Freedom Christian Fellowship

There are many dating and marriage guides available today, and a lot of them are really excellent.  Many people who need a marriage guide will not take the time to read through one however.  We have condensed what we believer are some of the most basic and important principles about finding and keeping a mate into a single short booklet which you can download at any time.  We will continue to update with time.  Marriage Manual

A number of exciting things are happening with our church family right now.   We now have a definite end date to our time in the ministry house — April 30th.    This culminates a major learning process for us where we have learned how to help people take responsibility for their freedom.

Brad is marrying his Cincinnati sweetheart Becca Wickert on March 20th and they will be living just a stones throw away from Will’s house where we are meeting.   Joel and Brandon also have plans to get an apartment in the same complex. We are confident that this shift in the center of gravity making us all closer is going to create a lot of momentum.   Brad is in the final round of an interview process for a job that would be a closer and more flexible as well.

Joel continues to walk in victory from the major breakthrough he’s had in the last 6 months and has been delivering a series of powerful messages including divine health, heart evangelism, and now a series on victory over the devil.

Will finished and published the our book “Free at Last” and it is now available for sale on Amazon.   We are planning a series of Freedom Seminars which will allow us to take the message on the road.   We will first have the seminar here, possibly followed by ones in Bastrop, LA; Duluth, MN; and John G. Lake Ministries in Colorado.

Jaime has been working very hard to leverage her classical piano skills into worship leadership.   Our first worship night was last Sunday and it was really great!   At the same time, we’ve had our first consistent local members start to come and it has been exciting as they tell others and also experience freedom through the ministry that they were unable to find elsewhere.

Perhaps most importantly we are in the process of launching a mission organization.  Joel is now in the planning stage with another friend about doing an initial trip into a remote and dangerous area.  We are targeting this trip for June.    At the same time, we want to launch a business which will support missionary activity year round.  Instead of living on nothing and constantly raising support, the vision of our church is that the local leadership be volunteers, and a key part of the budget go to missions.   In addition, we are in the planning phase for starting a local business.  This will support the flexibility needed by missionaries to have the money they need to live on an ongoing basis.

We want to take a minute to let everyone who has supported us know how much we appreciate you your heartfelt prayers and the financial support you have given to us.  We consider this a sacred trust and express our sincerest gratitude to you

2009 was our first year of ministry as a team and was a major year of growth.  More than anything else we felt the Lord establish us in a shared set of values and vision together, even as we touched people with the Gospel.

We began the year with an emphasis on recovery ministry, first in a small house, and eventually even making a personal offer to buy a small apartment complex.   The process of running the house led us all through significant moments of growth and significant revelations about the freedom process.

We have also decided to shift our focus from running a house to an outreach based model which will allow us to work with more people and at the pace which they themselves are ready to grow.   We are still exploring we are currently discussing starting a business and gearing up to move into a facility.

We ministered to a number of different people this year.  Perhaps the highlight of our evangelistic outreach this year when one of the young men in the recovery program reached out to man on the bus who was rolling a joint and brought him to church.  We believe that seeing those we help turn around and reach others for Christ is the true fulfillment of the Gospel.  Many others, including several drug dealers and prostitutes, have not only heard, but had serious encounters with the Gospel through our ministry this year.  One man even turned himself into the police because he came under conviction after we worked with him

Pastoral counseling has emerged as a major part of our ministry and we have been called upon repeatedly to minister to some very difficult cases, including several failing marriages, people hearing voices, and those with lifelong problems.  These experiences have culminated in a book that we plan to self-publish early this year called “Free At Last.”  It is a short guide encapsulating many of the things we have learned this year and which we believe will be a blessing to those who can’t find their way to personal freedom.  We plan to send you, our supporters, a complimentary copy when it is printed.

Although we have had many remarkable encounters, what is most important to us is that we bear fruit which remains as we reach out to a lost generation.   For this reason we rejoice over the two men who stuck it out in the program as we are seeing their lives turn around and they in turn become blessings to others.

