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Toledo UBF 2016 Review and 2017 Key Verse, Prayer Topics and Goals

Rom 12:11-12 “Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”

It is hard to believe we are at the beginning of a new year once again. God has again graciously blessed, guided and protected our ministry throughout 2016.  Last year was a year of growth for Toledo based on our key verse from 2 Peter 3:18, “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.”  With God’s help our ministry grew slightly in numbers, but that was not our goal. The goal was to grow spiritually in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  

Throughout the year, we were reminded that grace and knowledge are key ingredients to healthy spiritual growth.  Grace helps us to stay humble. Without grace, we become proud and self-centered trying to grow in our own way using our own ideas.  Without grace, ultimate we fail and have to come back to depend on the undeserved grace of God.    

On the other hand, knowledge of Christ provided us with growing power.  Knowledge of Christ allowed us to overcome the thorns and thistles trying to choke us.  It also enables us to see God’s road signs for the right way to go.  This knowledge was largely imparted to us through all those who served the word of God each week and from all who participated in the weekly group Bible studies.   In 2016, we studied the books of 2nd Peter, Proverbs, Jonah, Esther, and Matthew’s gospel from chapter’s 8 – 13.  We also studied various passages including Psalm 34, Isaiah 9, Luke 2, Luke 24, and Hebrews 12.  

Based on our key verse and study of 2nd Peter at the beginning of the year we found three guiding prayer topics for the year.  The first one was obvious:  #1 Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  The second one was: #2 Be ready for the Lord’s return looking forward to our heavenly home.  Well the Lord did not return last year as we hoped, but in a kind of unexpected way God reminded us of the importance of setting our hope firmly on our heavenly home.   We did not expect Kathy Reilly or Missionary Joan Park to be diagnosed with cancer.  Neither did fully expect God to call home several of our loved ones including Mary’s Seo’s father, Dr. John Seo’s Mother, Ruth Kille’s mother, Bruce Kwiatkowski’s sister and Kevin Pelland’s grandfather.  However, through these events, God was reminding us to be ready.  Life is precious and the ones we love will not be with us forever.  We do not know what may happen tomorrow. Therefore, be ready and alert.  Set our hope firmly on the grace to be given us when Jesus Christ is revealed (1Pe 1:13).  Our 3rd prayer topic this year was: #3 Practically become living sacrifices for Jesus and his kingdom.  It was beautiful to watch as so many of our members poured out there life to serve God’s work while maintaining a full-time job, school and many other responsibilities.  I do not know of anyone in our ministry who did not sacrifice some part of his or her life to serve God’s will.   Some sacrificed to serve our children sacrificially, others college students, others to serve our Bible studies, or taking care of the lawn, cleaning, cooking or the video, or the music, or the church finances or fixing the building, or updating the Facebook page, or serving message, or whatever it was, it was truly beautiful to watch every member become a living sacrifice for his glory. Praise God!    

I cannot thank each person enough for all their labor in the Lord last year. Because of our sacrificial members, God worked to grow and mature our ministry in new ways.  We cannot know all that God was doing, but we could see the sign of God’s work through several key events that took place.   In no particular order, I want to list some of them.  

• The Marriage of Esther Li & Aiwen  - we sent them off with God’s blessing. 
• We rented out our “Mission House” to becoming better stewards of our finances. 
• We temporary rented out our Antioch Building for 3 months to support Greater Life Ministries and make connections with the greater body of Christ in Toledo 
• We organized the 2nd Annual Great Lakes Region Spring Conference at nearby Beulah Beach and for the first time did so with simultaneous CBF/HBF conferences.  
• John and Maria Jun from Shippensburg joined our ministry.
• Several couples completed the Art of Marriage Series sessions
• We completed our goal to clarify membership and membership classes and awarded membership certificates. 
• We finalized our Church by-laws, Constitution, Operations Manual and planned out our entire messenger schedule and events calendar for 2017.  
• We saw the answered prayers of Susan Lewis, Tammy Kwiatkowski, Mary Seo and others in regard to their job positions. 
• We reestablished friendship and fellowship with MSU ministry and held our CBF camp at Peter and Ruth Yoon’s home together with the Rockey Myall family.    
• We dedicated now 2-year-old Timothy Lewis to the Lord. 
• We prayerfully supported Dr. Paul Hong’s academic and ministry travels to many different countries and his preparation for serving God in India in 2017
• God enabled us to connect more to the greater body of Christ, especially with other campus ministries and to host the 1st Toledo Campus Prays event where more than 10 campus ministries came together at our church to pray for the new semester and UT campus.  
• We saw God answer the Bang’s family prayer for a green card
• We hosted, served and ministered to several people from outside Toledo. 

As we look forward to 2017, we choose Romans 12:12 as our key verse. “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.”  Based on this, our ministry has found the following ministry prayer topics and goals for 2017. 

Ministry Prayer Topics for 2017: 

• Keep our spiritual fervor and zeal in serving the Lord. 
• Strongly secure our hope in God so our joy is never lacking.   
• Afflictions and distress may remind us of God’s patience love.  
• Be more faithful in prayer individually and corporately. 

Ministry Goals for 2017:

1. Engage everyone in regular Bible study and provide practical resources to support our families, students and children.
2. To learn faithfulness in prayer based on Romans 12:12 & Ephesians 6:18
3. Build up “The Well” student ministry and one-to-one ministry.
4. Strengthen Sunday Worship Service to promote worship that glorifies God and is mutually edifying.   
5. Further develop and integrate our CBF and HBF ministries.
6. Encourage and help our young couples with the Mingling of Souls materials.
7. Support parent’s development through the Visionary Parenting materials. 
8. Develop our outreach and collaboration with other campus Christian ministries through the Toledo Campus Prays.  
9. Continue to strengthen Great Lakes region network, relationships and communication

Prepared by, Russell Kille and Greg Lewis