We’ve stopped posting to this site as we work hard to create an even better one. Here’s the designer’s pic of the new home page. What do you think?

Unleash Site Design

Fellowship sent a team to North East Nigeria to visit with the Bible translation team, meet the Dadiya people, and take part in the showing of the new Jesus Film.

FBC’s North Congregation Pastor Will Crawford delivers the report in this video.

We had the chance to meet with our partner Caleb of Haiti’s Hosean International Ministries while he was in town last week. Caleb explains the current situation and efforts needed to help the Haitian people.

In this video - Rosie Stephens, Global Mission Pastor and Caleb Lucien, President HIM.

Glen Woodruff, FBC member and experienced disaster responder, gives a first hand account of conditions and relief efforts in Haiti. Additional topics:

• HIM (Hosean International Ministries) status
• The Church’s role in disaster response.

Fellowship Bible Church Haiti Update Meeting from Paul Chapman on Vimeo.

Haiti Disaster - Fellowship Bible Church Update

We’ve joined the Evangelical Church of West Africa, The Seed Company, and The Jesus Film in a partnership to bring God’s Word to the Dadyia people of Nigeria. A small team from Fellowship will travel to Dadyia City in March to formalize our commitment and start relationship building.  Click here to visit the new ‘Dadyia’ page on FellowshipUnleashed.

Over 200 people attended our kickoff night to hear details and celebrate this mult-year project. Here’s a video of the event:

Dadyia Bible Translation Project Kickoff from Paul Chapman on Vimeo.

• Fellowship has sent $25,000 from our Benevolence Fund to World Vision to help provide relief assistance. World Vision has 400 staff on the ground doing Community Development work and have redeployed for the relief effort. These videos are from the W.V. leaders in the U.S. and Canada:

• Fellowship will provide 100 water filters through efforts with Engineering Ministries International (eMi) a non-profit Christian organization made of architects and engineers.
• Fellowship has also sent $8,000 to Hosean International Ministries (HIM) to help provide sleeping mats, food and transportation to evacuees leaving Port au Prince to Pignon.

Click here for audio interview on January 13, 2010

with Arkansan Caleb Lucien, missionary in Haiti.

If you wish to give towards the Haiti relief efforts, you may write a check to Fellowship and in the memo section indicate it is for the Benevolence Fund.

Mailing Address

Fellowship Bible Church

P.O. Box 7123

Little Rock, AR 72223-7123

Phone: 501-224-7171 / 501-823-1389

The thoughts in these books keep coming up in our meetings:

WHEN HELPING HURTS

Churches and individual Christians typically have faulty assumptions about the causes of poverty, resulting in the use of strategies that do considerable harm to poor people and themselves. When Helping Hurts (WHH)provides foundational concepts, clearly articulated general principles and relevant applications.  The result is an effective and holistic ministry to the poor, not a truncated gospel.

The authors are leaders in The Chalmers Center, an organization that seeks to Help the Church, Help the Poor Help Themselves. Their book is the introduction to some great information they make available for free on the Chalmers site. The Unleash Team is using WHH to develop our future actions.

TRUTH AND TRANSFORMATION

In this landmark book, international scholar and author Vishal Mangalwadi offers a radical vision for the gospel’s power to heal a society. With insights drawn from real-life struggles against corruption and years of study, he delves into the ideological roots of social oppression. Reform, he argues, is never without controversy. Yet, reforming a culture’s values is a necessary precursor to lasting liberation and hope.

I can’t stop thinking about this book. Vishal’s story’s are brilliantly told to illustrate points. This book comes at a perfect time for us as we are engaging with leaders in a few countries who are seeking change.

This is what ‘Unleash’ looks like:

FBC member Michael Baxley is a photographer by profession. He wanted to use his talent to bless families who could not afford his service.  Michael organized a group of 7 other pro’s to partner with the Passport to Success after-school program (which encourages strong family involvement) for a ‘Help Portrait’ event:

Help Portrait is a movement of photographers who are using their time, equipment and expertise to give back to those who are less fortunate this holiday season.

I love this video of their work:

In September we brought together community stakeholders across Arkansas to host a conference, in partnership with Prison Fellowship, the Department of Community Correction, and the Arkansas Department of Correction. The purpose of the event was to get educated, equipped, and networked to reduce recidivism (rate of return to prison).

Several hundred local and State agency employees as well as church leaders attended. We had the good fortune of capturing the plenary sessions on video and the breakouts on audio. Many have been waiting on these to use for training.

We’ve uploaded the videos and are working on the breakout audios. Click here for our Out4Life channel.

Fellowship Guatemala is a ministry of Iglesia Biblica run by pastor Daniel Bran. Daniel and his family spent last year in Little Rock going through FBC’s Residency Program and are now back in Guatemala city starting their own Church Planting Residency Program with a mission to “Equip, Plant, and Transform…”.

Monday was a big day for Fellowship Guatemala with two big meetings:

I) Back to School

We piled in Daniel’s van and headed across town to SETECA, the largest Spanish speaking seminary in Latin America, to meet with president Jim Adams. SECECA has a close association with Dallas Theological Seminary, which is where many of FBC’s pastors and Residents studied.

After catching up (Daniel and Teddy are SETECA graduates and former students of Jim’s), Daniel and David Watson pitched the vision for Fellowship Guatemala…. planting i2 Churches in Central America. Jim liked the idea and appreciated the progress made in the last months. Jim then agreed to help fill a needed component in the program - insuring the Residents had a Biblical understanding for the i2 vision (making a difference in the world). This is a great thing for both Fellowship Guatemala and SETECA. The former benefiting from the academic and teaching expertise of the seminary and the latter having a relationship with a good, externally focused, church who is planting churches. This gives SETECA an excellent place to refer students for the additional training needed to plant a church.

II) Lunch with the Prado Family

Eduardo’s family owns the Guatemala campus of Atlantic International University. They are Christ followers and a joy to be around. At the restaurant we ran into one of Eduardo’s former students who was celebrating a birthday.  This man grew up very poor, acquiring his first pair of shoes when he was 14. Looking to be in his 50’s, he has earned an MBA and owns his own company. Watching the interaction between former student and teacher made me like Eduardo even more.

At lunch Daniel and David pitched the Church Planting vision and asked for Eduardo to join the cause. I captured the clip below after the interaction: