B.A.S.I.C. NEWSLETTER #250
B.A.S.I.C. NEWSLETTER #250
I Cor.. 16:9 ‘For a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.
October 15, 2013
—————–
In the first BASIC Newsletter, Dec.13, 2002, I wrote
It is great to share “information on the work. And I receive email from you of course, and am glad to receive it as we share His work. I think it is excellent that there has been an exchange in email between you. Those churches that are in fellowship with the CLC-USA are also in fellowship with one another. I encourage you to continue to use email, which is a gift of God to us to communicate on His Word and Work. What a great blessing to be able to encourage one another in this manner and all the more as we see the day approaching. I will continue to communicate to each of you with personal letters. But at this time I will begin sending a monthly newsletter which will go to each of you”
———————–
That was one benefit of the newsletter, to share news in our fellowship to better know and learn and pray. Another opportunity through the newsletter is to share the Bible teachings in shorter form. I pray this will continue. At this time my wife Mary and I are turning over the newsletter’s production to Pastor Matthew Ude and his wife Vanessa. As of October 31st, Reformation Day, they are in charge. You are welcome to write to them at matthew [dot] ude [at] lutheranmissions [dot] org, or vanessa [dot] ude [at] lutheranmissions [dot] org
I look forward to reading the news of His work which we all have a part in.
God Bless, Pastor David Koenig
——————-
Pastor and Mrs. Ed Starkey are now living in India, and have begun the Lord’s work among the CLCI and BELC.
Pastor David Koenig is finishing his time in India, and will be returning to the U.S.A. soon.
——————-
Evangelism in the Early Church Oct. 15th.
In an age of compromise and indifference we preach conversion, we seek conversion. When we join with overseas brethren we want to help in conversions. In this we mirror the early church.
Excerpts pp.149-151(from Michael Green’s book) “The Church received the Spirit not for its selfish secret enjoyment but to enable it to bear witness for Christ…Every initiative in evangelism recorded in Acts is the initiative of the Spirit of God. From 1:8 where the world mission is(put forward)…up to the Roman imprisonment of Paul at the end of the book which enables the Gospel to be heard freely in the capital, each new advance is inaugurated by the Lord the Spirit. It is the Spirit, the gift of the ascended Jesus, who fills and so signally uses the disciples on the day of Pentecost, likewise Peter before the Sanhedrin, Stephen at Jerusalem, Philip with the eunuch. It is the Spirit who drives Paul out on his mission…the Spirit is what creates, validates and energizes the Church…
First, they preached a person. Their message was frankly Christocentric. Indeed, often enough the Gospel is referred to simply as Jesus or Christ: ‘He preached Jesus to him.’…
Second, they proclaimed a gift. The gift of forgiveness, the gift of the Spirit, the gift of adoption, of reconciliation. The gift that made ‘no people’ part of the ‘people of God’, the gift that brought those who were far off near…
Third, they looked for a response. The apostles were not shy about asking men to decide for or against the God who had decided for them. They expected results. They challenged men to do something about the message they had heard. ‘What shall we do?’ was the response of the crowd on the day of Pentecost…It involved a radical break with the past. It could not be real in the absence of ‘deeds which demonstrated repentance’. It meant burning their books for the Ephesians magicians, and washing Paul’s stripes for the Philippian jailer…All men everywhere must repent: the challenge came to ‘every one of you’.”
There was as Green says a “professional ministry –apostles and ‘ordained’ men” and there was that of “informal missionaries–men and women”. pp.166-172 Here we have that which Scripture clearly teaches that in the church we ask men to carry out a public ministry of the Word for us, as well as each one of us being part of the priesthood of all believers. Each of us being one for whom Christ died and one of the witnesses of who He is and what He has done for us. May God give us the courage of the early Church to boldly proclaim Him as the answer to all our problems and difficulties and the one on whom our expectation of heaven is firmly fixed. God Bless.
———————————
Pastor David Koenig