Missions

Lord, we thank you so much for it's time for us to just fellowship together. thank you, Lord, for, Tom and his brothers just to be able to come out and, to worship you and to share what's going on around the world. we thank you, Lord, that we're, we're part of your kingdom. This is about your will and your kingdom being done as we've been learning in our sermons.

It's not about our will and our kingdom. We thank you, Lord. just for Tom and his family and just blessing them and, and leading them to Rugby England, we pray, Father, Lord, that you would just, continue to grow that ministry. We pray that you would instruct us this morning both in Sunday school and during the, the sermon.

And just thank you so much that we can have fellowship, Lord, together in Christ's name we pray. Amen. Let's all give a cornerstone welcome to Pastor Tom McConnell. Thanks, man.

Thanks. Thanks, bye. Well, thank you for the opportunity to be with you and to share with you a little bit about what the Lord's doing in the United Kingdom. As Pastor Mike said, my name's Tom McConnell and we, we go back and you started in '93, we started it together 96.

OK. So 25 years ago, this coming autumn, I started as a freshman at the Master seminary and walked into my Hebrew class. And they said we have a new professor of Hebrew. He's a recent graduate of the master seminary, straight A average, and he's gonna be your Hebrew professor and he came in the room and said that introductions are necessary due to the sorry state of the audience.

And never forgotten that Pastor Milton. I'm not sure if you're quoting Aristotle or somebody else, but that was when I met your pastor, Pastor Milton and we, we began our journey through the master seminary in '93. It was a couple of years later, Mike and I met. in classes and, and, and the rest is history.

Mike's been here with you, Pastor Milton, and the Lord has led my wife, Kathy, and, and our five children who are unable to be here, with us this morning. They're visiting mom and dad in the Saint Louis area, and enjoying some respite, from, from the field. I want to tell you a little bit about, what the Lord is doing at least in our small part of, Western Europe. in England, and, then if I, if I can, that's really helpful to have that clock there, by the way, up on that back screen.

When I preach, the clock is behind me and I can't see it, in our school hall, but everyone else can in the, in the church. So, if we, if we have time, I, I've brought two brothers from our ministry, in rugby, my Portuguese brothers who've been saved, 56 years ago. And if we have time, we'd love for you to hear their testimonies about how the Lord saved them and the burden on their heart to reach their people on the island of Madeira. So this is my family, as you can see, my wife Kathy there, my eldest son on the far left is Joshua.

Next to him is Josiah, then we have Jonathan on this side, my older daughter Joy, and our youngest is Julia. We've been Grace Community Church missionaries since 2003. And in 2003, the elders of Grace Community Church approached, approached myself and my wife about, participating in an experiment in the United Kingdom. I was getting ready to graduate from the seminary and planning to go back home, which is what they train you to do, which home for me is, northern New Jersey, North Central New Jersey, but we, submitted to the elders, and their recruitment and, agreed to go over, to the United Kingdom.

Now, the United Kingdom is made up of 44 separate countries. How many of the difference between Great Britain and the United Kingdom? Anyone know the difference? What's the difference between Great Britain and the United Kingdom?

Great Britain Basically OK. Yeah of the major Scotland a Wales was Tribal OK, yes, you're, more detail than, than what I was anticipating to say, so, I'm gonna ask you, for more. to be one. Yes.

combined Scotland's flag. Mhm. That's right. They are their own separate country.

Great Britain is the island on the right. And when you add Northern Ireland to those other three countries, you have the United Kingdom. OK, so if you're, if you want to say we're going to go to Great Britain, it means you're gonna go to this island. If you want to say we're part of the United Kingdom, it's just that you added, Northern Ireland on, on the right.

Now you notice Ireland and Northern Ireland, two separate countries. They're under 22 different governments. The North is under the, the pound, the British pound, and the republic is under the euro. And that the Irish, which, who are predominantly Catholic in the South, and, and, and the Irish, you would never call them the Irish in the north, they want to be known as the British and Saint Patty's Day, when is that?

Is that sometime soon coming? Oh, so it's coming up and, there's a story to tell you. Well, it was Alistair Beggs who said that the UK is made up of four groups of people. there are the, there are the Welsh who pray on their knees and also on their neighbors.

There are the, there are the, the, the Scots who keep the Sabbath and everything else they can get their hands on. There are the Irish who don't know what they want, but they're willing to fight to the death for it. And there are the English who regard themselves as a self-made nation, thus relieving the Almighty of a great responsibility. So any of you Irish, McConnell, that's me, Irish, Scottish, so, any of you want to admit that, any English here?

No? Any Welsh? OK. OK.

So we, we know who we have with us. and, and I found over the last 15 years that that caricature is, is, is, there's a lot of, culturally is pretty accurate. Great Britain and England particularly, my wife and I started off by going to, for 2 years ministering, in a small village in Northern Ireland. So if I were to go back, if you look on the right side of near the D in Ireland, if you go all the way over to the end, to the end, the western side.

that's where we ministered in a little village called Scion Mills. just moments, about 20 minutes before I was going to preach for the first time on my pilot trip, my wife and, two week old son were back in America. They told me, they said, Pastor, we just want you to know that our church was blown up twice in, in the mid 80s by the IRA. And so, that's not what I wanted to hear preaching for the first time in that church and began to shake like a leaf in the autumn wind.

And ask the Lord to help me preach the best message I've ever preached. So we, we lived through that by God's grace. They basically the IRA was targeting the police station across the street when the C4 went off and in the truck blew up the police station, but it also raised the roof on the church. So they weren't targeting us.

We were just collateral damage. after two years in Northern Ireland, we were called to Pastor Church in Rugby there. If you'll notice just north of London. I, London is obviously a much bigger place than rugby, but we want, we want to emphasize rugby's importance, it's strategic strategic importance.

it doesn't get more centrally located than rugby. rugby falls geographically between the East Midlands and the West Midlands, and in between the East Midlands and the West Midlands is our town called Rugby. It is the town where the game rugby started at the local school and, and for which it is famous. it's, in the heart of England.

We like to say that we're ministering to the heart, in the heart of England. England, as, is known for its great history. We have the tower, you have Wycliffe's Church there, on the right where John Whitcliffe, Morning Star of the Reformation, ministered and died in 1384. the great history of the preachers, the great preachers John Wycliffe, Knox, Bunyan, Wesleys, and, Whitfield and, and many others like Spurgeon and, and the last great preacher, of the United Kingdom, Doctor Martin Lloyd Jones., England also as the place, the birthplace of modern day missionary movement under the father of the modern-day missionary movement, William Carey, who was the great pioneer missionary, and if, how many of you have read, Carey's biography by Carey?

it's one of the best books that you can read on mission. It's one of my top 3 books in my 3000 volume library. So I highly recommend it. It's well worth it.

It's an easy read. It reads very quickly. I have a really slow reading speed, but it's a, it's a tremendous book and Carry, is, the father of modern day missions, that's what he's called. So England is, it's past is, is, is renowned.

But that's the England of the past. And if you think about the England and the United Kingdom of today. This is Britain today. Your God is imaginary.

This is them outside of parliament. Atheism UK challenging religious. It's just a snapshot of what Britain is like today. You can, maybe you can make it out, but, Richard Dawkins, the, the notable atheist, he took out these adverts on, the buses.

There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life. That's from Richard. Dawkins, the notable atheist. He was scheduled to debate a well-known Christian at a festival and Dawkins didn't show up.

And so the festival people, the Christians at the festival decided to take out their own ad on other buses. I don't have the slide, but they said there's probably no Dawkins now just go and enjoy the festival. So a little saber rattling there between Dawkins and and the great apologist. This is a relevant picture to see what the churches looked like.

Some of the churches, a lot of the churches look like, churches that were once filled to capacity and overflowing under great biblical gospel preaching are now empty and And now we have the rise of Islam and and and so many Muslim people are looking for these churches to close so that they can convert them into mosques, places where the gospel was once heralded. Not far, of course you've heard of the Paris terror attacks and They called Brom before attack. Now Brom is short for, that refers to someone who's from Birmingham.

If you're from Birmingham, the second largest city in England, in the United Kingdom, with a million people, then you're called a Brummie.

And so they rang. These terrorists rang someone in Birmingham. Well, Birmingham with a million people has the second largest Muslim population in the entire UK. London has the first, with between 6 million to 13 million people, not all.

Muslims, but, what happens is, is when they come in from those countries, they settle in London, realize how expensive it is and how impossible it is to provide for your family. So they move up north where it's a bit cheaper to a place called Birmingham and they've settled there in Birmingham. That's about 40 minute drive from where we're located. We live in Rugby, in the shadow of Birmingham and Coventry.

I'm not going to take time to look at the, at the details of the population. I want you to see this picture. this is a, this is a, an advert, in our town, where some construction is going on and they want to let everyone know that they're putting a new face on an old town, the town of rugby. and, and they said they're regenerating rugby.

And notice how they're regenerating rugby through new homes, through employment, education, and leisure and the retail parks. This is how the secular world is regenerating rugby and when I saw that I said, wow, we, there's a bit of competition going on between their regenerating rugby and our desire to see rugby regenerated. And, and that's where our church comes in. We're with, 5 years ago, we started a church called Grace Bible Church Rugby.

the a lady in our church, created our logo for us, with the image of Psalm one. We wanted, we wanted to, we wanted to be part of disciple preaching the gospel and, and being a church filled with people who were like Psalm one people, planted near the rivers and, and so this is, this is our, our visual aid here. I'm joined by my fellow elder Tim Atkins and his wife. You can see our, our two wives there.

We did have 3 elders. We sent one of our elders who was a TMS grad, to the village next to us, to assume the pastorate. And the takeover for a man who, an elderly man who was declining in health and needed to retire. So our church, our small church, our church plant of 5 years, has, has two elders, myself being one of them.

We meet in a school, we don't, can't afford our own building. We're 5 years old. This is the school, it's a C of E school, junior school called the Church of England school, and they let us hire out the facilities. It's very unusual to have off-street parking.

A lot of times you have to park on the street, and that could be a pain with the with the parking wardens and, and, and paying for parking, but the Lord has really blessed us with a, a, a suitable place. Our church, we're 5 years old, as I said. one of the unique features of our church is that we are not a white Anglo church, although we're in England, in the heart of England. As a foreigner myself and I preach, it seems as if we've become a magnet for other foreigners who've come from all over Western Europe.

With the EU, people can just come from Romania, they can come from Poland, they can come from anywhere in the EU, and we have really an international church. We have probably about 50 adults now, and we probably have between 12 and 14 different nationalities. and then if you add on top of that our 35 children, you, when everyone's there, you get a picture about what our churches, our church is like. It's not a mega church, but the average British evangelical church is between 15 and 25 members.

That's complete. Mostly gray heads. There are exceptions like our sister church. Called Grace Life London has about 200 people, mostly young families, but obviously they have a, a, a, a greater footfall there in the London area.

You can see we have Filipino on the left, friends of ours, South African in the middle, Northern Irish, on the side. There's my beautiful wife who I haven't seen for 10 days. Has it been 10 days? I'm gonna, it's gonna be another 2 weeks before I see her and the kids.

There she is. We have Filipinos, Americans, British, and Romanian, our children., which is unusual. we have people, elderly people visit our church and say, wow, you have young people in your church. And for 7.5 years I pastored an elderly congregation, my wife and myself and our 5 children.

We were the youngest, people in, in the, in the church, and mostly because they weren't reaching the next generation. they, they were trapped in their tradition. And, and so we would have a Christmas time celebration and we're rejoicing over something like this, to meet in a hall. They call it a hall, you would call it a gymnasium and, and the Lord has blessed our, our outreach and, and the Lord continues to add people to our church.

In a church plant like ours, we have to set up every week and we have to unset or pack up every week. So the kids are involved rolling up the, you have a beautiful facility here and, and maybe one day the Lord will provide us a, a place of our own so that we can do, have more frequent ministry, but this is everyone getting involved on a Sunday morning. My brothers here, my Portuguese brothers, they lead the helps team, that's the set up team. all of us are involved, so Mike, the reason, the real reason why I'm, I was late today is because Mike invited me to play music and worship in the men's room, didn't you, Mike?

I, I, I asked him if I can, if we can sing a special together and you invited me. There's a special music at 8:30 in the men's room, and so did, did they not know that? No, they didn't. OK, I'm sorry.

I didn't mean to put you on the spot with that, but I know 5 chords on the guitar and I lead worship at our little, little church plant. I brought my guitar just in case you needed a backup and we can maybe do something over lunch. And my son's there in the back, he knows and loves Christ and that's him learning how to use gifts and skills to serve the Lord. My wife plays the piano.

and then preaching, as you can see just in, just in our hall is when we call ourselves Grace Bible Church rugby, every word in our name is important to us. So grace is, is our name because we want people to know about the grace of God through the gospel that we're a Bible church, that when you come to our church, the word of God is going to be opened, it's going to be read, it's going to be illustrated, explained and applied. And that we, that we're a church, because we want people to know that we're a church.

We meet in a school and, and for some people that's that's unusual because they see a church as just being a building with a steeple and that we're in rugby, obviously that's our, that's our town.

Now we have some unusual opportunities in the United Kingdom that you don't have here in the United States or at least not that I know of. But to go into the public school system and to be able to open the Bible to children, particularly because the British government has requirements, what they call RE requirements, religious education requirements, where they have to bring in Muslims to teach the Islamic faith, they have to bring in Catholics to teach the Catholic faith, Protestants of all sorts they bring in because they have Have to expose children to as much religion as they can and in a, in a fair a way as possible.

So we've been invited to the very school that we hire out on a Sunday, back to that school by the head teacher to hold assemblies. Now this is a, a rare thing for me because it's not my primary gift of speaking to children.

in fact, normally they have someone else speak and my wife and I will do the music. but this is us with 400 kids. You can see us there, in the back singing, singing songs, children's songs that are filled with scripture, and, me being able to open the Bible in a public school. Can you imagine that, pastor?

Being able to open the Bible to 400 kids with staff and just tell them the gospel? We have, if you're gifted in children's ministry and are gospel preacher, there's great opportunity for you in, we have what, 1520 schools in rugby alone. You can go to all of those schools on a reoccurring they, they'll have you in a couple 23 times a year. And be able, you can just share flannel graph, you can do boards, you can do music and you can open the Bible freely and unashamed.

There, there, you need to have wisdom and you need to be careful on certain subjects, but you have freedom to declare the gospel in a positive way. And so, these are, these are amazing things. we, we are a church, we, we here around the Lord's table together. We have outreaches.

This is an old picture from an outreach from the first year, year and a half, a football outreach. You throw a soccer ball down on the ground, in England and people, kids will come from, anywhere and, and you'll be able to talk with them, have some, have some matches, be able to talk about the gospel. this is a recent picture from our men's discipleship. When I was, when I went to the master seminary, disciples.

Discipleship was a real important aspect of the master seminary and I know every institution grows and changes and they're trying to continue that that emphasis. and in recent years they've asked me to come back and speak in chapel and the way the student body president put it to me was, I don't think we have discipleship at Master seminary like you had it in '93. And I said, really, what does it look like? And he told me.

And so they had a whole series on discipleship a few years ago and But discipleship is something that was drilled into me at the master seminary, something that I loved, the 2 Timothy 2:2 model and it's marked, it's marked my ministry, since 1993 onward. The things that you've, learned from me in the presence of many witnesses, these entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. And for us, this is, this group of men meets, once a month, and we're going through our sufficiency in Christ and Older book by John MacArthur, but it seems just as relevant today, with the, the sufficiency of scripture.

So that's just, our, our group of men that we're meeting.

We've had other people come to the United Kingdom on short term missions trips to help us. You might recognize this pastor, Pastor Steve Schwartz, and his wife Sylvia. He's the pastor of Grace Bible Church of Bakersfield, a TMS graduate and a supporter of ours. You might recognize.

at least the, the man on the left, Bill, Pastor Bill Shannon from Grace Community Church. He heads up the, he's an elder at Grace Community Church, our sending church, and, and he's come over and, and done biblical counseling, sessions and so forth at our church. The man on the right is a NASA scientist, who's a member at, at, at Grace. You might recognize Doctor Keith Essex.

He teaches Old Testament studies at the Master seminary. He's been to our church and a number of other. People. Now I put this slide up here for you to see, even though it's dated back to 2016 for two reasons.

I put it up. Number one, we had a baptism service. Now we, we don't own our own building and whenever people present themselves to be baptized, we have a baptism class. Perhaps you have something similar, and we, there's a church up the street with whom we're friendly who opens up their church to us and allows us to use their facilities, their, their baptist baptism pool.

And on this particular day, we had a baptism followed by membership Sunday. Not just any membership Sunday, but our very first membership Sunday. Three years after starting the church, we were able to be recognized by the UK government as a legitimate church and charity, and we received our first official members on this service. And that's why I show you this slide.

it was a, it was a great, what we might say a great red letter day. It was well attended and if you look in the top right hand corner, that's my, my eldest son Joshua, who I had the privilege of hearing his testimony of faith in Jesus Christ and to baptize, my son and my brother, which is weird to say. Say it that way, but, and he's the first of my children. I have 4 other children that I'm, I would ask for you to pray that the Lord would open their heart and save them.

My oldest 2 sons do claim to be the Lord's and we're waiting, we're waiting to see that fruit that corresponds with, a genuine work of grace. Joshua serves with us, on the worship team and, continues to serve the Lord even these many years later. that's, that's on the membership day. So you can see, you may have seen bigger numbers, in, in the previous picture, but that is our church.

Those are the members of Grace Bible Church rugby in 2016 with my wife and I taking a selfie of, of those. So we're small. we, we have a small beginning, but it's, what I, my wife and I regularly say. This was just a few weeks ago at our fifth anniversary.

that's our church now. So 2 years ago, you could see what our church looks like. Not all our members in this picture, but this, these are the people who came, on our church service for our 5th anniversary Sunday. So we have great encouragement, not just numerically but spiritually, taking place, at Grace Bible Church rugby in our church plant.

I, I did want to, I, I put this up there because this is one of the big reasons why we've traveled out to be with you today, not only to share with you some of what the Lord's been doing in the recent past at Grace Bible Church rugby. these last 5 years have been the best 5 years of our 15 years in the United Kingdom. And I'd like to say regularly that if I knew how sweet it was, to, to plant a church, I would have done that 15 years ago. And obviously churches need to replace pastors who retire and change ministries, but there, I never considered myself to be a church planting pastor.

I just wanted to get one place and stay there for the rest of my life and in the unfolding of God's providence, he closed doors or opportunities or made it impossible for me to stay at my two previous churches. And, these last 5 years have been such a joy and a delight to see people saved, to see people burdened for ministry and serving Christ, and, and so this is a little sign up sheet that we're going to have on the clipboard wherever Mike's gonna set us up at the table and It's basically a way for you to put your name down and your email address so you can receive our ministry update.

and that's the big thing that we are asking you as a church to do, to partner with us in ministry as missionaries seeking to preach the gospel in the United Kingdom, a land that many people say is dead, that, in in 90, in 2002 when I was graduating with my THM and Old Testament. it was exciting days and churches were contacting us as we were approaching graduation and we got a phone call from a scientist in Princeton, New Jersey, and, and he contacted us and, and, and, and said, listen, we want you to come and, and, and, and preach at our church and see if the Lord has it in his will for you to be our pastor.

