many have indicated interest to join, and are reluctant due to the nature of Roman Catholicism. But we are still on aggressive evangelism to win them totally over to salvation.
Achievements’  in this Church we are so reliant on the Holy spirit we never see all that have been accomplished as the work of man rather we see and view it as the work of the most high, Jesus. That is the reason why we always say, it is not by might nor by power but by the spirit of the Lord. And one of our mostly quoted verse is in the book of exodus 14:14, “be still and you will see the salvation of the Lord”. Through the help of the Lord we were able to carry out an over whole repairs of the Church, such repairs as, cementing, and plastering of the whole Church, we were also able to paint the entire building and boldly write a name on the front elevation. We were also able to plant a bigger signboard, given direction to the Church. On both the entrance form the road and the entrance to the church, we are also able to buy a new aluminum pulpit, bought and are still buying plastic chairs to replaced the old wooden ones, bought two foreign speakers, and one 15 channel amplifier, we also bought a set of jazz drums, and 6 microphones, we are also able to order for a bass guitar. All this is to match the trends of other churches that see ECWA as a dead church, and this was also done to help bring the youths attention back to their place of worship in ECWA.

Computer school, to a large extend, we were able to see a great privileged through the use of computer, we all started to see and think of ways to be relevant in the society where we minister, and the Lord gave us the idea of starting a school through the use of computer, and believe me, we have been able to reach out to so many people from other denominations through this, some have started coming to the ‘church as members and we believe some will still come to join, we have been able to graduate 15 students, some of which are our ECWA MISSIONARIES, serving in cross rivers.coppers Pastors and secondary students all graduated the same day
Many more to show as the Lord does more and more for us here in the Church. We also want to say we have organized many seminars and trainings for our church Pastors, elders, and agency leaders. This has proven to be beneficial.
Evangelism. The church has embarked on aggressive evangelism, this happen every last Friday of the month. Method of outreach, we use mostly the video and personal house to house meetings to talk and reach out to people, I tell you we have been seeing the result of this method and we will see more as the Lord directs and lead us.
Help. Being small in size is not being small in mind and in the word of the Lord, we in our own little way have tried to see how to impact other people lives, we have  been able to  assist the less privileged in our  midst, like the blind, and the sick ones and also the disabled. We have been able to assist through our mega income from our offering, with transport money, to the blind, money for soap and also starting up a small business, through our prayers and assistance the blind member of the Church is now able to start a wheelbarrow business, this was possible for him as we help in seeking help from the Government for small scale business money for the less privileged, and he got the sum of 50 thousand naira to start with, and is now doing well. We still are praying though supporting one with a shriveled hand to start a recharge card business to help him we also need the same amount though not yet gotten but we are still praying towards that. “The religion that our Lord requires is taking care of the widows’ orphans and the less privileged”
Our weekly  activities, has been good we have seen a great change in them, now member are committed, to weekly activities, and are trying to attend, mostly bible studies, and pray meetings. Right now we are treating the book of  acts of the Apostles, and we are on the 14th chapter.
The agencies that have been inactive have now been resurrected again, and have also added new ones like the youth band, and is doing good and great. Offering and tithing has also improved well we now get enough to help carry out work in the Church though not satisfactorily but it is helping, to push further the work of ministry.
Spiritual attacks, we cannot quantify the level of attacks we have been going through, some of which are ; sickness, many times we fall sick, both we as parent and our children, we vividly remember, one terrible attack, on me, to start with I want to say I have no record of high blood pressure, so I was a lone in the room as my wife have travelled to Jos to bring our kids home for holidays, as I was sleeping alone in the room, suddenly I was hit by a big stroke, that paralyzed half of me, I tried to stand no way, tried to walk no way, I started bringing down tears from my eyes, and a voice said to me pray, at that instant I started praying alone in the room, and I refuse also to eat making it into a fast, and from that time 7am to around 6pm I again try to move my feet and eventually I moved and moved and a stood up from where I was lying down all this while, fully healed, I went to see my Pastor friend at Ndok Zaria and narrated all the events to him we then prayed together.
We were also asked to pack our things and go if we want to live, I will quote,” this is our place you want to disturb us we will not allow you just go” as you know cross river state is the seat of Amok fraternity, and anything that will hinder their work will be fiercely attacked. On and off we fall into sickness, that we can’t say from where they come but we are always victorious.
One of the recent things that happened to us was the stealing of my sim card. At around 10pm in the night we were getting set to sleep, and so I finished receiving a call from my friend, and then plugged my phone in the sitting room while we go to bed in the bedroom, we locked our room prayed then we went to bed, in the morning as I woke up, I took my phone from where I was charging it and then tried to call, but to my surprise, there was no sim card in the phone. I asked my wife is she took it and no was the answer, till now I have not found the sim card, and to crown it the entire phone on it own disappeared, but still this will not deter us from doing the work of ministry. We have received night visitors, strange spirit movement in our room, in the night, suppression by spirits while we sleep,
 Severally we escape from accidents on our way to the Church, recently we have been dragged into road dispute this  to is power encounter, form our neighbors the Christ ascension church, threatening that we will not have any road to the church, I quote one of their elders as saying, “ even if it means shading blood we will not give you this road to follow  and if you insist someone will die” but through prayers we were able to come to a compromise with them without any spill of blood.
We have seen spill of blood on our way severally, we have even seen charms with hairs and blood and red clothe tied to it on our way we crossed over it and passed to the church. And several others too numerous to mention. All we say in all this, is “all things work for good to those who trust in the Lord and are called according to his will”
Areas of need.
 Our areas of need  are numerous, as the saying goes human need are numerous, but we also have need that are pressing and need s urgent attention. Such need includes;
Prayers, there e is no meaningful progress without prayers, and there will never be achievements without prayers, so we need your support in prayers. As we pray please pray along with us.
 Pastorium, we need to build our pastorium, close to the place of worship, to help in the maintenance of the church properties, and keeping an eye on them. As this will also help to ease the difficulty the Pastor is undergoing, living in a rented apartment which we pay 90 thousand every year and a lot of rules and regulations, so much that we can’t even keep livestock or freely do things that will aid our living, to say in a nutshell the environment is not conducive for a Pastor to stay.
House rent, we need  support in the areas of rent, our rent have expired and we need to pay so as to renew our rented space for one more years we need support in this aspect to help us focus more on the ministry and not the constant call of the Landlord who has been on our neck for lack of payment please and please this also is one thing we will not want to overlook but rather we want to make it a priority, but as time goes, I believe the small prayer house will be able to build a pastors house or pay the rent, that is if we are stronger . the money for the rent is 90,000

