On May 16th, I had the privilege of baptizing Jone Kruger. As we were having some technical difficulties we were unable to share her video testimony Sunday morning. Please watch and be encouraged!
Archive for the 'Testimonies' Category
From Keith to KingsWay:
As you may already know, my family and I relocated to KingsWay from Sovereign Grace Church in Chesapeake this past September to start a residency for evaluation and equipping to lead a church plant. It has been an absolute joy for our entire family to get to know many of you and serve the Lord alongside you. God’s grace is so clearly at work here, and we thank God for this opportunity!
Planting a church is a huge undertaking, and leading a plant requires a pastor to be well equipped for the task. Over these past six months, God has been refining me and equipping me in key areas - particular the preaching of the Word and administration. Apart from this season of receiving specific and much needed help, I cannot conceive of how God could have met me in the ways He has. I am so thankful for these pastors and for each of you. Your feedback has been very encouraging and helpful. As it stands today, I am trusting God for additional, needed help - especially in the area of administration. This has been an historic weakness for me, and God has highlighted it once again through the pastors and through my opportunity to lead the Resolved ministry. Given the administrative demands of church-planting, I believe God has new convictions and habits to build into me. In light of that, I am not ready to plant a church at this point. But I am trusting God to continue this work of training and equipping so that I will be prepared for the future.
Thank you for your encouragement and prayers… and for the ways you have embraced me and my family. Please continue to join us in prayer - to the God who completes every good work He begins. Please pray for wisdom, as we seek to discern the call God has on my life and to discern His timetable. We count every week spent with you a blessing. And we look forward with faith and joy to Christ: who has gone before us, and who oversees every detail of our lives. As you pray for us, and as we pray for you, let’s take great courage that each of our days are in His hands… while we have breath, let’s all be looking for ways to bear eternal fruit for His kingdom.
From Gene on behalf of pastors:
Last month I asked you to give us feedback on how Keith’s ministry has impacted you. Thanks those who have provided thoughts, which have been very helpful in considering the way forward. The area most of you have connected with Keith is in his preaching, and many of you shared how his love for God’s Word helped and encouraged you in specific ways. The single adults also experienced Keith’s leadership in the Resolved ministry. He brings a love for community and evangelism. Some shared some specific ways where his administrative leadership needed to improve. A number of you have also received personal care & encouragement from Keith and expressed how wise and meaningful that care has been.
The reason SGM invests in church-based residencies is that the day to day life of a local church provides the best arena for seeing where a pastor is strong and where growth is necessary. Your feedback has helped Keith and the pastors to establish two things. First, we agree with Keith that more preparation is important before planting. This is not because we are reluctant to take a risk, but because we have seen that planting a church is one of the most demanding tasks a pastor can undertake. Making sure he is prepared from the beginning is a practical way we can extend care to Keith & his family and confidence to those participating in the church plant. So your input was important to the decision to postpone the church plant. Second, the pastors recognize significant gifts in preaching and leadership in Keith’s life that we believe will position him to be an effective church planter. He has a gift of faith and the ability to care for people along with an evangelistic heart to reach the lost. Since Keith is receiving care and training from the pastors with a genuine and humble heart, we believe he is in process to be prepared to plant a church. What a joy it would be to send a team from KingsWay to impact another city with the Gospel! But since the funds SGM is providing for Keith’s residency ends in May, we will need to trust God for resources to make that happen. We’ll talk more about that in a couple of weeks in relation to our partnership fund, but please pray with us as we seek clarity and provision for this next step. Thanks!
Looking for a way to keep the truths we studied a year ago in our adoption series fresh and regularly before you? Check out the album mentioned below, available in our book shoppe.
By C.J. Mahaney
Congratulations to my friend Bob Kauflin whose album Sons and Daughters has won the 2009 Worship Compilation of the Year award in the Worship Leader Magazine Readers’ Choice Awards.
I love this album!
And apparently many others love this album as well.
What I love about the album is the theological lyrics on the theme of God’s adopting grace.
