Scott and Brooke Greening

Now that we are ministering on site in Chicagoland and in the midst of our church plant we no longer post as regularly on our blog. However, we do send out a WEEKLY prayer e-mail. If you are not receiving our emails and would like to please sign up using the form on the right of this page. We are grateful for your interest in our ministry and make sure you are kept informed. God bless!

- Scott and Brooke

Here are some pictures from our recent outreach in a local park.

We are putting together a prayer team to pray about these opportunities. If you want to participate let us know!

Spend Memorial Day in Chicagoland! We are hosting a Memorial Day Weekend mini-mission trip and we want you to be involved. This mini-mission trip will begin Saturday morning, May 29 and conclude late-afternoon Monday, May 31, 2010. Individuals, families, Sunday-School classes, and entire churches are encouraged to come! This weekend promises to be a fun weekend of ministry and exposure to our ministry.

The Schedule

Friday (For Early Arrivals):
6:00 PM – Dinner with Scott & Brooke and tour of area

Saturday:
9:00 AM – Orientation/Training
10:30 AM – Ministry Projects (Door-to-door surveys and/or invitations; servant evangelism projects; etc.)
12:30 PM – Lunch
2:00 PM – Ministry Projects
5:00 PM – Dinner
6:30 PM – Ministry Projects
8:30 PM – Done for the day!

Sunday:
10:00 AM – Worship with GCBC!
11:15 PM – Help pack up the Sunday stuff.
12:30 PM – Meet for lunch
2:00 PM – Head downtown for some sight seeing

Monday:
9:00 AM – Meet for Prayer
10:00 AM – Memorial Day Picnic Invitation Blitz/Food Preparation
1:00 PM – Memorial Day Community Picnic
4:00 PM – Head for Home

The Details

Who Can Participate?
We would love to have lots of different people involved. The only restrictions would be the fact that Saturday will be a long day of ministry outside. This means that this mini-missions trip is not for young children or others without the stamina to help. Families are encouraged to come; Dads and Moms just make a judgment call for your kids (if some need to head back to the hotel after dinner that’s fine). Teens still living at home need to come with their family or a family/church approved adult sponsor.

Where Will We Stay?
We are working on securing a reasonable hotel rate (reasonable for Chicagoland ). The rooms will be at your expense. We will not be getting a room block so if you can find a better deal great!

What Other Costs?
GCBC will care for your lunches (packed lunch on Saturday, Chicago favorite Portillos on Sunday, Picnic on Monday). All other meals will be at your expense. The other expense will be the sight seeing activities on Sunday (There will be no required activities downtown, so besides transportation expenses (parking or train tickets) the rest will be at your discretion.).

How can I help if I cannot come?
You can pray for the weekend of activities. We will be assembling a prayer team leading up to the weekend. If you want to be involved in that please email me at scott@scottandbrooke.info. You could also help underwrite the costs involved for our church (meals, printing materials, advertising, give-aways for picnic, etc).

How do I let you know I am interested?
You can leave a comment on this post, email me scott@scottandbrooke.info, or call me at 847-340-8593.

Thanks for considering this invitation. Please pray that we will have a great weekend of ministry.

Here is a video we made for our prayer update. It shows a little bit of the process of getting ready for our Sunday worship time. If you don’t already get our prayer letters make sure you sign up through the box on the right of our website www.scottandbrooke.info.

Our calling campaign last week conducted by Tellstart (www.tellstart.com) was a success. Thank you all for your prayers. Over the course of the week we received 72 messages of people sharing their contact information. These people for the most part are “hot” contacts, in that they had no reason to leave their information other than the fact that they were interested in the church. Brooke and I attempted to get in touch with each of the contacts within 24 hours. We had several great conversations with people. Some of the individuals were new to the area and looking for a church. Others were attending large mega-churches and very interested in a church where they could more actively minister and be ministered too. Still others were frustrated with not being able to find a church that effectively communicated the word. Finally, some seem to not be believers but interested in spiritual things. We will be following up with all of the contacts again this week and encouraging them to attend a reception that we will be hosting on Friday evening.

Please pray for the following:

1. Follow-Up: Pray that God will allow us to get back in touch with the individuals that responded last week. Pray that these people will still remember and be interested in our church.
2. Friday’s Reception: We are hosting a reception on Friday evening in order to communicate what we hope the church becomes and how people can be involved. Pray that people will come to the reception. Pray that our team will effectively plan for the event. Pray that we will show God’s love in action by how we interact with the individuals. Pray that some might come to be a part of our launch team because of these efforts.
3. Diversity: We know that we spoke to people from a lot of different ethnic backgrounds on the phone. Please pray that God would in fact draw people from the many nations that exist in our target area to be a part of GCBC.
4. Excellence: We want to do everything we are involved in with excellence. Please pray that even in our beginning stages we can communicate God’s excellence with our actions.

We are thankful for God allowing us to get a lot of systems in place over the last month and a half in order to effectively assimilate and welcome guests. Now we are praying that God will bless the efforts that we are beginning in ernest to reach out to people in our community. Please join us in these prayers.

Deputation Trip to Ohio

Thank you for your prayers about our deputation trip to Berea Ohio. We had safe travels both coming and going. We had a great time with the Pastor Spink family and the people of Berea Baptist Church. It was a great blessing to get a chance to speak with Bob & Donna Bennett two of our co-laborers with BCP.

Thanks for praying!
Scott & Brooke

Monday’s Results

Thank you all for praying. I nervously awaited the results this morning from the calling yesterday. I think my nervousness started last night about bed time. I wouldn’t exactly call last night restful.

