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The Church Starting Team has as its goal to establish and develop healthy churches that are launched for success (not survival), SBC in practice and principle, self-sustaining through evangelism, intentionally reproductive and culturally relevant. In order to reach this goal, Embrace Baltimore:
* Enlists prayer support networks to commit to pray for church launchers.
* Identifies sites for new churches.
* Equips church starters for ministry.
* Enlists partners to provide people, prayer and finances for the launching and development of healthy new churches.
Pray for these new churches in the Baltimore area:
 The Garden Community will begin the planting work full-time on July 1, 2008, as church planter Joel Kurz and his family move to the city. They will take on the challenge of ministering to an area that is largely disconnected from the church as a whole. In 2006, Pastor Kurz felt God call him to plant a church in Baltimore when he saw how detached the area was from church, and how open the people in that area were to change. The church focuses on reconnecting people with Christ by building a strong sense of community and belonging among its members. In the future, they want to strengthen and broaden their community by creating neighborhood-based cell groups that go out to the people who might not otherwise come in. For more information, click here.
Pray for The Garden Community:
* The Kurz family will be moving to the city on July 1st, at which time they will begin full-time planting work. Please pray for the whole family as they make this transition to work more effectively in the area they will minister in.
* Pray for the church as they strive to develop a strong core group.
* Pray for opportunities for church members to connect with the unchurched in the city.
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 Everything from the name of the Village Church to its “eclectic, bohemian” style is designed to target the generation that Pastor Dan Hyun says is currently missing from the church in Baltimore. For several years, Pastor Hyun felt the call of God to plant a church that reached the generation of people between the ages of 20-40, many of whom are either unchurched or “dechurched.” The Village will launch in September 2008, but a group has been meeting since January, creating an environment that is comfortable enough even for the skeptics. Through taking the Gospel to people for the first time and “mopping up” bad misconceptions of Christ, the Village is breaking through to people in the area. For more information, click here.
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 Grace Life Church was thrilled when their young adult group from the Maryland Institute College of Art ballooned from five members to 30, but everyone laughed when Pastor Roger Kim alluded that the small discipleship group they started could one day morph into a church plant. That was just the vision that God laid on his heart, however, and three years later, on October 7, 2007, The Light Church began its ministry to artists in the Baltimore area. In addition to its weekly meetings, the church holds discussion groups, knitting groups, and they are in the middle of building an art gallery/café that will spotlight local artists' works and hopefully draw them into the church. For more information, click here.
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 The goal of the Gallery Church is to display the greatness of God to the world, and they will begin doing that in Baltimore when they officially launch on September 14, 2008. Pastor Ellis Prince worked as a youth pastor in Georgia when he and his wife Ginger felt a strong call from God to plant a church in the Northeast. After much prayer, the Prince family moved from their home in Georgia to New York to work with the original Gallery Church before coming down to Baltimore. The church will hold several pre-launch services in July and August, and they plan to minister to several ethnic groups in the area by broadcasting multilingual sermons. Their goal is to reclaim the reputation of Christ by displaying the pure truth of the Bible in the world, starting with their zip code. For more information, click here.
Pray for Gallery Church Baltimore:
* More than 400 volunteers on ten teams will travel from all over the country to assist the church this summer. Pray that God will grant strength and safety for teams, churches and volunteers involved.
* Pray that the church will find several venues to worship in.
* Pray that the church starting team will live “with their armor on” to say and do things only in God's Will as they begin ministering to the community.
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