Because of your generosity and a conservative spending strategy we start a new year with significant financial resources to expand and continue this mission.  Thank you for being partners with us in the harvest of God.

Just a quick update to let everyone know that you can now subscribe to our Bible School Audio, Message Audio, and Reading Recommendations in addition to the ministry updates you are already receiving.  Check under the “Email Subscriptions” section on the website:  http://www.cincinnatifreedom.org

On the ministry side, I’d like to let everyone know that we did get into a new house for the ministry.   We have had to do a lot of things to make the house livable, but it is more than double the size of our old house at a lower price.   We are currently having a bit of a “summer break” while the team recharges.    Blessings to everyone.

A number of  important things have happened since our last update.   Brad finally connected with a job.    Just like the last time, this came in direct answer to us going before God in prayer.   He got to the final round at one place and was the preferred candidate until someone with a “perfect resume” parachuted in and took it.  It was at that point that we decided we needed prayer to get this breakthrough, and as soon as the prayer started, a whole series of opportunities started coming leading to the new role.  That was a breakthrough for the ministry because Brad’s employment is an important part of the financial provision for the ministry in this season.

We took some new people into the program, but lost them.  This was a disappointment to us.  We always reflect “what could we have done better.”  It also led to God searching my heart about really putting concern for each individual ahead of any kind of grand master vision.  There was one moment when things seemed so full and crowded that we would have to get a bigger house immediately so we put an offer in on an apartment complex, and then were looking at living in a big house in a slightly rougher part of town.   Ultimately we did not feel like either of these was the right option, but the process helped us a lot in clarifying our values and team dynamics.

Joel’s dad came down and did some nice ministry on the father’s heart, and also took our deliverance process back to Duluth with a lot of excitement.  He has been trying it out and giving us feedback.   In addition we had some great follow up ministry in Washington, Indiana.    One of the guys who received ministry on our recent trip to Evansville was so impacted that he started reaching out to basically everyone around him.   This led to us going out to his house in Washington twice in the past week to minister to these people.   One drug dealer got down on his knees to surrender to God, and another one was directly confronted in his own house!   Jaime was also able to get involved and do some ministry time with a woman who was later filled with the Holy Spirit.    This activity was a major confirmation for us because it showed that not only were people getting real help, but that our philosophy of following the need really does work.   Someone who gets ministry, then wants others to get the same ministry, and it creates a chain reaction.

This is leading us to see new avenues of ministry including women’s ministry, the remote ministry in Washington, and Duluth.    Our original guys gain a little maturity each week, which is encouraging me that a harvest is coming.   We were realizing that once people are not in a crisis in anymore, only then do they have a real choice to surrender all to God.   This led us to give a series of messages on dying to self.   One of the biggest payoffs of all of this work  was seeing one of our guys get involved in the action that God was doing in Washington.     I am looking forward to the summer, as I hope it will mean the arrival of Craig and Rachel, as well as some potential new team members we have been praying about.

Although we had some ideas of what we wanted to do when we moved here, but as we pursue Him and seek to meet the needs of the hungry, our identity in the Lord is increasingly becoming clear. Instead of starting with a vision, the vision is coming forth from pursuing God’s Kingdom. There is a lot of freedom in this. The job of the leadership team is to ride the wave of the Lord’s direction instead of trying to get God to operate where we have a vision. The more we satisfy the hungry, the more hungry people show up. That’s real Jesus ministry.

Because we want to see guys succeed in the program, we do a deliverance process up front when they arrive in order to cut as many of Satan’s cords as possible. It works! One of our guys actually saw the devil leave him. We only saw the fruit! We have our own homegrown process, which was originally based on Neil Anderson’s steps to freedom and we have progressively been refining it to be more effective and incorporate the learnings from each session. Most recently we added a diagnostic tool to help discern exactly where someone is in terms of their spiritual health and what areas need immediate ministry most.

I am now realizing that deliverance is going to be a major part of our ministry. In order to be a people of freedom, we have to directly confront the demonic forces which hold people back. We’re seeing real fruit from this process, and it appears that we are going to be needing a larger house much sooner than we thought. Personal freedom will eventually lead to corporate freedom. I believe there is an awesome power to be unleashed through a people with corporate freedom.

