A life changing Sunday is approaching

The Great Commission in Matthew tells us that we need to go into all the world with the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This Sunday we have the great privilege to have missionary Steve Shoop (check out his facebook by clicking on his name) with us. He is the director of an amazing ministry called Engage. Taken from the website www.engagemylife.com, this is how he explains this worldwide ministry:

Engage International is an Assemblies of God World Missions program for college-aged students. It is designed to give students the opportunity to respond to the call of God in their lives.

This is accomplished by immersing students into a new culture and by providing hands-on training. Engage students will have the opportunity to develop lifetime ministry goals, working together with career missionaries and assisting national pastors.

The mission of Engage is to provide opportunities for students to pursue ministry experience while acquiring higher education. It seeks to fulfill that mission by:

• Providing regionally accredited education through partner schools.
• Creating cross-cultural ministry experiences on the mission field.
• Mentoring students to be Christ-followers.
• Collaborating with national churches.

New Hope, we have a great chance to partner with this ministry. Please invite any young person who is even remotely interested in missions work to be at New Hope on Sunday. Visit the Engage website, have a look around and let's be in prayer for a life changing Sunday!

Looking forward to seeing you at 10am Sunday morning. Come prepared to be blessed and be able to bless Pastor Steve with an offering.

Bible Reading Plan

"A church that reads together stays together." Ok, that saying has been used for many topics. My 6th grade band leader used to say, "a band that taps together stays together." Well, I don't play trombone anymore, but the logic behind it still sticks. Since we are talking about Church unity in Ephesians 4, I know that reading God's Word together will help us stay together.

New Hope, and anyone else who wants to join in, will be starting a new Bible reading plan this Sunday. Here is how it works. We will be using an online Bible reading plan that may work for many of you. I know that several of you already use YouVersion on your phone, ipod, or on your computer. This is a great tool to have the Bible with you where ever you go. You Version offers many Bible reading plans to choose from. Ones that will take you through the Bible in a year to an array of different topics. These daily reading plans are tracked on a calendar for you to make sure you don't forget where you are. You can have the plan emailed to you each day or even put the app on your mobile device. If you want, you can even share with your facebook crowd that you what you read that day or just the occasional verse that may have jumped out at you during the day. You can even decide which of the many versions of the Bible you would like to read. If you need to brush up on your Hungarian, they have that available. So, go to You Version and start a FREE account with them if you haven't already. It's super easy and I think you will enjoy having the usage of this tool.

I know that for some of you holding the actual leather bound Bible in your hands is much easier and more enjoyable, so to help you with that we will have paper copies of the reading plan available to you at New Hope this week.

The reading plan this time will be on Prayer. A very important topic. These readings are fairly short and will cover prayers from Jesus, the apostles, and kings of the Old Testament. As we read these inspired words of God, we need to be asking ourselves how our prayers match the Biblical example we are reading. Learning how to pray in a godly manner is vital to our walk with Jesus. Click HERE to find this reading plan.

We will also be starting a facebook group (for those who don't facebook...come on!) so we can leave our thoughts to each days readings. Maybe you have a question or comment. Maybe just need to have us pray with you on something. Whatever it is, let's use this as one more way to encourage each other in love and good deeds. If you want to leave comments at the bottom of this post in regards to your reading, that works as well. Let's share with each other what we are reading and thinking. This is one more way to Connect with God's family.

I love you guys and I look forward to seeing you Sunday at 10am as we start our reading plan and as we continue in our understanding of Ephesians.

Bearing His torch

P. Eldon