If you were encouraged by Sunday, come to a conference we're doing in February!

As I write this on Sunday afternoon, our family is preparing to head off for a quick vacation. However, I wanted to provide a follow up from this morning with a short newsletter article before I go. As I said on Sunday, in order to fulfill our vision to make Jesus known, we need to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit. We need to have His power working in us and through us. I’m guessing a lot of us would resonate with that thought. We cry out to God for it. We believe it. But I’m also guessing a lot of us struggle to understand how to really lean into it. How, practically, do we engage in the ministry God has given us with His power, instead of our own?

We’re hosting a conference next month that is about exactly that. We haven’t normally hosted conferences- this is a bit of a new thing for us. We are bringing in a friend and mentor of mine named Bob Branch. Bob is the father of a very close friend I made while studying at Regent College years ago. We’ve stayed with Bob and his wife Becky in Southern California a couple of times and I’ve kept in touch with him by phone when I’ve had questions about various things. Bob is the founding pastor of The Springs Community Church in Temecula, California. He is a man full of wisdom and experience, and has impressed me as someone who loves the Lord deeply, studies His word thoroughly, and loves His people genuinely. Bob particularly has a lot of wisdom and insight to share in areas like spiritual gifts and spiritual warfare. I had him do a Zoom conference with our leaders in September about “deliverance ministry” (as in, questions about demonic possession and so on), and it was so good. It was humble, biblical, engaging and deep. Afterwards, I thought, "I want our whole church to gain from his teaching!" That’s what we’re making possible.

On February 21 and 22, Bob will be teaching a conference called “How to pray effectively for healing”. The essence of it is that through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are called to engage in the kind of ministry Jesus himself did, including the ministry of healing. We’ll gather on Friday night and on Saturday from 9:30am-5pm (lunch and refreshments throughout the weekend are included). Bob will also be preaching at The Bridge on the 23rd.

I’m really excited about how our church will be blessed through Bob’s ministry and I hope you can be part of it. Again, I want to say that if you’re hungry to understand more about doing any kind of ministry through the power of the Holy Spirit, make it a priority to join us. The cost is $50 for the whole conference, and you can register now at the link below. We’re even hoping to have childcare available during the sessions. Let’s keep growing in our vision: to know Jesus Christ personally and to make him known!