Dear Ministry Partners:
I hope you are enjoying this warm weather! I wanted to keep you in the loop of what is happening with this ministry. We just concluded our last Community Leaders Breakfast on May 6 at Recovery Point. It was a very inspiring and deeply touching gathering. It ended with a moving testimony of one of the graduates of Recovery Point. You can mark your calendar for the first of our next season Community Leaders Breakfast which will take place September 2 at Christ Temple Church. Most of you know that MTS hosts a semi-annual retreat for our core team. The goal of these retreats is to seek God's guidance for this ministry's prayer focus and outreach for the upcoming year. Below is a summary of our last retreat that took place in May at Heritage Farms. The leadership team of Mission Tri-State felt that God was convicting us that this retreat was launching a new season of removing a dimension of spiritual darkness from our community and the Appalachian region. We believe that this daylong session was the first step in this process. We felt convicted that this first step was less about removing darkness and wrong spiritual mindsets as it was about establishing the right spiritual atmosphere to accomplish the eventual removal of certain detentions of darkness. One of our team members was given a simple three-step process that we felt was to be the focus of this retreat. 1) Seek God’s glory and allow it to fill us as the Temple of the God on earth today. If we are to be used to remove darkness, we need to ask God to give us a special impartation of His light and glory. “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (I Cor. 3:16 NKJV) Just like God filled the physical Temple with His glory, He can fill His present temple (we the Body of Christ) with His glory. “ The priests could not continue their service because of the cloud, for the glorious presence of the Lord filled the Temple of the Lord.” (I Kings.8:11 NLT) 2) Having been filled with His glory, we declare His words over our lives, this community and region of Appalachia . We are the Body of Christ, His “called-out ones” (Ecclesia) who have been given the authority to change our part of the earth to look like heaven by advancing His Kingdom of God on earth. We do this through prayer and declarations. Jesus created through His words. He resisted the forces of darkness through declaring God’s word. It was when Peter was speaking the words of God, the Holy Spirit came on all who heard the message. (Acts10:42-45) Jesus told His disciples that if they would speak to their “mountain” with just a little faith, it would be cast into the sea or be removed as a hindrance. “For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be removed and be cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says.” (Mark 11:23 NKJV)) 3) Ask God to give us pure hearts motivated by the love of God for our community and the Appalachian region. We know that Paul explained in this letter to the Church in Corinth that if something was not motivated by love, it would have no lasting value. So it is when we are motivated by God's love, we can have an eternal impact. “ If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it;[a] but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing.” (I Cor. 13:3 NLT) Also, when we come against darkness and evil with love, it has no recourse. We know that Jesus was the personification of God’s love. When He referred to the evil on or the ruler of this world, He commented that because He was motivated by God's love, the evil had nothing in Him or no access to Him. “…for the ruler of this world is coming, and he has nothing in Me.” (John 14:30 NKVV) I hope you have enjoyed this summary of our retreat. I do pray that it may speak to you as you join us in praying for our community and the Appalachian region. We want to thank you again for all your support for this ministry and our mission to help transform our community and region. We also want to thank those of you who have supported us financially. Blessings, Mike Greider Director of Mission Tri-State Dear Ministry Partner:
This is an amazing time of the year. We are fortunate to live in an area that has beautiful and colorful trees. I wanted to remind you about the upcoming Community Leaders Breakfast that will be taking place on Friday, November 5, at 8:30 a.m. at Lifehouse's Fellowship Hall, 404 Washington Ave., Huntington, WV 25701. Please let us know if you're coming and if you're bringing a friend to make sure we have enough. As I mentioned before, these breakfasts are a wonderful opportunity to hear the good things that are happening, many times behind the scenes, here in Huntington. It's also a great chance to connect with other people who want to make a difference in what's happening in our community. I would like to give you a brief summary of out recent Mission Tri-State Retreat. This is when our Leadership Team gets away to discern what the next step is in God's plan to help our community experience ongoing transformation. This is what we felt God spoke to us during our retreat: God impressed upon our hearts that It is His desire for us to pray the two different ways people see the Gospel, (the Gospel of Salvation and the Gospel of the Kingdom) would be seen as one Gospel of Grace, which would unite the Body of Christ and release the Ekklesia (The Greek word for the “Church” mentioned in Matthew16) with a greater revelation of who they are and what God has called us to do in our work of expanding this Kingdom on earth today. “Simon Peter replied, 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.' Then Jesus answered him, 'Blessed (happy, fortunate, and to be envied) are you, Simon Bar-Jonah. For flesh and blood [men] have not revealed this to you, but My Father Who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter [Greek, Petros–a large piece of rock], and on this rock [Greek, petra–a huge rock like Gibraltar] I will build My church, and the gates of Hades (the powers of the infernal region) shall not overpower it [or be strong to its detriment or hold out against it].'” Matthew 16:16-18 (AMPC) We felt convicted to pray for a deeper revelation of Jesus revealed in Matthew 16 to the Body of Christ as was given to Peter. Out of this revelation comes a unified view of the gospel. The gospel is the good news of God‘s grace of saving us from our sins and adopting us into the family of God. (Eph.4:4-6) As members of the dynastic family of God, we are working with Christ as he rules in us and through us to advance His Kingdom on earth. It is upon this true revelation or massive rock foundation of who Jesus is: “the Messiah or Christ (one who is bringing forth the Kingdom of God) and the Son of the living God (revealing the family of God)” that Jesus will build His Ekklesia. (This Greek word was a governmental term that described a group of people who were called out and given authority to transform their sphere of influence to reflect the values and will of their King.) This is why Jesus concluded this declaration by saying, “And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven. What you forbid on earth will be forbidden in heaven”. We are to pray that this revelation will cause the Ekklesia to have a passion to seek first the Kingdom of God, which will release all the Kingdom provisions for us and our communities. If we go deep into God’s heart and will we will go wide with His purpose and provision. We invite you to join us in praying for this revelation to come to the people of faith in our community. We are praying and working to help the Body of Christ to become a greater blessing to our community. To that end we are looking forward to launching our Market Place groups which will take place next month. I'll be giving you more details on that, for those that may be interested. Again, we thank you for your ongoing support and prayers. Your support helps us to work together with God to see our community continue to be transformed. Yours in Christ's service, Mike Greider Director of Mission Tri-State Dear Ministry Partner:
I hope you're enjoying these cool nights and warm days! There are some truly amazing things happening in the Greater Huntington area. At our last Community Leaders Breakfast we had some very uplifting and encouraging reports. We'd like to invite you to our next Community Leaders Breakfast taking place on Friday, November 5, at 8:30 a.m. at the Lifehouse Fellowship Hall, 404 Washington Ave., Huntington, WV 25701. We will be hosted by Rocky Meadows and his organization. We know you would enjoy hearing firsthand some of these inspiring reports. As we have mentioned before, this is a great time to connect with other people who really have a heart to see things get better in our community. I hope to see you then. Please let us know if you are coming so that we have enough food for everyone. I mentioned in our last letter that we are launching our marketplace small groups. We are calling them Destineer Groups. The purpose of the group is to help people in the marketplace who would like to get together on a regular basis to encourage and uplift one another as they study John Maxwell's “21 Laws of Leadership”. If you are interested in being in one of these groups, please let us know. We'll get you in touch with someone who will invite you to one of the groups. We're also continuing our ministry to our community leaders. We are seeing God being faithful in answering prayers, big and small. One example is how God has been blessing the Huntington Food bank with more resources to help those in need. Come and hear the details at our upcoming Community Leadership Breakfast. We do ask that you pray for our upcoming Mission Tri-State Retreat that will be taking place on Monday, October 18. The purpose of these retreats is for our Leadership Team to get away and discern what God's next step in His plan to bless and transform this community. As you know, Mission Tri-State works at providing different ministers and intercessors to be at each of the City Council meetings. If you think you would be interested in helping out as either a ministry leader or as an intercessor, please call Dr. David Frederick at 304-733-5773. Again, we want to thank you for your support of this ministry. Your prayers and finances make it possible for us to continue our work of connecting the Body of Christ and working together to make our community a better place. Yours in Christ's service, Pastor Mike Greider Dear Ministry Partner:
Hope all of you have had a wonderful summer and had some great family vacation and getaways that will make for fond memories. It has been a busy summer for my wife and I as we are prepared for our daughter‘s wedding which took place a few weekends ago. It was a beautiful time for our family. God answered our prayers! I wanted to share with you what’s coming up as we move into our fall season. Maybe the most important thing is that we plan is to start up our Community Leaders Breakfasts on the first Friday in September (September 3rd) at Christ Temple Church. I’ve had several people asked me when we’re going to return to these breakfast meetings that have been such an encouraging and uplifting time for all of us. We ask that you wear a mask especially if you’ve not been vaccinated. Our Leadership Team is also gearing up for our fall retreat. This is a special time to discern what we believe God is speaking to our ministry in this hour and season. We will give you more information as we solidify that date. Just wanted to let you know that during the summer we have kept up our meeting times with many of our community leaders. These are always special times because so often we have an opportunity to see God move as we join our faith with theirs. It continues to be a blessing to our leaders to have others come alongside them and intercede for their area of influence. As always we continue to see God‘s hand move in amazing ways. We have continued to meet every Friday morning at Heritage Farm Chapel to continue our prayer time for our community and the Appalachian region. These are precious times, because we sense God‘s presence in such a tangible way. It’s evident to us that what God is doing in our community is a reflection of what He wants to do throughout all of Appalachia. We are excited about our opportunity to gather marketplace leaders. We believe that God is leading us to begin a new Market Place Kingdom Network. Right now this team is connecting twice a month as we pray and discuss how to move forward in ministering to many of our key marketplace leaders. We also believe that when the time is right, we are to launch a monthly Marketplace Leaders Luncheon. We believe these will look similar to our Community Leaders Breakfasts. Our hope is to gather faith-filled marketplace leaders for the purpose of praying for each other and encouraging these leaders as they seek God‘s will and purpose for their organizations. We will keep you posted as things continue to unfold in that arena. We continue to see God working in mighty ways behind the scenes. One of our main focuses in this hour is to pray that God places the right people in the right place with the right gifts and attitudes so that through them He can bless our community and region. We believe this is part of our mandate to advance His kingdom through his “Ekklesia” or church. As always, we want to thank you for partnering with us. We thank you for your prayers and offerings to make it possible for this ministry to continue to move forward and uniting the body of Christ so that we can become a greater blessing to our community and region. Our goal is to see God’s name glorified as His kingdom comes and His will is done on our part of the earth as it is in heaven. Yours in Christ's Service, Pastor Mike Greider Dear Ministry Partner:
I hope all of you are beginning to enjoy some of this beautiful springtime weather. It is so refreshing to see everything bud with such vibrant life. As some of you know, our team meets on Friday mornings at 8:00 AM at Heritage Farm Chapel to continue to pray for this community and region. We have had some truly inspiring encounters with God. I would like to share with you a vision that was given to one of our team members and our perceived interpretation. The vision was an individual seeing himself looking up the main valley of Heritage Farm. He saw a fire that was vibrant with fluctuating colors. The fire had blazing flames of blue, orange, white and yet it was not consuming anything. As he looked up the valley, he saw I-beams in the shape of a cross. The cross was dark blue, very bright and somewhat polished. The words that he heard were, “When people come to observe the fire, they will encounter the cross.” We believe that the Holy Spirit gave this interpretation of the dream: The fire is the result of God’s people being fully surrendered to the leadership of the Holy Spirit consuming them as they fulfill their kingdom assignment. This kingdom assignment is bringing about God's plan for the transformation of Heritage Farm which we believe is a symbol of our community and the Appalachian region. When people come to see what God is doing through His people, they point to the grace of God released through the cross of Jesus Christ. That grace saves and transforms for God’s glory! We believe this is a time when we are to pray that God’s people surrender to the leadership of the Holy Spirit so each can discover their “Kingdom Assignment”. As they move forward in this assignment by the grace of God, they will refuse to take any personal credit. Rather they give God the credit, which is made possible by the finished work of the cross so that God gets all the glory. We are continuing to pray with many of our community leaders. Currently these prayer times are by conference calls. However, we hope by this fall we will be able to return to in-person prayer times. Also, this September we plan to start up our monthly Community Leaders Breakfasts. Also, we are continuing to build a network of “Kingdom Market Place Leaders”. Our goal is to connect with those market place leaders who want to better understand their “Kingdom Assignment” as it relates to what God is doing in our community. As this grows, we plan to pray for and with these leaders as we do with our Community Leaders. In the fall we hope to begin Marketplace Leaders Luncheons. These luncheons will be similar to our Community Leaders Breakfasts. Our goal is to encourage, connect and inspire these leaders. We want to thank all of you for joining with this ministry as we pray and work for the transformation of our community and region. A special thanks for those who continue to support this ministry with your contribution and prayers! Yours in Christ's service, Pastor Mike Greider Director of Mission Tri-State Hope all of you are handling this blustery winter weather. For some of us, this is challenging on top of the issues we must deal with daily concerning the COVID-19 pandemic.