So why did Bob focus this project on the doctrine of spiritual adoption? A while back on his blog, Bob wrote this:
The project came out of a perceived lack of songs that help us meditate on the unfathomable love God has shown us in adopting us through Jesus Christ (Eph. 1:5). We are now part of God’s family—in Christ we will forever be the objects of God’s particular and passionate mercy and love. We are not only forgiven, we are co-heirs with Christ, and never again have to doubt God’s care for us. That biblical reality, rather than leaving us focused on ourselves, drives us once again to proclaim the greatness of the God whose grace turns hopeless rebels into precious children.
We need songs on this important topic—especially worship albums for individual and corporate worship.In his classic book Knowing God, J.I. Packer writes:
If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God.…Our understanding of Christianity cannot be better than our grasp of adoption. (pp. 201–202)
I highly recommend Sons and Daughters. It will help convince you of God’s passionate and personal love for you. This album will remind you of God’s adopting grace, a theme that should prompt and control our worship. What better album to do this than Sons and Daughters.Congratulations to Bob and to all the musicians and songwriters that made this album possible!
Community Groups kicked back into high gear last month after the August break, including several new or reorganized group. The most significant change has been the creation of 3 new CGs designed for single adults as part of our Resolved ministry. Tim & Gail Emerson, who lead one of the singles CGs, shared the following encouraging testimony with me from a recent meeting!
“Our new singles community group has been meeting for a few weeks now. We’ve been excited to see God at work, especially around the Resolved message series, and the idea of thinking rightly about God. A few weeks ago we met to discuss Keith’s message on the Holiness of God. Thinking about God’s majesty, I was convicted that my life was spent more focusing on the shiny trinkets of life. We ended up praying for the last 15 minutes of the meeting that God would reveal himself to us. It seemed like everyone left wanted to know God in a deeper way.
Last week we one of the members asked for prayer that they would know God personally and not just intellectually. We had a good discussion on how God wants to reveal himself to us in our day-to-day lives. We’re praying that God continues to work in our hearts, and we’re looking forward to seeing what he does over the next few months.”
Thanks for your leadership, Tim!
Written by: Remie Verougstraete
In a week or so, I head back to school to see and enjoy God’s activity in another sphere of life. But before I go, I’ve been given one last opportunity to share some thoughts about my experience this summer. Two things immediately came to mind.
- It would be totally inappropriate for me to leave without mentioning my rich experience of God’s grace made manifest in the folks who work in the office. They have all been a constant help, both in important practical ways and as faithful encouragers. They are regularly seeking excellence in their work and to impart grace to one another. The way the office staff (everyone who’s not a pastor) relates and functions is a beautiful, powerful testimony to God’s spirit in their hearts and in our midst.
- A word about the pastors. The past few months have given me a front row seat to watch this team regularly evaluate and re-evaluate how to serve you more effectively and biblically. At the end of the day, they always move forward trusting God to care and provide for His people, and with humble faith in His willingness to use them to do it. This should be the basis of our hope for this church as well.
I thank God for the loving support of this church and the joyful privilege to be a small part of what He’s doing at Kingsway. It’s a good thing heaven lasts for eternity, because we’re going to need all of it to sing of the divine goodness and faithfulness of our Father.
God bless you!
Written by: Sandy Wilda
What do you get when you mix 130 ladies, two hours, worship, testimonies, small group fellowship, gift giveaways, and food? You get KingsWay’s By Design Summer Study!
This year, the ladies studied the amazing depth and richness of the grace found in the Christian life, benefiting from the Transforming Grace materials written by Jerry Bridges. The heart of this study may be summarized well by this statement taken from his book:
“Because we do not comprehend the superabundance of God’s grace and generosity, we ask Him for paltry blessings, the fifty-cent variety, when we could be drawing on the abundance of His riches”.
What a way to spend some of the summer - learning more about “drawing on the abundance of His riches”!
One of the highlights for us was hearing from different ladies about how they were experiencing God in their study of grace. Last summer, the value of reading Christian biographies was highlighted. Through John Piper’s teaching, we were encouraged in this, that we may “see Jesus with eyes more full of wonder than our own.” This summer, as we heard ladies share of how God has been at work in their lives, we experienced this through their testimonies. We were given the opportunity to see the beauty of Jesus through their eyes.
