LYNNWOOD BAPTIST CHURCH, PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA

Pastor Ronald Kalifungwa writes,

“We are thankful to the Lord for the opportunity we have to share with you God’s dealings with us through the medium of this prayer letter.

We are burdened to see our senior youth ministry develop over the next few months and years.  For some time now we have had a reasonably good work for our young people, but for various reasons we have over the last short while lost something of the effectiveness of that ministry.  The result has been that we have been left with a very small number of young people who don’t find it easy to resist the temptation to move to churches with higher numbers of young people and probably with more attractive programmes for them. We desire to develop a ministry that will both attract and retain all our young people.  At this stage it is not clear to us what we should do over and above our present efforts, but we have considered setting apart someone who can work full-time with the young people, under the oversight of the elders. Such a person would have to be someone with a strong doctrinal backbone and a vision and passion for young people’s work and who can help us recruit, mobilise and help young people to become functional members of the church. Please pray for the Lord’s guidance upon us. If you perhaps sense a need to send such a person to us won’t you please contact us?

Please remember us as we seek to evangelise our community.  With high fences becoming fashionable and even necessary in our community, the homes are becoming almost impenetrable and we are increasingly having little personal contact with our neighbourhood.  This makes our door-to-door evangelism difficult, but we are nonetheless persuaded that the Lord has called us to win souls back to Himself.  Won’t you please pray that the Lord would open opportunities for us to conduct a meaningful door-to-door outreach inspite of this situation? Pray too for the Lord to bless other methods of evangelism we are utilizing such as an evangelistic pulpit, literature distribution and our student outreach to name but a few.

Please pray for the Lord’s assistance upon our Pastor as he seeks to open up the Word of Life from week to week. Every Lord’s Day morning, he endeavours to give evangelistic emphasis to his sermons. Pray that our members would be diligent in inviting non-Christian friends to our services and that we would have the Joy of seeing many converted in coming weeks and months. Pastor Ronald continues with his series from the Book of Ephesians in the morning. He has Just brought his evening series of sermons in Psalm 73 to a close.  Both series of believed amongst us. Pray that these studies will help to dispel ignorance, re-ignite our love for the doctrines of grace, deepen our understanding of what we believe and help us to spread and contend for the faith that was once and for all delivered to the saints. Pray for the Lord’s assistance upon brother Richard who exercises a preaching ministry at church and elsewhere. We would covet your prayers for him.

Pray also for Klaas Mashabela who had been working as our missionary in the western part of Pretoria.  We shared in the last prayer letter that for various reasons we had decided to go slow in as far as this work is concerned and this has raised the need for Klaas to find new work while he runs a Bible Study group on a part-time basis.  Klaas has not yet been able to find a suitable job and so we urge you to pray for him.  Pray also for the budding work associated with him in Sunnyside (which is in the centre of town), that in years to come, it would blossom and that in God’s good timing Klaas would be re-engaged in a full-time capacity.

Please also join us in praying for our country. In about a month and a half’s time, the country will be voting in national elections. Please pray for peace to prevail and also for the Lord to help the people vote wisely. South Africa has been fast drifting into humanism and secularism and there is a great need for men who know and fear God to rule the country. Please pray to that end.

Our elder Richard Blackbeard has began teaching from the 1689 Baptist confession of faith in our Adult bible class. The last time we undertook such a study was about eight years ago. We feel that time has come for us to remind ourselves of the things most surely believed among us. The studies have been well received by the members, with many expressing deep appreciation.  Please pray that the fruit of this ministry will be lasting.

Finally, pray for the Christian school that operates in our church premises.  Recently they secured the services of a new principal but they continue to need extra space for the ever-increasing numbers of pupils.  The ideal would be for the school to relocate to other premises, but no suitable place has been found yet. The alternative (and it is a short term one) is to use a prefabricated classroom within our church premises; to do this they will need special consent from the local authority.  Please pray that this would soon be granted so that they (and the church) would not suffer for too long the inconvenience of having to accommodate new pupils in our church foyer.  Pray that the Lord would provide in a miraculous fashion.

I wish to end by thanking you all for your faithfulness in praying for us in the past. Should you find a moment, please lift us before the Throne of Grace once again.”