At about 11:15 I received the report. Attempting to be disciplined, I opened the instructions first and read through them. I then opened the Excel spreadsheet with the information from the messages. Quickly scrolling to the bottom I noticed that we had 33 people leave messages. Praise the Lord!

I called Brooke who was working and let her know the good news. I then had to figure out how to download the voicemails. After accomplishing that feat I began to listen to the voicemails. I called Brooke and we listened to a few together.

It was amazing to hear the different voices leaving their contact information. I was thrilled to hear voices that obviously were from other parts of the world. God is at work.

Here are a few prayer requests from today:

1. Continued Relationships – Pray that we would be able to enter into actual relationships with many of these people. Pray that they would not just be names on a mailing list but would be contacts for the gospel.
2. Wisdom – Responding to and assimilating all of the information and people is going to require wisdom. Pray that God would allow Brooke and me (and the rest of our team) much wisdom in handling these people and their life situations.
3. Timing – God’s timing was good in allowing us to have the initial contact with these people. Pray that we would have God-ordained timing as we attempt to reconnect with them.

A Fun Story

I received a voicemail from Joan Alexander. Joan is one of our team members already. It was fun to hear a familiar voice. It was a good reminder that God has already provided team members and will provide team members. Thanks Joan!
Thanks for praying!
Scott & Brooke

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from Scott and Brooke!

This video was made for our prayer letter. You can sign up to get our prayer letter by email using the box on the top of the column to the right.

My nephew Ben is working on praying. He has some improving to do but he’s off to a great start. Check out his Christmas prayer.

Happy December! We are excited to be entering the Christmas season with so many partners in ministry. You are a gift from God!

We desire you to be intelligent prayer warriors for our ministry. In this prayer letter we will be reminding you of our church planting strategy. We are using a “launch” strategy. What this simply means is that we will seek to build momentum towards a “grand opening” Sunday that would impact as many lives as possible. In our metropolitan mission field this strategy is often the most effective in starting churches that reach self-support status quickly. The details of this strategy are as follows:

1. Preparation Stage – This stage focuses on establishing the legal identity of the church, assembling the nucleolus of a core group, raising the financial backing to allow focus on the church plant ministry, and beginning to enter the community through acts of service and evangelism. This has been the stage of our church plant since our arrival in February. We are taking steps to continue establishing our legal identity. Please pray for wisdom as we work on a constitution and the necessary steps for incorporation in the state of Illinois. We have gathered a core group for the church. Fifteen individuals are now a part of our launch team. Please pray that our team would continue to grow. We have also raised most of our financial support that will allow me to focus on the church plant. As December continues I will be scaling my hours of part-time employment down to 8 or 9 hours a week. We have continued to enter our community in various ways. Our summer mission trip leads continue to be relationships we are seeking to cultivate. We have raked leaves, hosted Bible studies, and continue to find ways to interact with our neighbors. Please pray that our Christmas efforts of caroling and neighborhood open house would be used by God to further the gospel.

2. Preview Stage – This stage focuses on enlarging our launch team, increasing the public presence of the church, and continuing to evangelize and serve the community. We are transitioning into this stage during December and January. We will begin canvassing neighborhoods with custom invitations to our services. Please pray that we will find people interested in spiritual things and in our church. We will be investing in a telephone blitz to contact 50,000 homes with the goal of finding other believers that are interested in helping start Great Commission Baptist Church. Please pray that this investment would be used of God to grow and diversify our launch team. In this stage we will begin to publicly advertise our identity as a church. We will be utilizing newspapers, post card drops, online advertisements, and other means to publicize our preview services. These services will be focused on visitors and communicating the gospel. These services will occur once a month leading up to our “grand opening.” If God allows our launch team to grow we plan on having our first preview service in either February or March. Please pray that God will use our efforts to bring people to Himself for salvation and to be a part of our church. The weeks in between services will still have weekend services but these will be focused on training and involving new launch team members in ministries and follow-up.

3. Launch stage – This stage focuses on the “grand opening” or launch of our church. This is the point when we transition our weekend strategy from our cycle of preview services and training/follow-up to weekly regular services. We will have our grand opening Sunday and a special follow up Sunday the next week. If the Lord allows our plans to come to fruition we plan on having our “grand opening” the week before Mother’s Day with a special Mother’s Day event the following week. Please pray that God will bless this plan and we can see a large launch of our church.

Hopefully this recap of our strategy will allow you to pray more specifically for our ministry. We need God to work and ask that you would pray to that end.

Seeing as it is December and Christmas lists are abounding. I want to give you a Christmas List for our ministry. Would you pray about how you might participate in our list?

1. 20 people to pray everyday until January 4 for our telephone blitz.

2. People to pray during the calling hours of the phone blitz January 4 – 11 that God would bless these efforts.

3. 15 people to pray everyday for our church to grow in ethnic diversity.

4. 15 people to pray everyday for effective facilities.

5. 4 groups to come between January and April for a Saturday of canvassing with invitations to our services.

6. The finances to pay for the different aspects of our launch strategy.

* Phone Blitz – $3,500                        * Custom Invitation designed and printed – $1,000

* Post Card Drops – $500 x 4            * Newspaper Advertisement – $400 X 4

* Letterhead designed and printed $400

* The Carols Story (Christmas Caroling Outreach) – $250

7. A professional grade keyboard – $1,000

Thank you for your prayers. If you desire to participate in any of these items please contact us for more information.

If you would like to make a financial gift you can do so online by visiting http://gcbc.info/?page_id=110 (Please fill out form completely so we can receipt your gift).

Thanks for praying!

Scott & Brooke