Ekklesiae presents "A Conversation in Concert"

Register here to confirm your attendance. You'll receive a link to the YouTube livestream prior to the event, free of charge. A love offering, however, will be taken to support the artists & the work of Ekklesiae.

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Ekklesiae presents a "conversation in concert" regarding how Christ transforms or confronts the way we relate to the present age and one another...and why this matters. An intimate group of intergenerational leaders will dialogue about this, while singer-songwriter, Ken Medema, and spoken word artist, Jermaine Hughes, respond powerfully through music and poetry. Prepare to be blessed!

Donating Masks to Nigeria

In response to great need, we are gathering cloth masks to send to Rev. Sunday Agang to share with the ECWA Seminary and neighboring community in Jos, Nigeria.  We are partnering with Grace Fellowship and a local mask organization and will be collecting masks until Friday, September 11.  If you have access to cloth masks, either from making them yourself or from another source, we welcome your contribution.  

Masks can be dropped off at church (1224 Fairfax Ave, SF on Tues-Thurs 9:00-3:00) or at the Low's (15 Moncada Way, SF).  Please contact Pastor Cindi or the Lows before dropping off masks to ensure that they will be there to receive them.

If you are interested in volunteering for a mask organization that is producing masks, Masks for All California (MFACA) provides materials and invites volunteers to cut and prepare fabric, to sew masks and/or to deliver materials in SF.  Their Bay Area volunteers have generously dedicated all of their current production towards our gift to Nigeria.  If you join now, there is an option for your efforts to go just towards this gift or to continue on as a volunteer towards other initiatives.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact Co Wong or Karen Yee.

Colleen's Note on Supporting Sunday Agang

Thanks be to God for graciously allowing us to send a total of $6110 to Sunday Agang for our 1st quarterly special offering to support him, his family, ECWA, and their neighboring community, during this time of the pandemic. Thank you to all who faithfully pray for Sunday and generously contributed to this offering.

In his response to us, Sunday said, 

As the Scriptures say, "They share freely and give generously to the poor. Their good deeds will be remembered for ever." To God be the glory! "For God is the one who provides seed for the farmer and then bread to eat. In the same way, he will provide and increase your resources and then produce a great harvest of generosity in you." (2 Cor. 9:9-10).

Paul says, "So two things will result from this ministry of giving--the needs of the believers in Jerusalem (Nigeria) will be met, and they will joyfully express their thanks to God. As a result of your ministry, they will give glory to God...."(2 Cor. 9:12-13). 

This is to underscore the fact that you have fulfilled God's intention for creating us: "Everything comes from God, everything exist by his power, and everything is intended for his glory."(Rom. 11:36). We are intended for God's glory.

Many thanks to all of you who have fully participated and have willingly contributed to the success of this ministry of a generous act of giving to the praise of God's glory! My family and I and all those who will benefit from your gift to us, deeply give thanks to God for such a wonderful expression of Christ's love, exemplified through this gift too wonderful for words!

Peace of Christ be with you all,

Sunday and family

Letter from Sunday Agang

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

I bring you greetings in the name of our Lord and Saviours Jesus Christ. You have been in our thoughts and prayers. I hope you are staying safe. My primary aim in this email is to acknowledge, with deep appreciation a receipt of all of your magnanimous contributions to our welfare during these very challenging times in the history of our modern world. For instance, the coronavirus pandemic has created a situation of extraordinary economic uncertainty and unexplainable hardships. In my country, Nigeria, the coronavirus pandemic has added insult to injury. We have been struggling with an economic situation that was not trekling  down to the grassroots, the poorest of the poor, a context of enormous social and political injustices. As a result, the floodgates of violence, war, murder and killings of the vulnerable have been thrown open. Our youths, who are capable of working and earning a dignified living wage are denied such opportunities because the country is badly governed. Many of them are agitated and frustrated to the extent of becoming drug addicts. 

Thus, without mincing words, I can say that your enthusiastic and compassionate contributions have played a significant role in helping me provide palliatives to the marginalised and oppressed in my community and beyond. In sharing your contributions and meeting the needs of the needy, I have been able to demonstrate to a divided society that Christians can collapse the walls of partition and create a new narrative: a civilisation of love and inclusiveness, in a social context of ethnic and tribal divisions. 

