Dear Friends and Family,
The Easter season is here and we can focus our attention on Jesus and His death, burial, and resurrection. One of the things I’m most excited about is how the Lord continues to build His church and how we get to be a part of His wonderful, redemptive story.
One of the ways that the Lord is building His church is through the Evangel School of Urban Church Planting. Recently I’ve had the privilege of hosting a school with some leaders from the Evangelical Bengali Church. These wonderful brothers from Bangladesh are true soldiers for the cause of Christ. While their church is located in Queens, New York, their vision is much broader. They are taking steps to plant three churches in the New York City metro area, and training leaders is a critical part of that process. Our Evangel School of Urban Church Planting trained and commissioned six new leaders and there are plans for more schools to train additional leaders. One of the interesting parts of this particular school was that while our presentations were in English, all of the group discussion times were in Bengali. After each discussion session, we asked them to make a presentation to us in English so that we could understand their plans.
We are working with Pastor Joseph to edit the 488-page training handbook to a more manageable 100-page field handbook that will be translated into Bengali and used to train pastors in Bangladesh. Pastor Joseph is delighted at the prospect of equipping and empowering others with this field guide to reach a country that is roughly 95% Muslim with the good news of Jesus! Dynamic Bengali leaders with first generation connections in their homeland will teach other Bengalis to plant churches that are immediately culturally relevant. What an amazing gift to participate in the glorious things that God is doing here and around the globe!
Please pray for our family as we continue to partner with amazing ministries and people. Thank you for your support, prayers, and partnership in the ministry.
In His service,
The Raughleys
