Pastoral (Quarantine church) Report Church Business Meeting

Beloved Bramaleans:

We are living in an unprecedented time in our human history. Rapid changes are happening in our world. The “new normal” is upon us and we as a church must be ready to continue to embrace these changes as we conduct ourselves in fulfillment of our gospel task.

 At the beginning of the lockdown period in March of 2020, while we were caught unprepared for the close of in-person service, yet the Lord in His goodness has guided us at every little step of the way. We never missed conducting a single church online service, Sabbath, Vespers, and Mid-week prayer meetings. We grappled our way at the beginning, but the Lord kept us going, and through the wisdom and diligence given to our technical crew manning our Zoom, FB, A/V under our Communication ministry, we were able to meet regularly in worship and fellowship every Sabbath, we were able to conduct weekly ministry and discipleship activities on the evenings of Fridays, Wednesdays, Tuesdays, and now even on Mondays. This year, we also have re-started our Pathfinder meetings on Saturdays and Sundays and a separate Children’s Sabbath school every Sabbath morning.

What initially was a challenge due to the physical closure of our church became an opportunity for our church to minister to one another in different ways and has allowed our church to expand our borders through our live online worship services. Now, we are able to engage at least 150 – 350 global audiences through our online Vespers and Sabbath worship services every week. Appreciation to our Discipleship Council and our board of elders for diligently preparing for these regular services every week.

 At the beginning of 2020, we set out to transition our church to embrace the Holistic Small Group model for ministry and through the leadership of our Sabbath School council, we are now seeing tangible fruits of doing church through Holistic Small Groups. More members are being nurtured, cared for, prayed for and discipled through the care ministry of our HSGs. One of our HSGs has not stopped in doing Community service during this pandemic and they have gone out of their way to engage the community by participating in Tree planting initiatives of the city and gave bagged supplies to the needy and homeless in our community. Over the last month, an opportunity to partner with a community organization named KAIROS, an organization that provides help and assistance to migrant farmworkers in Southern Ontario, has opened for our church. We are looking to have joint activities with KAIROS and we can connect our HSGs for some future outreach activities with this group.  One of our baptismal candidates this year (who should have been baptized last April 3) is in fact, a fruit of the ministry of our HSG. And we believe that as we continue to pursue the ministry of Discipleship, Outreach, and Evangelism through our HSGs, that the Lord would be able to make more disciples and prepare more people for His soon promised return. Currently, there are four precious individuals ready for baptism.

 Last year, we participated in the joint FAMCC evangelism which culminated in the baptism of 6 new members of our church. Five of these six new members are being intentionally discipled through the conduct of weekly zoom Bible studies with them. This year, we are conducting evangelism through our HSGs and we are enjoining and asking our HSGs to pray for and minister to at least 5-7 non-baptized family members and friends. We are allocating from our evangelism fund a budget that will be used by the HSGs for their friendship evangelism and outreach-related activities this year. By the month of October, we will be conducting a one-week reaping evangelism campaign where we hope to usher in at least 15 souls into God’s kingdom. The Personal Ministries Council is now working diligently to prepare the church for this reaping campaign. Our eight local evangelists/speakers have been selected and these speakers are now preparing for their evangelistic sermons for October.

 For obvious reasons, our Family Life council has been hindered by this ongoing pandemic from pursuing our calendared social church activities such as retreat, camping, gym nights, and other regular social events. However, we are grateful that this year, we have been able to host one zoom Baby shower for a family and we are planning for a few more for those expecting their first babies as members of this church.

 Working behind the scenes is our Administrative Council ministry. They meet regularly to see to it that we are able to function well through our online ministries and the upkeep and maintenance of our building and our equipment. One of our major projects is the upkeep of our HVAC. Our Property Mgt is meeting regularly to make sure that once we are ready to re-open our facilities for worship and ministry, we have our building prepared to be used as a safe and comfortable place for worship and ministry. Our new website is now also up and running and we intend to maximize the use of this website to provide necessary tools and information that will be available at the fingertips of our members and worldwide audience.

 Let us continue to delight ourselves in the Lord and humble ourselves before Him so that we can continue to face the challenges of the future and seize every opportunity to expand God’s kingdom amidst the “new normal” world that we live in.

 In all things, let us claim Proverbs 3:5-6: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He shall direct your paths!”