Praise God that Craig and his wife Rachel have decided that they are called to move here with us and join us in the work! We ask that you pray Craig would find a job in this economic environment, and also that Brad would find a new position as well.

The past two months since our last update, have been an intense time.   Joel, Brad and I have had opportunities to grow together in the Lord, both on a personal level and also as a team.   This has led to some wonderful and refreshing moments.

Our first meeting with more than just the leadership team was memorable.  Our friends David and Melanie from Paving the Way world missions were here in January at the same time that we took in our first member of the program.   We played the Jesus Culture DVD with our new projector and sound system in the basement.   The presence of the Spirit was very strong in the meeting leading to a powerful message from Joel’s heart as well as an almost tangible intensity at one point.

This encouraged my heart deeply because it showed me that if men will band together to seek God wholeheartedly the Spirit of the Lord will manifest in a special way — that together we can bring a greater anointing than any one individual.   Rather than seeking God intensely almost alone in the midst of a larger body, we are seeking intensely together.   All of us are beginning to see the firstfruits of this kind of relationship in our lives.  Joel gave a testimony of being freed from rejection last week, the Lord has dealt with lust in my heart in a deeper way than I remember, and Brad has also felt and ease in entering the Spirit.  Jaime has even had a signficant breakthrough against a stomach problem she has had all her life.

I find myself  coming to worship hungry for and believing in God in a way that never remember in a consistent way.  Instead of working it up,  our collective hunger for God seems to leap right out of me as I reach out to God.    I feel that we are drawing near to God and away from the world.   This has caused a jealousy for God to be released in my heart — being with a group of guys who want to keep it pure is worth more than any church empire we could ever build.   I feel that deep encounters with God are near at hand and that one day on this path we will know his intimacy among us in the way that we lie awake in our beds dreaming about.

Another friend, Craig, came and visited us, and ministered a word about our identity in Christ.   His pastoral gifting and ministry were a real blessing to the entire team.   Craig has played a major part in helping us minister to our first program participant and each step forward with him has been a true miracle.    God has used the situation to teach us some important lessons and we feel that we are ready as a team to embark on the second phase of this ministry, which may have us welcoming 3 more guys in the next two weeks.   As we work with them, we believe God will turn ashes into beauty.    We are also beginning to see that our message of freedom itself is liberating, as people are touched by a church model that is built from the ground up around people.

We are very excited that our third core team member, Joel has arrived here with us. If the past four month has been a time of settling and developing vision, the coming year promises to be a time of foundations.  I believe that each person who joins the team has to wrestle through a process not only to decide to come, but to actually get established here.  Once established each person is “like a tree firmly planted by streams of water” (Psalm 1:3)

We believe a major part of what we are supposed to be doing is to “open doors” for others. We are supposed to provide opportunity for those who are in situations from which they do not see an easy way out. This means people who are looking for doors to ministry, people in recovery and looking for a door to wholeness, people who are not happy in the world, and want a way out.

Brad and I have wrestled through the structures and dynamics that will make this a reality and not a theory, and we are still learning.   In some ways it feels like God is having to literally reprogram natural ways of thinking into God-ways of thinking, much in the same way He has to do with faith versus works.   Building life giving structures is not natural… it’s supernatural!

We’re very excited to be bringing the first participant of  our 3/4 house program in at the end of the month.    As we walk, God goes ahead of us lighting the path.

We’ve officially been in Cincinnati two months now. It has been a great time for my family personally, as well as one of working out what we are called by God to do. We bought the house here completely by faith, just on the witness in our hearts that this was the house for us, and the knowledge that it fit all of our criteria. The location has turned out to be fantastic, and the neighborhood very family friendly.

Brad and I have been working through all of the papers and processes we need in order to be a real official ministry, accept donations, etc. In the meantime, we’ve been holding a weekly worship service in the basement and God has been speaking to us more about our mission and strategy– both Brad and Jaime gave messages about what it would take to bring freedom to people.