I want to share with you an update on the Lord's work in and through Grace Life Church of Ankeny and ask you to pray with us about a number of issues in our church.

(1) Praise God for His faithfulness in allowing us to start six new small groups this fall. I've been asking for the last couple of months that we could start three new groups and the Lord has doubled our prayers.

(2) Praise God for the eleven new members who joined our church on August 7th. Two of them joined by baptism.

(3) Praise God for the twenty folks who attend our membership class on August 14th. Our elders have already interviewed seven for membership. Pray the rest can determine if Grace Life Church is the right place for them. And also pray the elders will have wisdom in making sure those coming for membership are truly believers and agree with our understanding of Scripture  and with our philosophy of ministry.

(4) Praise God for the upcoming baptism this weekend.

(5) Continue to pray for us as we seek new deacons to help with the logistics of finance, children, and facilities. We have candidates for children and facility, but still need someone to oversee our finances. We approve these deacons at our November members' meeting.

(6) In July I asked you to pray for a young couple I was meeting with regularly. Both now acknowledge they are not Christians. This is a huge praise. Now, they are interested in studying what it means to follow Christ. I shared the gospel with them at our last meeting. Pray the Lord will grant them faith in the Lord Jesus and repentance toward God. We start an 8 week evangelistic study on Sept. 27th.

(7) The leadership development study I was doing this summer is completed. I've decided to start implementing it within our children ministry first. So pray this new deacon will be excited about working with me to better train our kid's ministry volunteers. Pray also the Lord will give us further insight and wisdom in when and how to implement the training in other areas of our church. 

(8) Pray the Lord will raise up more elders to help bear the burdens of our church. Pray anyone pursing eldership with bad motives would be exposed and we would be spared the problems that would bring.

(9) Our church has experienced unusual numerical growth in the last six months. While we praise God for this, it has caused some problems. We've had to make changes to our small groups; its placed stress on our seating capacity and children's ministry; and it has unearthed some hidden preferences of longer term members. Pray the elders will shepherd our people through these problems with patience and humility. Pray we would also know when to be firm in addressing any division. Thankfully the Lord has been kind to us so far, so we don't want to take that for granted but want to petition Him even more.

(10) Pray the Lord will continue to bless my conversations with my children. May God's word take root in their hearts and bear much fruit.

Thank you for partnering with us in Ankeny to make the glory of Christ known to all people!