We had a great mid-week service Wednesday with church planter Mark Irmler presenting his work and preaching. It was encouraging to us all to see a man of 55 willing to enter upon the vigorous work of starting all over and planting an independent Baptist church where there was not one before. He pointed out research which demonstrated that California has only one independent Baptist church like ours per every 147,000 people! There are more Muslim Mosques in the state than independent Baptist churches. There are only 4 small independent Baptist churches in the entire Los Angeles area of some 13 million people, while in that same area, there are now 48 Muslim Mosques. With that great need to see more churches like ours planted across America, we look forward to going back to the National Church Planting Conference at Heartland Baptist Bible College this week. Brother Ryan is carrying back about $1,000.00 raised by the Teens of Faith class for helping church planting pastors and their families as they get new works started. Our Christmas offering was dedicated to this objective as well, and so I am privileged to carry back almost $3,000.00 to be given out to helping meet those needs as well! Thanks to all of you who are involved in helping to see good churches springing up across a spiritually needy land.
-from January 13, 2013 bulletin