Some of you are aware of the fact that Mission Tri-State recently held a retreat where our core team spent one day just seeking the Lord’s face to discern what God might want to speak to us in this hour. As I had mentioned in an earlier letter, we normally do this in the fall. However, because of COVID-19, we delayed it until this past January. Our team continues to pray with our community leaders throughout the week usually through a conference call. As usual, we have seen some amazing answers to prayers. As one man said, “When we start praying, we start noticing these amazing coincidences. When we stop praying, we noticed those coincidences seem to stop as well.” God has called Mission Tri-State to lead a prayer movement for this community. However, in the last few months He has impressed upon our Leadership Team that we are to expand our prayers for all of Appalachia. This would explain why this recent retreat was even more important than usual because we believe that God was speaking to us for our community and region. The following is the summary of what we believe we received from the Lord concerning our prayer focus for this community and all of Appalachia: “We believe that God is moving us into a new season of spiritual warfare to remove an important element of spiritual darkness over this region and community. We were reminded to put on our armor regularly and in some cases several times a day. As we move forward, our focus is to be on abiding in Jesus, being hidden in Him. All that we do should be motivated out of God’s love. “We are to repent of our self-reliance and admit that we don’t know how to do what God wants to accomplish through us. This deep dependency and intimacy with Him begins when we allow Him to remove the spirits of self-reliance, self-righteousness, fear of man and of self-justification. As we draw near to Him, the fire of His passion will ignite us. This fiery passion will draw others to Him.” We do hope that you will continue to join us as we pray for our community and region. I would also like to ask that you continue to pray about our new outreach to Christian Marketplace leaders. We are in the process of establishing a “Kingdom Marketplace Network”. If you know someone who might be interested in being a part of this new initiative, please let us know. Our goal is to pray with different business leaders so that we might see God move in their business and in the communitywide marketplace in greater way. Again, we thank you for your support of this ministry. Your prayers do make a difference. To those who are able to support us financially, thank you very much. Yours in Christ's service, Mike Greider Director of Mission Tri-State Dear Ministry Partner:
Hope that all of you had a wonderful Christmas and an enjoyable New Year’s Day! I’m sure we will all be relieved when the COVID-19 crisis is behind us. I’m sure you are praying for God’s grace for those who have been impacted by this virus. Let us continue to pray that God will bless the rollout of all the vaccinations that hopefully can turn the tide. You may have noticed that I have not sent out any newsletters in the last several months because much of what this ministry does has been put on hold because of COVID-19. We believe that this new year holds many positive promises that we can all look forward to. In fact, God has spoken to our Leadership Team that we are entering a season of acceleration. Even with the limitations of COVID-19, our team has continued to minister to our community leaders via conference calls. As always, we continue to see God’s hand move in response to the faithful prayers of His people. The following include some of the answered prayers we saw this past year:
Of course, we have seen many other answers to prayers. We have seen God bless our community as we join our faith community with our community leaders asking for His blessing and provision so that His name could be glorified. We were unable to do our normal fall retreat because of COVID-19. However, God has been speaking to our Leadership Team about us entering a season in which God wants to pour out the answers to many prayers from the last several years for our community and this region. We believe that God wants to remove the spirit of religion that has been a hindrance to this region. This will involve a season of spiritual warfare but with a time of greater revelation of God’s goodness and the Lordship of Jesus Christ. Please join us as we pray for this upcoming Retreat which will be taking place on January 22. If you feel called to join us, then please respond to this letter. God is also called us to begin a new network of Kingdom marketplace leaders. Right now, because of COVID-19, we are beginning this new dimension of our ministry primarily through a conference call twice a month. It is a great opportunity for committed Christians in the marketplace to connect and learn more how we can be a positive influence for Christ in the marketplace. We are currently studying together Ed Silvoso’s book, “Anointed for the Marketplace”. If you feel that you would like to be part of this new network, please respond to this letter or give us a call. We are looking forward to the time in which we can renew our monthly Community Leaders Breakfasts. These have been such a source of encouragement and connectivity for the leaders of our community. We would like to thank you again for your prayers and your financial support for this ministry. You enable us to be God's hands to connect and empower the body of Christ to be a greater blessing in our community. In Christ’s service, Mike Greider Director of Mission Tri-State 304-634-7593 mike.greider@missiontristate.com |
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