If you needed a victory for the Kingdom for your own encouragement or to report to your church, here it is. As you know, about 13 years ago the BR-KC Churches, in partnership with the North American Mission Board and the Missouri Baptist Convention purchased a Presbyterian Church building in the Historic Northeast on Benton Boulevard. Many of our churches, Baptist Builders and other outside groups spent hours renovating the older church. The vision for the church was to be a place where ethnic and immigrant groups of believers could worship and grow their congregations; to be an incubator for ethnic churches. A host, anchor church was entrusted with occupying and managing the church with this goal. Palabra Viva, a Hispanic Church pastored by Dr. Luis Mendoza, has faithfully served the Lord and BR-KC in this role since the church was acquired. Many churches have been started out of Palabra Viva, which we also call the Multi-Ethnic Church Planting Center (MECPC).
This last Easter, the Karen Church announced that they were able to purchase their own building north of the river and would be moving out of the MECPC. Yesterday, I was invited to preach to the Karen Congregation in their new church building. It was such an encouraging sight to see nearly 75 Karen believers worshiping the Lord. The church is very young, too, with several young families and children there. No doubt, they would not have been able to save the money necessary to purchase their own building if they had not been able to meet in the MECPC for nearly 10 years.
In these times when there is more bad news than good news, here is a Kingdom victory you can publicly celebrate with your church. Because of your faithful partnership with the other churches of BR-KC and with Palabra Viva, another gospel preaching, teaching church has been started and now has their own ministry presence in the Kansas City Metro area. As your Director of Mission, I want you to know how truly grateful I am for your continued partnership with us (BR-KC) in the gospel.
