New City Baptist Church Toronto

New City Baptist Church Toronto

Thanks to some excellent Challies design work, the New City Baptist site is now up and running!

Here is What Al Mohler Has to Say About You, if You Have Had an Abortion

What Makes Abortion Plausible? What Makes Abortion Unthinkable?, Part Five:

"You know, there may be someone reading this today, there may be someone reading this ten years from now - and you are someone who has experienced an abortion. There may be someone who has experienced not only one, but multiple abortions. There may be someone here who is haunted by empty footsteps. The sight of every stroller and crib brings a pang of conscience.

I have good news for you. I know who you are. You are a murderer. I have good news for you. I know who you are. You are a sinner. I have good news for you. There is a savior. I have other news for you. You are in the company of fellow murderers.

You see, the story of the Bible, the story of the Gospel is that when Jesus Christ was sent by the Father, those Jesus was sent to save, killed him. Jesus himself told the parable of the wicked tenants within the vineyard. Because of their wickedness - a picture of our human wickedness - when the vineyard owner sends his own son, the tenants killed him!

I want to tell you, if you have yourself chosen abortion, if you have experienced abortion - you are a murderer. But you are in the company of fellow murderers with blood on our hands because sinful humanity killed the sinless Son of God.

If that is where the story ended, then death would have its victory, sin would have its victory, and that would be the end of it. We would have nothing to say and we would just go home and live out whatever remains of our lives in the despair of a people who know no hope.

But that is not where the story ends, because that is where the Gospel turns and tells us that even in light of the fact that we are sinners beyond even our own imagination to understand our sin, even though we rob God of His glory, even though we do everything we can and everything within our power to do new ways of doing evil, even though the Apostle Paul makes clear - "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" - God loved us so much! It was His purpose in the very beginning before we ever existed. He knew us and He loved us, before we were formed in the world He had a plan for us and He sent His Son, to die on the Cross, to shed His blood, to pay the penalty for our sin, to pay a price that we could not pay, to die in our place, and yes, by that one death, to accomplish salvation for sinners."

Two New Churches Are Born!

Tim recently posted on our longstanding prayer request at GFC for own meeting place for free. That request is one of many we gladly make every week as we gather to pray. Another thing we prayed about for many years was church planting.
Last Sunday night New City Baptist Church launched in downtown Toronto. It was a humbling experience to watch this new church be born. John Bell is leading the work and preached an excellent message from Matthew 16 challenging all of us to live like the Gospel is true. One of my favorite lines from his preaching: “Do you know what our biggest handicap is in evangelism? Who human beings are under sin.”
The Lord has been with this work so far and I cannot wait to see what He will do in the months and years to come.
Three weeks ago, we were able to launch a second church. Grace Chapel is pastored by Habib Sakr in Markham, a suburban area just north of Toronto. This work had a decidedly different birth than New City, but the Lord is clearly in it. Habib immigrated to Canada from Lebanon and was saved by God along the way. After many years of faithful associate pastor work, the time came for him to launch a new reformed and Baptistic church and amazingly, the Lord has gotten them up and going quickly. We were there for there first service where my brother preached an excellent sermon from Hebrews 11 on the faith of Noah. My favorite line from that sermon? “There was Noah before Noah. It was not like he had some model to follow!” That brought faith as humble reliance on God into a new light.
Please pray for us as we help both these churches move ahead. The lack of blogging around here has been in large part to the added work of helping these works begin. That has been absolutely joyful labour!

PRAY FOR IAN!

Woodbull Family: Happy SECOND YEAR Woodbull Anniversary... well...

Grace Fellowship Church is so glad to support the ministry of Dr. Charles Woodrow in Mozambique. I woke up this morning to an email from Charles asking for prayer.

The Turnbull family moved to Mozambique in 2006 to work with the Woodrows. This past week their 12-year old son, Ian, contracted cerebral malaria and had to be rushed to South Africa. He is in a very poor state.

The link will take you to the blog that the kids of the Woodrow and Turnbull family set up over one year ago. The particular post I am linking to will describe some of Ian's ordeal.

The Cyber Hymnal ™ Has a New Site - Update Your Bookmarks, Kids!

The Cyber Hymnal ™

Clearly one of the very best and most useful sites on the internet, Cyberhymnal was hit with some unfortunate stuff over the last couple of months.

They have rebounded and launched an updated site - please take a visit and link to it so others will find it.

From their main page:

Many have asked what will hap­pen to the do­main name “cyberhymnal.org.” The le­gal owner (Word.Net) is un­will­ing to re­lin­quish it, so we can’t use the old URL. In ad­di­tion, our site search fea­ture will not be ful­ly func­tion­al un­til search en­gines have had time to re-in­dex the site at its new URL.

Please spread the word about the new URL & ask Web sites to up­date their links! God bless…

How Can I Know if I Am a Christian?

SermonAudio.com - Wheat or Chaff - Which are you?

This is the last sermon preached by my dear friend (and father-in-law), Pastor Bob Hueni. It is a passionate call by a 75 year old pastor for all people to turn to God in Christ.

He preached it last summer and my family has been blessed in listening to it several times since then. I cannot commend this to you enough.

Toronto Spiritual Life Convention

GTSLC Home

The Toronto Spiritual Life Convention is almost here - it begins this Sunday night (Jan 18) and runs through Wednesday (Jan 21).

The Sunday meeting starts at 6:00PM. All other meetings begin at 7>30PM.

This year's guest preacher is Colin Smith, pastor of The Orchard in Arlington Heights, Illinois. He will be bringing us four messages from Romans 8 - what a glorious chapter!

Once again, all meetings will be held at The People's Church (374 Sheppard Ave E).

Hope to see you there!

Thought You Were Having a Bad Day?

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Toronto Pastors Fellowship - January Meeting

Toronto Pastors Fellowship:

When the Christian ministry is defined by worldly standards, it is often the most simple duties that are neglected.

Several years ago I asked Pastor Carl Muller to teach a section of my pastoral theology course on ministering to the elderly, sick and dying. Carl was a natural choice for this—he has modelled a caring ministry for many years. Thus, we were thrilled he agreed to present on this topic and help all of us remember that 'it is more blessed to give than to receive...' and to not forget 'the least of these.'

So, join us on January 19th, and plan now to take another day off that week instead of Monday.

You will not want to miss this meeting for a second reason—we have a very exciting announcement to make regarding our annual conference taking place on June 1-3!

Workshops on Biblical Exposition - About the Workshops

The Simeon Trust is coming to Toronto to put on a Preaching Workshop

"The purpose of the workshop is to increase the pastor’s confidence and ability in rightly handling God’s Word. We also want them to leave convinced that God’s Word is powerful and anxious to preach it to their people. A successful Workshop on Biblical Exposition has three essential components:

Instruction–clear, simple principles of exposition for interpreting and explaining the message of the Scriptures in an accurate and accessible way.

Small Group Practice–hands-on groups made up of 6-9 men who come having prepared sermon outlines for certain texts and are able to interact with the other men and an instructor to hone their skills

Model Exposition–a gifted local pastor who models how exposition can be done well by giving one of his own expository sermons."

Specific information on the Toronto workshop being held at Richview Baptist Church is available here.