Basically, you have profoundly thrilled my heart! For it is in the midst of the current situation of extraordinary economic uncertainty, a time when many people across the globe are overwhelmingly afraid; and lack compassion that you have shown me you care for my welfare and the welfare of the people God has called me to serve, to teach them how to be obedient to Christ. Since April 2020 to date, I have watched with tremendous admiration how your ardent love, compassion, kindness and generosity have evident your strong faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, it is your strong faith in Christ that has enabled you to overcome the temptation to allow fear to numb you and cause you to lack compassion. Your ministry of giving during these hard times has taught us, in clear terms, that you have recognised beyond any reasonable doubt that "God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church.” (Ephesians 1:12) You have helped us to realise, afresh, God’s intent in creating us: “God’s purpose was that we…who…trust in Christ would bring praise and glory to God.” (Ephesians 1:22) 

Therefore, I want you to know that I deeply appreciate all of your concrete act of giving to the praise and glory of God. In so doing, you have enabled us to serve the saints through meeting our financial obligations even as schools continue to remain closed. From March to July, our needs for foodstuff, staff and faculty's salaries and wages, medical needs and so on have been met by your wonderful expression of Christ’s love to us. 

As Paul puts, “Ever since I first heard of your strong faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for God’s people everywhere, I have not stopped thanking God for you. I pray for you constantly, asking God, the glorious Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, to give you spiritual wisdom and insight so that you might grow in your knowledge of God. I pray that your hearts will be flooded with light so that you can understand the confident hope he has given to those he called—his holy peoples who are his rich and glorious inheritance.” (Ephesians 1:15-18 NLT)  It may interest you to know that all the people that you have enabled us to show the love and compassion of God to are also praying this prayer for you. 

I must say that you have taught us, afresh, what Paul means when he said, “God has put all things under the authority of Christ and has made him head over all things for the benefit of the church.” (Ephesians 1:22) The reason: “He did this so we would praise and glory him.” (Ephesians 1:14). As the author of, Praying Through the Psalm, Yohanna Katanacho points out, “When I praise you [God], I see the walls of evil falls, with all humanity witnessing the miracle (Joshua 6)…. When we exalt the Lord, righteousness spreads, and sin flees.” (p. 195). Your continuous support since April 2020 to date have multiplied thanksgiving and praise to God.

As schools continue to remain closed and with no school fees coming in to meet our financial, foodstuff and medical needs, I would like you to stand with us in praying that God will open new doors of support for us to enable us pay our salaries and wages, and generally cushion the devastating effect of COVID-19, which is ravaging the entire globe. We need regular givers to survive as a theological seminary that is in the volatile region of Nigeria. 

Thank you so very much for all of your partnership in the gospel. All of your contributions have been deeply appreciated by my family, our institution's faculty, staff, students and our needy neighbours at our home town in Kafanchan. “So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.” (Ephesians 1:6) May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you and all yours grace and peace during these trying times. Amen

Your Brother,

Sunday Bobai Agang

Pastor Cindi's Note

Beloved Redeemer,

Thanks so much to those of you who took the time to send your reflections to me last week.  I was very encouraged to see God at work in our midst and felt  joined hearing your struggles.  Hearing from you helped me to enter back into ministry after vacation and not feel alone in these days of sheltering in place.  

As I prayed I was led to Phil 3:7-16.  This led me to pray for us that we could have the freedom to have a single minded and single hearted focus on Christ.  I prayed that we would know Christ, the power of his resurrection, the participation in his suffering, becoming like him in his death, so that we might attain resurrection from the dead as we navigate this pandemic and see racial injustice.

Some themes that surfaced were:

Seeing God at work in:  

  • Midweek Groups engaging in Scripture, experiencing mutual love and affection, and the grace that we can still connect, even though it’s limited. 

  • Families deepening relationships with each other as they grow in marriage and parenting and have opportunities for more time together. 

  • Experiencing the Lord’s provision and ability to be generous.

  • Surfacing need/ desire for racial justice

  • Deepening Partnerships, especially through the Pandemic Fund through partners like: Cornerstone, Rincons, Shekinah, Sunday, Rise Families, John Eddins

  • Increasing ability/ space to be limited, vulnerable, broken

  • Love for one another over long period of time

  • Concrete expressions of care like groceries, cards, food, and caring for each others’ homes. 

  • Our Youth

Struggles: 

  • Weariness, apathy, malaise caused by both navigating unknown, uncertainty, no clear end 

  • Weariness, deadness of trying to connect over zoom

  • Grief and loss from not being able to gather, not sharing life

  • Isolation

May our Lord continue to lead us in these days to experience his abundant love in gratefulness and struggle.

Grace and Peace,
Cindi

Resources from Boomers and Millennials Part II

Craig Wong and others shared a few resources from his time with us. They were put into the Zoom chat and I’ve pasted them below: