January 2022 Newsletter

Happy New Year- what will 2022 bring? It’s certainly starting as another year of uncertainty, in which all of our plans are tentative. It’s a good reminder that we always need to hold our plans lightly. We never know what tomorrow will bring, as God’s word reminds us. No matter what this year brings, we know that God is with us in it. And no matter what the circumstances, we can always use everything that comes our way as an opportunity to know Jesus better and to become more like Him. So with that in mind, here is some of what we think and hope to do in 2022.

New Role in Communitas Europe
We have been appointed Staff Care and Development Directors for western Europe. We will be providing pastoral care for and looking out for the needs of our fellow missionaries who are spread over 40 cities in Europe. Reaching out to check in, offer prayer and a listening ear, connecting people with others who can provide encouragement or support, providing training opportunities, retreats and resources are some of the things we’ll be doing. Much of this work will be remote, even post covid restrictions, but we will be traveling for retreats and conferences and to visit in person as we can and as needed. We were able to go to France in September to meet in person with the Western Europe Operations Team for planning and strategising. This was our first in person gathering with fellow Communitas missionaries since pre-covid. It was so wonderful to be together to work, to dream, to worship, and just to be in each other’s presence. It made us realise just how much we are all missing, and how staff care is more crucially needed than ever as we all deal with the effects of the pandemic. Please pray for us as we move forward in this new responsibility. It is a privilege to be able to serve our fellow missionaries in this way and we want to do it well.

Emotionally Health Spirituality Course
One of the tools we will be using is the Emotionally Healthy Spirituality course by Pete and Geri Scazzero. The premise of the course is that many of us are held back in our spiritual development because we have not learned to grow up emotionally. The course brings together spiritual practices, like setting aside time twice daily to meet with God ,with tools to help us understand and grow in emotional maturity, to help us really get below the surface in our spiritual journey. We are starting our first 8 week course on February first with several Communitas missionaries serving in different countries. We will meet online for the next 8 Tuesday evenings as a small group working prayerfully through the material. We are running this both as a help for their own spiritual growth, and as a a demonstration of a tool they may use in their local communities. We also will be offering this course to church leaders here in Ireland in the months ahead. If you’d like to know more, get in touch with us.

And speaking of here in Ireland…
Covid restrictions continue to impact every aspect of life and ministry here. These are constantly changing. At present, congregations can meet in church buildings, with masks, social distancing, and no congregational singing. House churches and start ups meeting in homes can have people from no more than 4 households (this is the rule for any gathering in a home). Across Europe, life is generally less open than in most of the US. It is a difficult time to plant new churches, and to sustain existing ones. It has also become much more difficult in recent years for full time missionaries to get visas for Ireland. To gain a visa you must show that you are coming to work for an established church which has a building and a budget to pay you, and that the position you will be filling could not be filled by someone already in the country. This is very difficult for church planters! We had asked you previously to pray for a young family who were raising support to work with us in Celbridge. Their visa and subsequent appeal was denied, even though we had found a church who agreed to sponsor them. They have had to change plans and are now in Northern Ireland, which as part of the UK has different rules for entry. Once again, plans don’t always come to pass. Yet these times bring unique opportunities. Please pray for us and other missionaries and church leaders here to see these and find creative ways to reach and to disciple people, and to strengthen and encourage one another.

IMPORTANT New Address for Donations

Please note that the address for donations has changed. The new address is
Communitas International
PO Box 60543
Industry, CA 91716-0543

You can find up to date information on ways to donate here.

There has been some difficulty with the USPS not forwarding mail promptly from the old address. If you sent in a check to the Lewiston address in the past few months which has not been processed, please get in touch with us directly. We are so sorry if this has caused you any inconvenience. We are so grateful for each gift, for each time we are lifted in prayer by you our ministry partners. Thank you. Whatever 2022 brings you, we pray you know God’s peace and presence in new ways and that you rejoice as you grow to know Him more deeply.

Here is an interesting article about Arthur Guinness who was born in Celbridge the town were we live. It is a pity that Guinness is not still in the Guinness family today.

Picture a young man sitting in a large cathedral in Ireland with his wife and small children. He lives around the time of our founding fathers and is a rising entrepreneur in Dublin. His name is Arthur Guinness, and he is a brewer, and it is hard to exaggerate just how important beer was to the people of Guinness’ day.
Guinness lived at a time when no one understood micro-organisms and how disease is spread. They routinely drank from the same waters in which they dumped their garbage and their sewage. Unknowingly, they polluted the rivers and lakes around their cities. People died as a result, and this made nearly everyone in Guinness’ day avoid water entirely. Instead, they drank alcoholic beverages.
Usually, this was done in moderation and all was well. Occasionally, though, excess set in and drunkenness plagued the land. This is what happened in the years just before Guinness was born, in the period historians call “The Gin Craze.” Parliament had forbidden the importation of liquor in 1689, so the people of Ireland and Britain began making their own. It was too much temptation. Drunkenness became the rage. Every sixth house in England was a “gin house,” many of which advertised, “Drunk for one penny, dead drunk for two pence, clean straw for nothing.” It was a terrible, poverty-ridden, crime-infested time.
To help heal their tortured society, some turned to brewing beer. It was lower in alcohol, it was safe—the process of brewing and the alcohol that resulted killed the germs that made water dangerous—and it was nutritious in ways scientists are only now beginning to understand. Monks brewed it, evangelicals brewed it and aspiring young entrepreneurs like Guinness brewed it. And they were respected and honored for their good works.
“Give all you can”?

So as Arthur Guinness sat in church on the day we are imagining, he was a successful brewer in Dublin, selling a drink throughout the city that made people healthier and helped them avoid the excesses of the hard liquor that had done so much damage for so many decades.
What makes this Sunday in Guinness’ life so important is who he is about to hear, because on this day John Wesley is in town. Wesley is the founder of the Methodist church, the man who started a small group at Oxford University from which a great revival grew. Wesley and his friends wanted simply to be good Christians—to “perfect holiness,” as they said—and so as they preached the Gospel, they gave to the poor and visited prisoners and raised money to serve the needy. Whole cities were changed by the preaching of John Wesley, his brother Charles and the famous George Whitefield. And now John Wesley had come to Dublin and was preaching at the soaring St. Patrick’s Cathedral. And Arthur Guinness was there.
We do not know exactly what Wesley preached, but we can know a few things. Wesley would have called the congregation at St. Patrick’s to God, of course, but he also would have had a special message for men like Guinness. It was something he taught wherever he went. “Earn all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can,” he would have insisted. “Your wealth is evidence of a calling from God, so use your abundance for the good of mankind.”
On this Sunday and on other occasions when he heard Wesley speak, Arthur Guinness got the message. He also got to work. Inspired by Wesley’s charge, Guinness poured himself in founding the first Sunday schools in Ireland. He gave vast amounts of money to the poor, sat on the board of a hospital designed to serve the needy and bravely challenged the material excesses of his own social class. He was nearly a one man army of reform.
Continue reading The Story of God and Guinness →