METAIRIE – Crescent City Rock was rockin’ today with a great “Back 2 School” Sunday, said church planting Pastor Jim Louviere Aug 9.
“The Crescent City Rock Leadership Team works very hard and I’m so thankful for them,” the pastor said. “We had more than 120 moms, dads and kids today, and 85 percent of the people in our worship service accepted my challenge to come back next week for our ‘Get In The Game’ Series that starts next Sunday.
“We also are celebrating 14 people in our worship service who accepted Jesus as their Savior,” Louviere continued in a Monday morning email. “More than half the people who came are brand new people!”
Louviere preached from Numbers 13 and 14. The title was “Are You in the Game?”
It was an either-or question, Louviere said: Are you following God’s exciting plans for your life to the promised land, or are you dying in the desert?
TIOGA – Aug. 8 was “a great day” at Faith Baptist Church in Tioga.
“It was thrilling and exciting and joyful to be a part of seeing six baptized,” emailed Pastor Clark Palmer to those on the church’s email list.
Faith Tioga, where about 130 people attend Sunday morning worship service, baptized 10 people over the last four weeks, Palmer said – six from VBS, a teen after youth camp, and adults who were motivated or prompted by the other baptisms to deal with their own lack of scriptural baptism, though they were longtime committed Christians.
Faith Tioga plans an all-church rummage sale for Saturday, Aug. 21. People can donate items for proceeds to go to the church’s World Mission Offering.
People also can have a table for their items for sale, with a percentage of the proceeds to the World Mission Offering in lieu of renting space.
METAIRIE – Two years ago the Celebration Congregation partnered with other Christians and Churches from the New Orleans region to prayer-walk through the Central City area of New Orleans.
“At that time, Central City was the most crime-filled, violence-prone area of our region,” wrote Pastor Dennis Watson in an Aug. 10 email. “During one of our monthly city-wide Pastors prayer gatherings, the Lord had spoken to us and communicated to us that He wanted us to prayer-walk through Central City. So, on Saturday, June 30, 2008, almost 1,000 people from our various churches showed up to begin what would become a several-week long prayer-walking effort.
“Nine months later, then-Chief of Police Warren Riley was meeting with our Pastor’s Coalition. He shared with us that in 2008 New Orleans was again the murder capital of the U.S., but that surprisingly the murder and violence rate had declined significantly in the last half of 2008, especially in the Central City area. One of our pastors said, ‘I know why the crime and violence rate went down so significantly in Central City in the last half of 2008. It’s because we prayer-walked through that area for a number of weeks.’ And Chief Riley responded, ‘Can I give you folks some other areas of the city to prayerwalk through in the coming months?’
“Chief Riley asked the pastors and churches to prayer-walk through the Treme area (where the Iberville Housing Development is still located) in 2009, and after several weeks of prayer-walking there, the crime and violence rates also declined. Now, in the summer of 2010, we are focused on prayer-walking through the Ninth Ward and other areas of our city. Already a group of pastors and churches have been prayer-walking through the Ninth Ward since Father’s Day Weekend. The Commander of the Ninth Ward Police District has said to the pastors, ‘I can’t believe the change that has happened in our community in this past month. It appears that the thugs and thieves are moving out since you folks have started prayerwalking through this area.’