Congregational Connection Update
- Jonathan Moore
- May 1
- 3 min read
Ahavat Yeshua
Jerusalem
Testimony: We are blessed to see our young people grow up and thrive. Last month, we had the pleasure to watch a daughter of our congregation, Rebekkah and her husband, Levi, lead a worship night dedicated to their new album – It Begins. We are blessed to see them succeed and influence the younger generation to be passionate about worship and serving the Lord!
Prayer Requests! (please take a moment to pray)
Pray for the new children’s director to have multiplied energy as she is also the mother of 6 small children!
Pray for finances as we are investing into this new director, new curriculum, new discipleship activities, and even new equipment!
Pray for children’s lives to be impacted as we have 5 kids getting baptized this month and another 4-5 a few months later.
Building Up v. Tearing Down:
On the face of things, we would think that we always want to build up and never tear down. But Ecclesiastes 3:1-3 says, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build…”
If something is built poorly, or a building is condemned, then you have to tear it down. But it’s also important to note that we mostly want to plant, heal, and build. We definitely don’t want our main focus to be tearing down, uprooting, and killing!
As a congregation, we spend most of our time discipling, worshipping, praying for healing and generally building people up. I would say almost 95% of our energy is spent on these activities. But there are times when we need to cast out demons, rebuke sin, and tear down the lies of the enemy.
In today’s globally-networked Body of Messiah, we can easily find ourselves doing these same “congregational activities” on a broader scale. We are discipling the nations through online teachings, livestreaming worship, and sending prayer requests on social media. Praise God! But as we’ve seen from legacy and social media, good and evil can be skewed. Algorithms naturally push us to see more of the aggravating content that gets us furious enough to type out a lengthy diatribe against the XYZ situation. The issue is that even if there is righteousness to our anger, we must be focused on building up – much more than tearing down.
In business school they teach the 80/20 Pareto Principle. Let’s spend 80% or more of our time building up and 20% or less tearing down. Let’s ensure we are mostly helping mothers who want to keep their babies, and much less waving signs to tear down evil clinics. Let’s ensure we are mostly building up congregations and praying strength and wisdom into our pastors and much less tearing down false teachings.
There is a time and season for everything, but let’s use the vast majority of our time and energy birthing, planting, healing, and building up!
Congregational News
Our youth group went to a conference for 7th and 8th graders and won first place in a team competition of Israeli “dodgeball”!
We had two circumcisions and dedicated three babies over the past month!
Pursuing transparency and inclusiveness, we held our annual congregational business meeting where we presented the activities from 2024 and plans for 2025 including budgets. People gave great feedback. Focus for 2025: Homegroups!
