Jeremy L. Berg

Hi friends,

If you frequent this blog as your only connection to me, you may be wondering how the MainStreet Covenant church plant is coming along in Mound.  It’s going well.  But we are “pioneering” a church, which means we are building from ground up and starting very much at the grassroots level.  The ideal approach is for one established church to send out a sizable core group to be the seed for the new church, and the established church “parents” that church plant by providing some resources, funding, and so on.

We currently do not have a parent church, but we’re seeking other churches to be partners in helping launch MainStreet Covenant.  So, where are we at currently in the process?  Like starting a garden or farm, there is a lot of “tilling the soil” and hard labor going on behind the scenes.  This is significant, faith-filled work that is all grit and no glory.  It’s filled with ups and downs, faith and doubt, excitement and drudgery.

We’re thrilled to have a growing launch team of people gathering every other Sunday evening for worship, prayer, Bible teaching and strategic planning. This group is exploring the vision and DNA of MainStreet and learning that church in it’s rawest, purest form is not electric guitars, sound systems, buildings and programs; it’s simply God’s people gathered together in order to be about the following:

“They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer…All the believers were together and had everything in common. ⁴⁵Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. ⁴⁶Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, ⁴⁷praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:42-47).

It takes more time for others to get free of the Americanized version of church that is all about numbers, buildings and programs.  By the way, there’s nothing wrong with these 3 and we’re praying that God helps us attain all three in due time.  But that’s not the main goal.

The main goal for us this fall is to get on the community’s radar by serving others in Jesus’ name, inviting more and more people to join us for our small worship gatherings at the Threshold, forming small House Groups throughout town where people can “do life” together in real fellowship, and growing the Revolution Teen Ministry.  We hope to also host a public worship gathering later this fall to invite the broader community to check out.  Stay tuned!

Life is full, God is good, the harvest in plenty and the workers are few.  So, please keep your prayers coming and keep up to date with us at our new MainStreet News site.  Check out my MissionMoment Videos as well for more on-location reflections from the mission field in Mound.  Everything else you need to know can be found at our official MainStreet Website.

Grace and peace!

Jeremy