December 2022 Prayer Letter

Dear Friends,

Here is our December prayer letter!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. Christmas is right around the corner. We are looking forward to a great month of December and also stepping into the new year! Here is the news from October and November. 

New leaders:

In March of this year, we began a leadership training program with nine key individuals. Our goal was to prepare some of them to take leadership of various ministries and others to step into roles in personal discipleship, counseling, or teaching/training. On November 6^th we installed 6 of them into leadership positions. The other three are all involved in our personal discipleship program and also participating in teaching and training. We are now looking forward to beginning leadership training with a new group in 2023. One of our goals is multiplication of leaders, and we are excited that God has brought us many more potential leaders in whom to invest. 

New Leaders

Discipleship Training: 

This fall we added 2 new all-day training events that we plan to do on at least an annual basis. One was on Bible Study and the other on Personal Evangelism.  We had 17-18 participants at each of these two events. It is our goal for all our members to go through our “Freedom in Christ” weekend, and also our all-day training events on Spiritual Gifts, Bible Study and Personal evangelism. 

Training on Bible Study

Speaking at national pastors conference

Outside Speaking events:

This has been a busy fall for outside speaking events. I had the privilege of speaking at two conferences on church planting and at the annual Pastors Conference of the Baptist Union of Hungary. I also was interviewed about church planting on one of Hungary’s national radio stations. Another fun thing was to do a series of seven devotionals for the Pax TV station. This time Charin and I did them together. We are grateful for these opportunities to minister.

 

Thanks so much for standing with us in your prayers and support! 

Marc and Charin Patton

October 2022 Prayer Letter

Dear Friends,

Here is an update on the past two months. 

Family Camp: 

We had a great week of family camp August 24-28. More than 60 people attended this year. We tried to have a more relaxed schedule this year and our people really enjoyed the time we had together. We had a good number of new people come who were not yet members, and it was good to get them better connected to the church. Our theme was "Going Deeper" with an emphasis on having a deeper relationship with God and with each other.

Summer Camp

New Members!

On September 18th we added seven new members to our church. We were especially excited that six of the new members were ages 40 or older! Up to this point 85% of our members were 35 or younger, so we have been praying for a few members from our generation. We are excited to see how the Lord will use them in our church. 

New Members

3 Year Anniversary

On September 18th we also celebrated the three-year anniversary of Focus Church. What a joy it was to look back at the blessings of the past few years. God has given us tremendous growth, and we are slowly outgrowing the coffee shop. We are looking forward to what God has in store for us in year number four!

3rd year anniversary

New Pastor in Esztergom

On September 25^th Joseph Steiner was installed as the next pastor of our former church in Esztergom. Joseph is about my age and has been involved in church planting, pastoring and Christian education for a number of years. We are praying that God will use him and his wife Csilla to move the church to the next level.

Thanks so much for standing with us in your prayers and support! 

 Marc and Charin Patton