And I told him, I said, the elders at Grace have asked me to go to England and so I'm no longer looking to go back to New Jersey. He said, England, don't go to England, they're too far gone. Now, I didn't know this man from Adam. And I'm so glad I didn't listen to him, and I'm so glad for these brothers and I'm so glad for other brothers and sisters who've come to know Christ, that I didn't listen to that man.

God's got his remnant. God's got his people. He's gonna have people from every tongue, tribe, and nation. And as it turns out, it's been my joy to watch God save people over these last 15 years, and, and some God has burdened to go into a pastoral ministry.

A number of the men who were saved or already saved and discipled are now already serving in pastoral ministry in church plants and other places in the UK. So this is an illustration of the newsletter you might get on a monthly or bimonthly basis, basically. Telling you what's been happening over the last month or two and then at the end of the newsletter, you'll see points for prayers. So your prayers, you'll be able to pray for us in a relevant way and in a specific way and be able to see answers to prayers.

That's our big desire of you. If you do, if you don't do anything else, will you please pray for us? that's what we, that's what our greatest need is, is God's blessing on our lives. So you can read our newsletter.

The best way to do that is to sign your name and email on the sign up sheets that you'll be off to the side, and then you can pray for us, pray intelligently and specifically. We've been studying James 5, and we know that the effectual, fervent prayer of a righteous person avails much. And so we trust that you'll be able to lift us up. And prayer.

You can send, you can send short term missions teams and Pastor Mike and I have talked about the possibility of doing that. What would that look like, and we hope to talk more perhaps over lunch and you can give, you can give your time, you can give resources obviously as missionaries we have material needs, but we'll just leave that with you. This is our website. If you want to know more about our church, you can go there, grace Bible Church rugby.org and and, and, and by all means you can follow and, and, and know how to pray for us.

So that's, that's my presentation. We're the McConnells and we would appreciate your prayers for us, for the ministry of the gospel that we're doing in rugby. We are passionate about the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have been radically changed by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

We love the Lord Jesus Christ. We know that he loved us first, and we want other people to know and love Christ. And with that, I think I have just a few moments to have my brothers come to share their testimony. So Sandra, will you come?

Please, and I'll just have you stand here at the mic and you can share your testimony and then I'm gonna ask Claudio if you can come as well, Claudio. So one right after the other, and to share their testimony and then please, I think we have a few moments when the testimonies are gonna conclude for you to ask questions about our ministry or about life in the United Kingdom, so maybe you can be thinking about those questions. We would love to answer, any of those that we can.

So Sandra, why don't you, share with them.

Hello, everyone. Like my brother Tom said, I'm Sandro Faria and this is my brother, Claudio. We're so thankful for the opportunity that we have to share. What the Lord is doing in our lives and, I don't know if many of it's Made Madeira is a small island.

It's actually closer to the African coast, but it's a Portuguese island and growing up, I never was exposed to the gospel at all. The island's about 300,000 people and it's like 90%, Catholic. So my mother was nominal Catholic. I maybe went to church like once a year for mass at Christmas, attended some catechism classes, but like I said, Never I heard the gospel.

On my teenage years, my parents passed away and so I was looking for a better opportunity. I went to England to find some work. When I got to England, I had a job in a hotel where now my wife was working. She was working there and after many failed attempts to get to know her, the chef at the kitchen told me she was a Christian.

I said, well, I'm a Christian as well. Well, what's wrong with that? Well, she didn't go out with me and then I found out which church she was going to. And that was when Pastor Tom was preaching in that church.

so I started going to that church and week after week, scriptures were being taught, the gospel was being proclaimed, but as a nonbeliever, that didn't mean anything to me. It was boring. It was dull. I don't know why people were gathering there.

It didn't make any sense. After knowing their parents, my, my wife's now parents better, and they found out that I was from Madeira. They wanted to go there. So they asked me, can you show us around there, be their guide in Madeira.

So I said yes, and we went to Madeira, stayed in different places, and, on our flight back a week later, it was much turbulence in the flight, and I was scared. I could see on my right, my, my now wife and her sister, which actually is his wife. We're not scared at all. And I was like thinking about those things I've heard in the past.

I said, if this thing goes down, I'm going to hell. At that time, plane landed and I said, whew, that's all right. Anyway, a few days after this still dangled on my mind and while before I was working in a, in a hotel and doing working in a bar. I know how wicked I was.

And I, I started seeing sin, as God sees sin. I started feeling the weight of it. And then I felt very guilty. And in my room, I just pleaded with God to just forgive me and give me a new life because I knew myself too well.

