Phil Wiebe, pastor and church planter at Lakeview Church in Stansbury Park, Utah, reports on the growth this new USMB church has seen since it officially launched Easter Sunday.
We spent from June 2018 to mid-April 2019 preparing, training and building a team of people to buy into the mission of reaching the local Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) community in Stansbury Park, which is 85 percent LDS.
Our church plant, Lakeview Church, officially launched Easter Sunday. We had 223 people come through our doors. We had sent out a mailer to the entire county for our launch, inviting people to come join us, to which we have seen plenty of responses. Many of our guests on Easter have joined us and are beginning to plug into our church by joining groups, signing up for activities, investing in ministries or participating in some of our classes.
Our average attendance since Easter has been 135, which is over 50 more people than our pre-launch average. In the four weeks after Easter, over 70 guests have signed up or plugged into life at Lakeview.
The new-to-Lakeview group that my wife, Melissa, and I are leading has seven new families. These are people from all different backgrounds, churched, unchurched, LDS and church-damaged—and all of them are getting more and more excited about the gospel of Jesus.
Watching our core launch team get excited about what Jesus is doing has been significant for me. Each Sunday, we are seeing LDS people come to our church and hear the gospel. We are excited to see where Jesus leads us and hope to see some people get baptized this summer.
We have been blessed by our partnerships with other churches as well, whether through financial support or prayer. Our relationships with partner churches have both empowered and encouraged our team to move forward. We have even been blessed with summer interns: Caleb Rempel from Hilsboro (Kansas) MB Church, James Friesen from Community Bible Church in Olathe, Kansas, and Mackenzie Hoffman from Capital Church in Salt Lake City who has decided she wants to be part of USMB.
I am personally delighted at the opportunity to be a part of developing future leaders of the church as my career began as an intern at South Mountain Community Church in Salt Lake City. It was through this experience that I found my feet in ministry which eventually lead me to where I am today. It is my hope that through this summer experience we can be a part of developing future leaders for our conference.
Along with that, we have several churches coming out this summer to provide support to our team as we expect some challenges in our first summer as many people are out of town and traveling. We love the chance to share about reaching the LDS community, being in fellowship with other believers and experiencing some relief in ministry through hands on support.
Thank you for praying for us! God is on the move in our community, and we are blessed to have you partner with us.
