Fellowship Church and Project Philip

Reaching Out with the Love of God in Christ

This fall is especially exciting for Fellowship Church because we are launching an evangelistic / outreach program called Project Philip.  Fellowship’s outreach committee has been hard at work planning and preparing for almost a year now!  And the church council of elders, deacons and pastors has given its blessing on the program.  Project Philip is an approach to evangelism taken from Acts chapter eight of the Bible which tells the story of Philip and the Ethiopian.  It’s an approach that takes into consideration the importance of prayer, openness to the Holy Spirit and courage to step out in faith.  And it’s a whole-church approach.

This is what Project Philip looks like here at Fellowship: We will be mailing out a booklet called “Freedom from Fear” to the southern half of our zip code (49307) on January 15, 2015 with the intention of doing it again in 2016.  This booklet which includes basic biblical information will also have information about how to find out more.  As the Spirit leads in a person’s life through the power of the Word of God and they want to know more they will then be put in touch with someone from our church.  Our discipleship person will then follow up with the request via phone, email, or letter and send a follow up booklet and keep in touch as the person desires.  We are thus coming alongside that person as the Spirit leads in order to help meet the person’s spiritual needs.  Here is the team approach that the outreach committee has decided to take:

  1. Leadership Team – Dennis Anderson is the point-person for this team which consists of the outreach committee and any others who wish to offer their administrative leadership skills to the project. 
  1. Prayer Team – Becky Patrick is the point-person for the prayer team.  Much work is needed in the area of prayer well before the mailing goes out.  Please see Becky’s announcement on the back of this page to see how you can get involved.
  1. Discipleship Team – Gregg Shewan is the point-person for the team that will be trained to receive the requests for more information and follow up with those community members.  Let Gregg know of your interest in coming alongside of those who are seeking to know and love the Lord.

Address labels will need to be filled out by hand and other tasks will need to be accomplished before and after the mailings this year and next. Please pray about and consider how you might be involved in Fellowship’s endeavor to share the love of God in Christ through God’s word in our own community.  And in all that we are doing and will do throughout the year may God be glorified and his kingdom advance powerfully in the name of Jesus!

As part of our preparation for Project Philip, the 40-day devotional book Why Pray? is being made available to the congregation and to the Ferris students. There will also be a few copies of the Why Pray? Listening Prayer Journalavailable. This journal is a supplement for the daily readings in Why Pray? and is a good resource for small group or family discussions.