I couldn't change myself unless he did something and God was so gracious to save me and I couldn't wait to go back to church to hear about Him and know what his word had to say about what I needed to do. And, and then I remembered my family. I wasn't getting along with my brother very well back then, but the first thing I did a few days after was I got on the phone and I called my brother and I told him, hey bro, it's me. I said, I didn't know the gospel fully, like all the doctrinal and scriptures.

So I said, look, God exists and there's a way for you to know Him. And that's when it ties in with his testimony. I won't steal his thunder. And yeah, so my brother called me and we were, we were enemies.

We just went different directions. And he said, brother, God exists, exists, and there's a way for you to know Him. And I said, what is this guy talking about? I have no idea what he's saying.

So he sent me a, a sermon from a man called John MacArthur. And I listened for a couple of minutes and I was bored. I did not understand anything that this man was saying. And so, but my brother said, look, come to England.

I'll give you a job. There's a job opportunity here. So I, I was unemployed at that time, so I said, OK, I'll go. I go to England and I saw that my brother was very different.

I said to myself, What have they done to my brother? What has happened to him? And I saw that he was a changed man and I couldn't understand why or how. He shared the gospel with me and he invited me to go to church where I met Tom.

And. I was a very angry atheistic person. I was cold against God. I would ask questions like, why would God allow suffering?

Where does evil come from? And, and they were good questions. I, I remember speaking with Tom and he said, look, those are good questions. Why don't you come to my house and I'll be able to talk to you about them.

So we did. I went to Tom's house and I remember he, him asking me. Claudio, are you a sinner? And I said, yeah, sure, aren't we all sinners, we're all imperfect, we're, we're not perfect.

Of course I'm a sinner, we're all sinners. And he said, OK. He, he looked at my brother and he said, sorry, Sandro, I can't help your brother. And I said, what's wrong with me?

What's wrong with me? And he said, well, you just don't understand sin. You do not understand sin. And so he gave me an assignment.

What he gave me was a topical Bible from John MacArthur, and he told me to look up the word sin. And so I did. I went home and I opened this Bible, and it, it had verses to do with the word sin, the origin of sin, the results of sin, the consequences of sin, things like that. And so God used that word of His word to convict me of my sin.

I remember specially reading a verse in Romans, Romans 6:23 that says that the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal. Life, I realized then God showed me that my sin was not just against people around me, but it was against a holy and a just God. And because I'd broken His commandments, I was going to hell. I was an enemy of God, and God used His word to convict me of my sin.

A few days later. I went to Tom's house and in my mind I still had a lot of questions. But all these questions did not seem to matter any more. I remember sitting very quietly at the at the at the table and and Tom looked at me and he said, Claudio, are you a sinner?

And that time was different. And I said, I am a sinner. I am, I know I'm a sinner. And he said, so what are you waiting for?

And so that day, I asked the Lord to forgive me. I repented of my sin. And I said, Lord, without you I cannot change. I will go to hell.

I need your forgiveness. From that moment, both me and my brother share a burden to reach our people. The Lord had to bring us from this island, this beautiful island. If you go to Madeira, it's a beautiful island with cruise ships and tourists, and the Lord had to bring us from that island where the gospel.

The Gospel was never preached to us to this dead island of England, seen by many to hear this gospel that changed us and transformed us. And now we as two brothers want to take this gospel that transformed us back to our people. We, we, I know we don't have much time. We, we went to, on a, a week, we spent a week in in Madeira with our pastor.

And we had many opportunities to share the gospel. We had an opportunity to share the gospel with our family. They haven't seen us in years and they were just quietly, they're Catholic and they were just quietly sitting down listening to the gospel like for the very first time. And, and I remember I have a godfather and a godmother coming from a Catholic, home, and I remember my auntie saying you, you cannot be talking about these things, about hell and about punishment they're old, you can't be telling them about this and I said, Auntie, that's exactly why I'm telling you this because I don't know how long they have left.

They need to hear this gospel. And all of those and many more opportunities were shared. Madeira is such a fertile soil, it's, there's fruit that is ripe and so. So our burden is to go back to our home and plan a church.

At the moment we're being, trained by our pastor. We've created a training in our local church in rugby where we can be equipped and trained. We're doing things like, biblical counseling and church planting and, and hermeneutics. And so our aim is in 4 or 5 years' time to go back and plan a church there.

Anything else? Thank you very much for listening to us. Well, just stay right here because there probably be some questions for you. Can we take any questions?

I think we have 5 minutes before Pastor Mike said to close the time, so there's plenty of time to ask a couple questions. Any questions about the UK or about our brothers from, from Madeira that you'd like to know more about? Anyone been to Madeira? If you, if people who go on cruises, the island has 300,000 people, but those carnival cruise ships.

They get 1.5 million people who land on the, on the island of Madeira. If, if you want to understand, I've never been to Hawaii, but I have seen growing up in the 70s, it's gonna date me now a little bit. Ricardo Montalban. Welcome to Paradise Island.

