We give thanks and praise to our God who, for His own glory, uses broken vessels to shine forth the grace of the gospel to a lost and darkened world. 

On Sunday February 26 Northeast Community Church held a combined worship service where six people from the Albanian community, seven from the Chinese, and five from the English were received into membership, five of which were baptized!  What a joyful day it was! 

If you were there you would have heard songs of praise sung, Scripture read, and prayers offered in each of those languages.  One highlight was singing the great hymn penned by John Newton, Amazing Grace, in all three languages simultaneously.  A taste of heaven!  The elder who held the baptismal bowl remarked afterwards, “One of the newly baptized members was literally beaming with joy.”

Some of the precious souls who were received have been exposed to the gospel for several years, others just this past year, five came through our ESL ministry and the rest through personal ministry. The ages range from seven to seventy!  This will give you just a small sampling of the diversity of those being reached through this ministry.  There is also a group of individuals who come regularly but have yet to come to faith in Christ.  We continue to plant and water trusting in our God to give the growth!

As we entered our eighth year of ministry in Northeast Philadelphia we recast our vision:

Unified to do God’s will in His strength for His glory, making mature followers of Christ, revived and equipped to serve one another and reach the lost. 

We have set as goals for 2017 growth in the two areas that seem to be the first to go in every church: prayer and evangelism.  By the grace of God, we have already experienced growth in our corporate prayer life and have committed ourselves to a church-wide Easter outreach to our immediate neighbors.  Our Arabic outreach has increased to weekly meetings, alternating between meeting in homes and in our building.  For all of this, we give thanks and praise to our God who, for His own glory, uses broken vessels to shine forth the grace of the gospel to a lost and darkened world. 

We are thankful for the continued prayer and financial support we receive from churches like Tenth and we pray God’s richest blessings on Tenth’s congregation and ministry in the midst of these dark and troubled times.