Access road, there is need for this road to be opened to us so as to enable our members go to the church premises. As of the last time we walked with the surveyor and the land allocation office we were told to provide 50,000 for the road which we did, but the Church that are claiming ownership said they will not allow us use it unless we buy the land from them we went back to the government, they in turn send us back to the church, who at first were asking for 200,000, but after all consultations with them we finally came to a close at the rate of 80 thousand naira. To be candid there is no other way or road that we can take to the church but this one, as all other avenues are now blocked, this is the only one left, we need support for this as the deadline for the payment is July or they will start the building of their pastors house there. This is an urgent need, for us. for without road we can no longer pass to the Church if nothing else will be done this issue is the one most pressing for us, we can sleep outside but we cannot worship under a tree, and cannot be able to get a new place now it is pressing to us so hard.
Providence, pray that the Lord will provide for us financially as things are so expensive here, so we need more support in this areas, so s we can keep moving without derailing from the work we are suppose to do, due to lack. We also need support for our children’s fees, coupled with all the expensive things here our children’s fee seems to be a problem pray for support in this areas.
Prayer points.
Pray for strength for all of us as we do ministry
Pray for members some are really sick and need healing others are childless and they need a breakthrough.
Pray for our agencies for better fellowship with the Lord and with each other.
Pray for more locals to join us,
Pray for some Police men newly posted to ogoja who are ECWA member but refuse to come and join pray for them as we visit them that they will be convinced.
Pray   for good health as this is the lubricant of doing ministry
For more on our ministry details and pictures visit our blog at;
http://godsloveinsudan.blogspot.com    or write to,    alapastee@yahoo.com

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