Remember that, any of that? Look, boss, the plane. Remember Tattoo? Yeah.

This is the island. It's beautiful. It's like the shape of an amphitheater in the hills and, and, and the cruise ships come in and a million to 1.5 million new people unless they keep coming back. Come on the island and, and, and that's great opportunity for them not only to reach the Maderin people when they go to play at this church, but people who come from every tongue, tribe, and nation on those cruise lines.

And they had a PowerPoint, unfortunately, you'll just have to take our word for it in the providence of God, we're prevented from showing you that, but you can still, you can still pray for them in that great gospel opportunity. We, we shared the gospel for 6 days on our pilot. The intention of that trip was to see these men who've been discipled shepherded into a healthy biblical church in Madera and let them use what they've been given in the truth to strengthen a local church.

But what we found out when we got there was that the one church that we thought was going to be a fit for them was supporting LGBT in their youth ministry.

So we felt like they couldn't go there. And the other church had a church split about 3 years earlier and they had not recovered and they were headed in a different direction theologically. And these men scoured the internet, asked friends on different messengers, are there any, any other churches that we can be part of? And what became clear to them is that it wasn't their plan, it wasn't our original plan, but that they needed to return to Madeira and that they wanted to plant a church.

Would you help us? And I said to my, I said I had to test, to check with my fellow elder. and and he said, you're gonna train the guys? And I said, well, yeah.

He said, by yourself? And I said, Yeah, I guess., at, at, we don't have a budget for that. Without a budget, I said yes. He says with the great possibility of failure, and I said yes.

He said, let's try it. So, here we started and they're halfway through their first year, having taken Old Testament studies one, having completed hermeneutics and an introduction to exit Jesus, they're now taking biblical counseling one and Old Testament studies 2. And they have another 3.5 years to go. their wives are taking classes that will equip them, like the biblical counseling classes, the discipled ladies, and the Old Testament studies classes to get a breadth of knowledge about, about the Bible.

but, it's, you can pray for us. we're not supposed to be doing this. We're supposed to have a whole faculty. To do what we're trying to do, but, you can pray for us.

We really need the Lord's help and, and other men like your pastors perhaps, maybe to teach classes from afar via Skype, on something that maybe they're teaching to you. But any questions that we can answer? We have like 1 or 2 minutes. So Is it just that They're preaching Madeira.

Madeira. Like in, in Madeira, we had, for example, a few opportunities like my brother shared with our family, but there was another opportunity we had while we were having our haircut. the lady was cutting our hair and she asked, so what are you doing here? And I said, all right.

And then, I just said, well, we're here evaluating a church that we could serve and strengthen to sharing the gospel. And have you ever heard the gospel before? I said, no, it's the gospel. He said, well, the Bible says that we all believe in God and that's, we suppress Him because, we're not righteous.

Do what sin is? And then she goes on to say, and then I told her, look, have you ever told a lie? And she said, yes, everyone does. So, like the very comfort way way.

And, She acknowledged, I still remember her face saying, I'm going to hell. She was like, And say, well, but there's forgiveness. That's what we call the gospel. It's the good news.

And I told her the good news, and she was like, I never heard this before. And, she was like, what's confessing? And she had loads of questions straight away. And she stopped cutting my hair for like 15 minutes.

And she, and then in the end, she was like, do you have a church? Where, where do I go? And we look at each other like, not yet, so we still gave her contact because we didn't want her to leave her there. But that's one of the great And then we had other, we have Jehovah's Witnesses knock on our door.

Coincidence, and we shared a gospel. It was a, a missionary from another country, and there was a Madeira next to her which shadows her and then, and I was pleading with them, asking them, do what the gospel is? And then they tell them what the gospel is, and oh, it's a new kingdom of heaven. I said, well, Paul says that This is the gospel in which you've been saved in which you stand, the burial, death, and resurrection of Christ for the forgiveness of sins.

And he then tells in Galatians that there's some other people out there preaching of the gospel, and that other gospel doesn't save and it should be a curse. So I'm assuming that you're not preaching the gospel of repentance, so you must be and now strength that you're not trusting the Jesus that saves. Normally, you, normally if you're like me, you've grown up around, folks like that, and maybe I'm, I'm not doing it right because I'm impatient and, I, I just get out of that conversation as quick as possible.

But that JW, leader, she wanted to get away from this man.

And get down the road and he goes, no, no, please, please, and let's keep talking and he was sharing the gospel with the, the junior member of, of the team and so we, to answer your question specifically, we equip our, we've equipped our church in the way of the master, way of evangelism coupled and fused with what Grace Community Church teaches and it's evangelism outreach and also a few other,. Just the ways of sharing the gospel, but yesterday we got our haircut because we're a bit shaggy after the, the, the, the, the shepherd's conference, and it's not always the same way.

