The Next Chapter for Ethiopia
An update from Michael Granger, Lead Pastor of Trinity Fellowship Church, Ethiopia ...
By the grace of God, Trinity Fellowship is a growing community. We now have roughly 100 members with around 15-20 waiting for our next membership intake, and approximately 130-160 in regular attendance on Sunday mornings. Trinity Fellowship's membership consists of a ton of young people, with very few over the age of 30. Back in December, Trinity Fellowship celebrated its 2-year anniversary where we heard testimonies and held baptisms. In that month I also had the privilege of marrying two couples in the course of 10 days. We are certainly growing numerically, but also I trust, in maturity.
Before being sent to Ethiopia, my dear friend and pastor CJ Mahaney told me that in his research, the one thing he'd found common amongst fruitful churches was they “knocked it out of the park” every Sunday. Well, we’ve spent the last two years endeavoring to do just that. I preach my heart out and Abenezer, one of our pastoral interns, leads us in singing - to the best of our ability in the grace of God. We wanted to do one thing with excellence before adding any other components. But now, we feel the church is ready, and in need of some new components. So in December we added a Sunday morning corporate prayer meeting at 9am (one hour before the service), and in March we’ll begin community groups. By the grace of God, this year will also see the establishment of a Wednesday evening Amharic service as well as an evangelistic outreach ministry. We feel our desperate need for the Holy Spirit's leading and blessing of all these categories in the life of the church.
Back in September last year, the Lord filled my heart with gladness as our first cohort of Trinity Fellowship Pastors College students graduated. These men took 42 Masters-level classes spread out over 12 months, sweating, bleeding, and reading together. They are Ephesians 4 gifts from Christ, dropped straight into the lap of the church.
One student, Muhammed, is fact-finding in order to plant a Somali church in the city, while the other 9 students have become full-time interns at Trinity Fellowship where they will serve until October this year. Amongst these students, Brian is considering a church plant in Nairobi, Kenya in 2024, and Amanuel and Abenezer will probably be ordained into Trinity Fellowship as co-pastors by the end of this year or early 2024. Finally, come September, Trinity Fellowship's Pastors College intends to start its second academic calendar year and we're praying for 10-12 students.
The most meaningful thing a person or church can tell me is they're praying for us. I really don't know what I would be apart from the Lord's people before the throne of grace on my behalf, and so as we look ahead to the next chapter for our local church and Pastors College, here's how you can be praying for us in the months ahead...
Please pray for the unction of the Holy Spirit in my preaching and in our new Sunday morning corporate prayer meetings.
Please pray for our pastoral interns, in particular Amanuel, Abenezer and Brian as we consider ordaining them. Please also pray for Brian as we consider sending his family back to Nairobi, Kenya to plant a church.
Please pray for our members to grow in spiritual maturity - for faith to see beyond merely the physical into the spiritual so that their greatest longing becomes an obsessive desire to surrender to Christ and do his will.
Please pray for God to give us 12 students for our upcoming Pastors College in September.
We're thankful to our family of churches who have made Trinity Fellowship and the Pastors College a reality. We know that it is all God, but God uses lots and lots of means. You're the means!
Thank You!
