September 2020 Prayer Needs from Bob and Susan Engel

Here are my prayer requests for September:

We are pursuing a grant with the Lily Foundation called, Thriving Congregations.  Please pray that we would find favor with the Foundation.  The grant would allow us to equip 12 church planting movements at 3 different stages in their movement - Emerging, Developing, and Maturing.    

Church planting movement led by Returning Citizens update.  I met with the TUMI National Program Director for Prison Fellowship (Audrey) to present a pilot program called, The Genesis Project (T.G.P).  T.G.P. is a vision of a Returning Citizen (Matt) to identify, equip, release, and embrace to plant churches with Returning Citizens.  It's a "prison to pulpit" process.  I am at the next step to connect Audrey and Matt by Zoom.  Please pray, 1) that we hear clearly from the Lord regarding this partnership 2) that others would partner in this pilot program with the belief that this would lead to a movement of churches planted and pastored by Returning Citizens.    

It looks like we will be facilitating our first Evangel School of Urban Church Planting, Dean Training online at the beginning of October.  We are praying for 40 church planting movement leaders to register to be certified to facilitate Evangel Schools in their context.  Here are some of the connections the Lord is directing our way:  Liberia Monrovia West Africa, Charismatic Episcopal Church Mid-Atlantic Region, Mexico, CTV-Freedom Initiative (Returning Citizens church planting movement), East India movement in the U.S., and others.  Pray for us to complete the final details of migrating all the training to our online platform.  Pray to meet or exceed our desire for 40 leaders to be certified as Evangel Deans.    

I am in different phases of M.O.U.'s with 6 church planting movements.  One of these, which is almost finalized, is with the Bangladesh Evangelical Bible Church.  Their vision is 30,000 new baptized believers, congregated in 10,000 new churches by 2023.  Bangladesh:  1 in 17 live in poverty; 8th most populated country in the world; .4% are Christian with the major religion being Muslim (89%).  Pray as I finalize and begin our partnership to reach their vision.  Pray also for partners to provide a "financial boost" for the 100 evangelists/church planters we will equip.

Pray that the Spirit of the Lord would protect and draw the Engels closer to Himself in Christ Jesus.  

 "...not of those who shrink back..." Hebrews 10:39