Addis Ababa - A Church is Born
The following is an update from Michael Granger, Lead Pastor of Trinity Fellowship in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Over the course of our Covid-19 quarantine Trinity Fellowship wrote, recorded, and produced a music album about sin and the gospel… Wow! I’ve attached the Christmas song they produced entitled “Kidus” at the end of the this report. Please don’t miss it. Enjoy…
Our plan for planting a church in Ethiopia was always broken up into two phases, firstly a Soft Launch with our planting team; followed by the second, a Hard Launch (or Official Launch) in which we begin publicly ministering to our community. I am so pleased to report that on Sunday October 4th of 2020, Trinity Fellowship in Addis Ababa had its soft launch in our home. We began with a call to worship from Isaiah 40:9-11 “Behold your God”. That was followed by Abenezer beginning the singing portion of our worship service with Bob Kauflin and Jon Althoff’s song He is Our God.
Our singing was followed by a pastoral prayer and then I preached from Hebrews 11:39-12:2 Looking Unto Jesus. It was the first sermon of a 3-part series entitled Why We’re Gospel Centered. Finally we ended our service by taking communion together. It was a sweet time with one another and with our dear Savior. The last words of the service were, “As my dear pastor and friend CJ Mahaney always says, “I wish tomorrow were Sunday!”
Then, in mid-November we moved from our house to a 200 seat theater in the Bisrate Gebriel neighborhood of Addis Ababa. That was a massive answer to prayer because it is right smack dab in the middle of where we had been praying for a location to meet. Finally on the very last Sunday of the year, December 27th, we celebrated the official launch of Trinity Fellowship in Addis Ababa. We called it a Very Merry Church Plant and with much merriment of heart I’m so pleased to report that by the grace of God we made in as a 2020 church plant! Our text for that Sunday came from Luke 2:25-35 on Simeon’s response to the Messiah. The sermon was entitled God in our Hands. And we had the chance to sing one of our very own Christmas songs. Abenezer Dejene, our Director of Music wrote and recorded Kidus (attached below) which we sang as a church.
In my opinion, it felt like a very fruitful Sunday, and we're stunned by the grace of God. My brother-in-law, who was serving as usher tells me there were around 150 people in attendance. That might be an exaggeration of 1 or 2 dozen, but he’s confident with his figure. And, after the service there was a buzz of excitement in the air. As for me, my heart is full of joy, a very very deep joy that I get to be a part of what God is doing in East Africa. I just can’t believe it! My heart is also flooded with thanksgiving at the generosity of the Lord in giving us such wonderful friends and such a marvelous Ethiopian planting team. And now, by the grace of God, we find ourselves two sermons into our series on Paul’s epistle to the Philippians. Praise God!