CityReach Wrap Up

God did some awesome things this week!! Thanks to all the volunteers and everyone who made this week possible! We finished the week with over 250 people committing their lives to Christ! Here's some pics from throughout the week:

CityReach - BridgePoint Church

Last night we had our block party at BridgePoint Church, which is the new church plant we are launching this spring. The church will be meeting in a boxing gym in Tarentum called the James 5:16 Center. They have about 25 adutls meeting weekly right now and after last night, there's no doubt that God is ready to do something awesome in this community!! We had over 140 people there enjoying the free food, the band, a few rounds of sparring, giveaways and of course the pastors, Greg and Francie Krowitz! It was so cool seeing people just pouring down the hill towards the James 5:!6 Center throughout the night. There is such a huge need in this community for Bible-believing Church. As I was walking the community the couple days before inviting people I saw three different church buildings closed, boarded up and for sale! If that doesn't show the need, I don't know what does! If you don't know Greg and Francie, here's a little pamphlet we made up to let people know a little about them!

Free Food. New Life.

Last night was the first night of CityReach and what a night!! I was at Sharpsburg Family Worship Center with our guest speaker, Seth Franco, and God did some awesome things!! The kids were hopping and God did some incredible miracles in individuals lives!

I met a teenage girl there who as a young child went to church and was living for God despite the fact that her mother was a drug addict. She's always felt God calling her to use her voice to glorify Him, but as she grew up she started to find herself getting into trouble. Through a number of circumstances she was expelled from her high school and ostracized from the church she attended.

The bad taste in her mouth has kept her out of church ever since. That is until last night. Last night God drew her back. Not only did this now high school senior give her life to Christ, but her passion to sing for Him came back. You could just see the emotion as she talked about what God was doing in her life. Seeing peoples lives reborn never gets old!! I asked her what made her come last night and she said, "I saw there was free food and figured I'd check it out!" Isn't it awesome how something as small as 'free food' can be an instrument in the hand of God to transform a person's life?

Please continue to be in prayer for these outreaches this week. I truly believe that this morning there are people that are waking up only to go to sleep tonight completely different people!! If you want to see more of what happened at other sites last night, you can read about it here.

CityReach

Tonight I drove around to all the sites for CityReach this week, and all I can say is Wow!! I just want to give a shout out to four of my heroes - our site coordinators: Mary, Sheila, Linda & Carey!! It is amazing how God blesses hard work. There are already testimonies coming in of how God is bringing things together.

At PCO there was some concern about what to do with the garbage each night. Just last week we got word from the City of Pittsburgh that they will be picking up the trash each night at our lot (which we got for free by the way!) for no charge!

Then in Ambridge, a neighboring church is shutting down their Thursday night service bringing there congregation over to the CityReach service at ACC! The Kingdom of God is bigger than one church!

Here's one final testimony: In Tarentum, we are only having a block party on Friday night. There was some concern if we were going to be able to find good giveaways for that location. But praise God, we were given a basket of goodies from Starbucks worth $130!!

Well, that's just a taste of what God is doing already. I can't wait to hear the even more incredible praise reports of lives changed this week!!