Scott and Brooke Greening

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