Youth All-Nighter, Grant City, and Discipleship Cohort

Sunday morning, I had the joy of worshiping in my home church, Waterline in Fishers, where Pastor John and Danielle Freed are doing a great job leading their team forward. They’ve broken 280 in attendance the last two weeks and are ramping up for their Easter outreach to Saxony. They’re also aggressively forging ahead to partner with 5 church plants in the next 2 years. Yes, we’re celebrating every time a church multiplies!
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After the early service at Waterline, I drove on to Grant City Wesleyan Church for their worship service and then conducted a meeting with their LBA in review of Pastor Dan Heylmann’s upcoming vote. Pastor Dan brought an encouraging message from Philippians 3 and the LBA affirmed his continued service with the congregational vote scheduled for March 11. Grant City faces the same challenges as many rural churches in communities with declining populations. I’m grateful for the faithful way that Dan and Shannon are serving this congregation.
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Last week began with multiplication leaders from the Greater Ohio District, the Indiana South District and Crossroads District meeting at Cypress Wesleyan Church in Columbus, Ohio. Pastor Ken Murphy and his team were gracious hosts and the meeting focused on ways that our districts in the midwest could partner together to unleash, encourage and resource the emergence of more apostolic multipliers. The shaping of such a partnership will be a topic during our 2018 District Conference, June 23, at Marion College Wesleyan.
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​Monday evening, I met with Pastor Jeff Luedtke and the Fairmount Wesleyan Church LBA in the conference room at The Branch. The LBA enthusiastically affirmed Pastor Jeff’s leadership and the extended call. It is exciting to see the progress the church has made as they move from an inward to an outward focus on impacting their region.

Tuesday, I was in Indianapolis for a coaching conversation with Rev. Darrell Herring, supply pastor at Central Wesleyan Church. I met with Pastor Logan Westrick and the LBA at Tipton Ash Street Wesleyan. Pastor Logan’s ministry was warmly affirmed by the LBA and he’s still going strong at age 78! Pastor Logan and Nancy joined me for supper at a local restaurant and it was fun seeing them connect with community members.
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Wednesday morning, I was back in Indy to meet with Rev. Stephen Nelson, to share in coaching conversations with Pastor Mike Colaw (Indy Trinity) and then with Pastor Jim Weinmann (Indy Evanston Ave). While in Indy, I also dropped in on the denominational Church Planter Assessment Center led by Sarah Cochran. Other members of the assessment team included John & Danielle Freed, Lennaire Vaughn, Rob Tippey, Michael Hewitt, and Seth Bye. If you are interest in exploring church planting, check out our free pre-assessment tool at our district website: http://www.crossroadsdistrict.org/

​Rev. Scott Rhyno and Rev. Damian Williams invited me to join them for a supper meeting on Wednesday focused on raising up more Kingdom force multipliers from the marketplace. There are some exciting developments on this important front.

Thursday morning, I joined with Rev. Chris Williams to welcome Kevin Batman, General Treasurer, to meet with our Investment Committee. This team will be bringing a recommendation to our March DBA meeting.
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Thursday afternoon, Sherry and I hosted Rev. Jon Wiest and the Discipleship Cohort at Thornapple Lodge. The group shared lunch and then went to work sharing their learnings from studying "No Silver Bullet" by Daniel Im. You’ll be hearing more from this group as they prepare to host a district workshop on discipleship on October 1-2, 2018.

Friday morning, I met with our staff team in Marion. I’m grateful for the partnership of Rev. Chris Williams, Mrs. Roxene Lo, and Seth Bye as we work together to serve our growing team here in the Crossroads District. Friday evening, Sherry and I had the privilege of welcoming 7 of our pastoral couples from the Grant County team led by Pastor Jeff Luedtke. We had a delightful time of fellowship and meaningful time of prayer together.
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After the zone fellowship, Pastor Tony Bye and I made a quick trip to Fort Wayne to drop in on Rev. Lane Sander, District Youth President, and his amazing crew led by Pastor Andy Jellison who hosted more than 500 teens and more than 100 sponsors for our annual Crossroads District Youth All-Nighter! Pastor Michael Hewitt, Muncie Rising Hope, was the keynote speaker and the team reported dozens of spiritual decisions.
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​On Saturday morning, I dropped in on the StratOp weekend that Rev. Chris Williams was leading with Pastor Steve Martin at Sheridan Six Points Wesleyan Church and then stopped by Waterline Church on Saturday afternoon for their leadership event.

This week, Chris and I will be in Orlando with 400+ other Wesleyans at the Exponential Conference. Roxene and Seth will be holding down the fort while we’re gone.

Some of the main sessions of Exponential will be streaming live from this site: http://live.exponential.org/

Keep on making a difference in the only cause that counts for eternity!

Your servant in Christ,
Mark Gorveatte