Scott and Brooke Greening

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

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

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

Praise the Lord! God is doing great things!

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Prayer Team Members,

Brooke and I hope you had a blessed Easter. Truly, we have a great Savior! I cannot help but be excited about the sure hope of the cross and resurrection we all communicate. Lord willing Great Commission Baptist Church will quickly join the ranks of those faithfully communicating the gospel message to the world. Please pray that Christ would quickly plant His church.

We continue to see God answer your faithful prayers. Our support level continues to climb! We are now 73% supported. Pray the remaining commitments of $59,000 ($1,640 monthly) come quick. It is wonderful to see God provide.

The development of the on-site team of people continues. We have met twice as a group and plan to meet biweekly until summer. Pray that this team of people would grow spiritually, numerically, and in diversity. Pray that a listing posted on Craigslist would help grow our on-site team with committed multi-ethnic believers. Please pray that our on-site team would grow to at least thirty adults by August. We know it is Christ who builds His church but He uses people.

We have a busy month of May. We have deputation meetings in Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. We will be in churches every Sunday of the month. Pray for safety in our travels, God honoring ministry, and effective communication of our burden for Chicagoland. Also, pray that God might use the month of May to see our support level rise dramatically. We are looking forward to seeing whom God will raise up to be a part of our team.

There are many aspects to church planting ministry. This summer we have two weeks in which mission teams will be coming to help sow seeds for our church plant. Pray that our preparation for these teams would be timely and wise. Please also pray that the teams’ preparations would be Spirit led and effective. Please specifically pray for good weather on June 13 and July 11; we have outdoor activities planned. We are also researching possible facilities for our church services. Would you join us in praying that God would provide the ideal location for a reasonable price? We need a facility in which a church worship service, nursery, and children’s church ministry can simultaneously occur.

Thank you for your time in reading this prayer letter and praying for our ministry. We look forward to heaven when we can rejoice with you and with the people God saved through the ministry of Great Commission Baptist Church. We trust you will see God greatly at work in your life.

Praying to be used by Christ to build His church,

Scott and Brooke Greening

God is showing Himself faithful. Our support level is on the rise! Watch the video to find out more.

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Thanks for praying!

Our latest video update includes thrilling details about what our weekly schedule looks like and some prayer requests. Okay, maybe the details about our schedule aren’t thrilling but they are informative! Have a great day everyone!

Team-members:

God is so good! Once again we saw God work on our behalf in mighty ways. We continue to learn that we are always safe in His hands and He is always in control. Here are just some of the blessings God gave to us in the last 45 days:

• Support – We are now at 67% support! This means we only need to gain $70,000 more support dollars either in hand or committed over the next three years.
• Home Sale – A week before we were scheduled to move to Illinois God brought a buyer for our home in Mason City, IA. God’s timing is always perfect. 
• New Team Members – We visited three churches in January to present our ministry: Walnut Ridge Baptist Church (Waterloo, IA); SW Community Baptist Church (Homer Glen, IL) and First Baptist Church (Waverly, IA). We praise the Lord that people at each of these churches joined our team for reaching Chicagoland for Christ. 
• Move – Brooke and I successfully caravanned from Iowa to our temporary residence with my parents in Chicagoland. Our two vehicles were packed to the gills with clothing, books and musical instruments. We felt and looked a little like the Beverly Hillbillies.
• Jobs – Brooke and I both started our part-time jobs within days of our arrival in Chicagoland. God provided jobs that will allow us to care for our financial obligations and make contacts in the community.

God proves to us that He answers prayers would you join us in praying for these items that are on our hearts:

• Support – We are making plans by faith to begin in earnest our church planting efforts this May and launching weekly services in September. We need to be fully supported by May in-order for BCP to release us to our field full-time.
• Home Sale Closing – Our closing is scheduled for March 16. Please pray that everything will continue to go smoothly.
• Testimonies – Brooke and I are both working with unsaved people in our work places. We desire to be salt and light to our coworkers and customers.
• On-Site Team Members – Our living in Chicagoland allows us to develop our on-site launch team. Pray that God would bring together the right group of people to launch His church.
• Meetings – We need to get meetings with churches to present our ministry and gain team members. Please pray that our schedule would quickly fill.

Praying to be used by Christ to build His church:

Scott and Brooke Greening