We're not always gonna say, so would you consider yourself to be a good person? That's the first question in the way of the master.

Yesterday I had this lady, she had all these piercings, and I didn't know what haircut I was gonna get. I was, I, I judged externally. I, I admit that now. but, and she had piercings and, and tattoos, and I was thinking, oh God, I, how am I gonna start the conversation about the gospel because if I say, would you consider yourself a good person, I, I get the impression that she's gonna say, are you judging me?

So I, I saw the tats on her arm and I said, I'm told that every tattoo has a story of its own. What, what do you, what are your, what's the story behind your tattoos? And she told me and it was a, a Hindu god who had a, a, a, a normal face on the one side of her forearm. She turned her arm over and it was the same Hindu god was angry and, and her name, she's named after this Hindu god and I said, does this, is this a small picture of who you really are?

And then I, and I was still praying, God, I don't know how to get to Christ. How do I get to Christ from here? And I said, and she started talking about her brother, who hates Muslims. And she was basically going off about how wicked her brother was for hating Muslims.

And I said, how do you take a murderer And turn them into a lover. How do you take someone who's committed to murdering somebody? I'm not saying Muslims, but just anybody. Christians have committed murder, so, so-called Christians, Hindus have killed other people, Muslims have killed.

How do you take someone who's a murderer and turn them into a lover of their neighbor? How do you do it in in Hinduism? She goes, I don't know. I, I don't know, karma, you just do good to them and maybe in the next life you get something good back.

I said, well, what about this life? I don't know. And I got to go to share it to her, with the gospel. I said, what the problem is those Christians who kill and those Hindus who kill and those Muslims who kill.

It's not the problem of religion. She says, well, what is it? I said, it's the problem with humanity. Because we're all born sinners.

It doesn't matter what religion we are. We're enemies of God and we hate God. And until God changes our heart and, that's what the gospel is. Did gospel means good news?

No, I've never heard that before and got to talk with her. And so there's different ways. So what we've learned is, is that we have to, if you say you love Christ but don't share the gospel, that's a contradiction. If you say you're like Jesus, but you don't share the gospel.

That's not the Jesus I know. The Jesus I know left heaven to come to earth to seek and to save that which is lost. So I know you love Christ. I've listened to your pastors online and I've read your pastor's book, The Gospelmer.

I know you're taught to love Christ, but our lack of evangelism really tells us where we're really at with our love for Christ. If we're gonna be like Jesus. Then we need to see people around us like he saw them. In need of a savior.

Right? So that's, that's how we do evangelism. We pray that we'll have the heart of Christ. We have a few tools of how to start, how to start conversations, but it's just about how to have the heart of Christ for the lost.

And these guys have the gift of evangelist. I'm a pastor teacher. But the more I'm around evangelists, the more evangelistic I get. It's a great com companionship.

So, would you, would you pray for us and would you pray for these brothers, Sandro and Claudio and their wives, Emma and Nikki? they have a, they still have a long road to go, but this is not an emotional whim. These men have been faithful for 5 or 6 years. They're my right and left hand men at the church plant.

When they go, there'll be a big void in us, but maybe you remember Dawson's Trotman famous sermon from the navigators. Where's your man? Where's your man? We can, we're praying that the Lord would save someone else so we can disciple them, and they're discipling men right now and passing on what, what, what, what we give them and, but we need your prayers.

They need, they need your prayers for endurance because they think I'm too hard on them in the training center and in Britain. We call that whinging when they complain. So there's a bit of whinging going on. So you can pray for them and pray for me, pray that the Lord would grant us help, and strength to train these men and see the island of Madeira re-evangelized with the gospel.

Pastor Mike, do you want? Yes, please. When you're preaching there in Madeira, it's in Portuguese. I Well, when, when not everyone there, it's a lot of people speak English.

So I met a woman from San Francisco who was a Republican. It shocked me. And, and, and I got to share the gospel with her in, in the, she, she in the souvenir, she was selling hats and shawls and stuff like that and I'm a good person. She's Catholic.

I'm a good person and so it, it didn't hinder us. The Lord provided ways and, and they know English, they're from American TV, but yes, they, they, there's a Portuguese island so. And for and for tourism they have to know English. They get a lot of people on tourism in order to sell their wares they need to know how to barter and trade and all that, so.

But Thank you guys so much for sharing. Let's go ahead and pray for these brothers and then if you guys wanna, your, the table's right here where it says missions, so maybe we'll kinda have you guys over there that way people can sign up for the, the prayer letter and the newsletter and stuff. But let's, let's go ahead and pray. Lord, thank you so much for, Tom and Sandra and Claudio, and we just pray, Father, that you just be with them and both in rugby and also we just pray for their training and as they head back to Madera.

Lord, that you would use them for your glory. Thank you so much for just the, the work of your Spirit and saving. we pray, Father, that we'd be able to really support them in our prayers. Thank you for the great encouragement that we've had this hour in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.