MISSION CORNER
Evangelism is a natural response to our Lord’s love and sacrifice for all of us. It's a lifelong commitment. It's part of our worship and includes every believer. Here are some mission activities that took place in the first half this year at IPC-Seattle.
A.
Aletheia
A group of Aletheians volunteered at Clothes for Kids in Lynnwood in March and August. Clothes for Kids is an organization whose mission is to provide quality free clothing service to children in need. Since they have been learning about God’s love and how we can love Him back in return, early in the morning they went to help out by doing cleaning chores such as dusting, sweeping, vacuuming and sorting their donations.
B. Ekklesia/Theophany
In February, Ekklesia/Theophany volunteered at Crista Retirement Community in Shoreline. They spent time playing games, sharing or just spending time listening to the elderly.
In March, they also volunteered their time in Union Gospel Mission setting up meals for the homeless and sponsored a Friday night for a speaker who was in charge for international Tsunami Relief programs. She gave us very good insight about how should we help those who are in need. We could not just give money to the organization and those money might not reach to the recipients properly.
C. Angklung for the world
It started back in December 2000 when one family in the congregation donated the Angklung instrument to IPC Seattle. We have been experiencing God’s love in our lives through good and bad times and we felt this was the least we could do to express our gratitude and love to the Lord. This instrument can be used not only to introduce Indonesia and its culture to the American churches and communities, but at the same time to share God’s never-ending love to become a channel of blessings to other people in need. When Tsunami hit Southeast Asia in December 2004, our angklung team used Angklung to help raising funds to rebuild the region. We also hope this would reach the remote and unreached group. Anklung team has performed in various places such as Ethnic Impact in Overlake Christian Church, Kent Presbyterian Church, and Chinese Baptist Church. It received high remark from Ethnic Impact conference.
D. Connecting to our World
Our church in April's mission offering raised $3,040.00. We dedicated the offering to Voice of the Martyrs. Voice of Martyrs is an organization dedicated to help Christians around the world who is persecuted for their faith. Among others, they followed and supported the three Indonesian ladies who were jailed because they were accused of “christening” the Muslim children who attended their Sunday school class. Praise the Lord; we learned that in early June they were released after serving a 2-year sentence. There are many other ongoing persecutions in Indonesia currently. Please go to their website www.persecution.com to learn more about what it takes to share God’s world.
We also raised over $2,000.00 in July for Trans-World Radio. Their website is www.twr.org. They use radio to spread the good news around the globe.
Our team is currently promoting Mission Fest-Seattle on October 12-13. Since we are a sponsoring church, we have put posters in our bulletin board and other areas.
F. Future Plans
In our own church, we had a church leadership retreat in March. It laid the foundation for the future development of our Evangelism program. Our guest speaker, Ev. Ben Poli, led us on a great topic of personal friendship evangelism (friends and family members) in May's church retreat. Other areas such as Movie-nights and Summer Short-Term Mission program are on our table.
We continue to get involve in our own community this coming fall: Union Gospel Mission. We will coordinate with our local community for what’s needed.