It’s hard to believe our study together is already over. God was kind to bless us with another summer of amazing truths from His Word, times of worship, and great fellowship
Two weeks ago we had the joy of introducing Craig Smith as KingsWay’s new business manager. Craig’s character, giftings, and experience have positioned him to serve us in significant ways in the coming years and we couldn’t be more excited about God’s provision of him for our staff.
Craig’s background includes several years as a counter intelligence special agent (spy catcher), as well as over a decade in public service in the VA state government. He’s served under 2 governors and a member of the House of Delegates in a variety of crucial roles.
In case you missed his remarks Sunday, or would simply enjoy reflecting on God’s goodness to us through the gifts he provides, we’re including them here…
Thank you Gene, Matthew, Doug and Aaron for your faith in me and your leadership through these changes.
Wow, I must admit I never for a minute expected to be standing here before you today. Accepting this position has been an answer to a prayer that my wife and I have been praying for at least two years.
We serve an amazing and awesome God … don’t we?
Here today on Partnership Sunday I get announced as the new business manager. It reminds me of our first day at Kingsway many years ago, back in the fall of 2002. It too was a Partnership Sunday. Your heart and passion for Christ as evidenced by your giving so impressed us. In that first visit we felt such a peace and excitement a
bout what God was doing here that we knew this was our home.
After choosing to become members here, God continued to use these Partnership Sundays in amazing ways. Ok, last year I probably wouldn’t have used amazing at this point. It was more of a prayerful wrestling with what God was calling us to do and the reality of our financial situation. On the eve of our first Partnership Sunday we had very little left in our bank account. Our youngest daughter had a serious bacterial infection that required two surgeries, numerous doctor and specialist visits, not to mention the medication.
While it makes no sense from a worldly perspective we both were convinced that God was at work and we were to trust him and step out in faith with our finances. So we wrote a check for all that we had trusting God to provide. The check we wrote…it never bounced. In fact within a week we had unforeseen income far beyond what we expected and more than enough to meet our future medical needs.
That call to give was not the only call God put on our hearts last year. I felt God calling me to a new role in the church and He opened the door for me to be able to step up and take over for Chris Edwards as the Community Group Leader of our group.
Now here we are today. When this new position was announced, I never for a minute thought that God was calling me to this position. Yet over the course of a week in my prayer time and through the prophetic words of others, I knew that God was calling me to pursue this new position.
Two years ago Justine and I began praying for God to open a new door for me for a job that could better provide for my family instead of me having to work two jobs. Serving, managing, and administering is where God has gifted me and where I have been serving. I have been serving a Member of the Virginia House of Delegates for the last 8 ½ years. The salary was far less than could support a family. So I have been working a second job as well. I worked in economic development finding clients for a firm that specialized in creative financial solutions for public and private agencies and businesses. God answered my prayer far beyond my wildest expectations with this new position.
My standing here today is just one piece in the exciting work that God is doing here at Kingsway. What a privilege it is to be able to serve as part of this team that God has put together. We live in uncertain times, but serve a God who is certain, who is faithful, and who is working in and through all of us to His glory. I cannot think of a more exciting place to be or a better group of people to serve than this amazing group that God has assembled here at Kingsway.
This evening we had the wonderful privilege of reminiscing God’s faithfulness to us over the past 20 years. As we shared this evening over fellowship, dinner and dessert, we watched these two videos. They are filled with pictures, stories and memories recounting all God has done for us! If you were unable to make it, you can watch them here.
Part 1
Part 2
In this series of posts we interviewed members of KingsWay that have been attending since the church was planted in 1989.
In 1988, Bruce and Mercy Robertson felt a strong call to be a part of the church plant team. They came to 
Richmond for the first time during the fall of 1088 to meet some of the other church planting team members. Though the first few years of the church plant were difficult ones, they knew God has called them there which gave them great faith that there was grace for those times. Some memorable moments for the Robertsons include Emily braking her arm during one of the many potluck lunches, the services that were held at Gene and Liz’s house when they were first meeting and the kids running around the movie theaters after church.
Bruce and Mercy came to the church plant with three children. Daniel was 7, Emily was 5 and Philip was 3. Daniel was the same age as Heather Whitman, whose family was also a part of the church planting team. In October 2006, Daniel and Heather were married and now have a child of their own. To read Daniel and Heather’s story, click here.
