gone weekly!

Have you heard the news? Bridge Covenant Church now gathers EVERY WEEK! Praise the Lord! We are so excited to open our doors to our community every week. Now we can be together at Grant Community School every Sunday at 4p (and some of us stop in other days too)!
And that's not all. Women's Bible Study meets every Tuesday at 6.30p. Men gather for Guys & God at Joe Mocha's every Thursday morning at 6a. We meet for prayer every Wednesday morning and every Friday at noon. And this new community gets together outside of 'official' gatherings all the time! We like to be together!
For more details, check out our calendar.
We're excited about the new things happening as our community grows. We'd love for you to help us grow!

Good luck...

When we share the Vision of Bridge Covenant Church we often get the same response; "Good Luck ... You've chosen a hard thing to do!" But we believe that God has indeed called Bridge to be a bridge between Spanish speakers and English speakers. We've known from the beginning that this would take time, hard work, prayer, grace, humility and lots of dialogue.

At our retreat last month this dialogue began. After several hours together the need to know and understand one another rose to the surface. So at our last CORE meeting Ronald Cruz (pictured at right) - one of our own - shared his story and helped us begin this important work. We believe this is the work that will move our mission forward and we are excited about it. Please pray for our continued dialogue: that we can be for each other and for the greater community of Salem messengers of reconciliation.

Our First Monthly Service

One of the best things about our first service was the involvement of our CORE. One of our values is “shared ministry” which we hope to live out in all areas of ministry. In our monthly services this means that both women and men, young and old, english and spanish speakers are all involved in the service. This happened at our first monthly service last Sunday which was wonderful. Thanks team for your willingness to step out of your comfort zone and participate.

After our Christmas service (where we gathered 60 people) we were curious about the attendance on a rainy Sunday in February. We were encouraged that 38 adults and 10 children participated. We had a great representation of ages and also a good representation of the two communities we are hoping to bring together (latino & anglo).

Doing things bi-lingually is a challenge but we believe it’s important for our vision. We learned a few things we’ll do differently but overall we had a good response. We had a few people with very limited english. We had folks who are bi-lingual but their heart language is spanish. We had bilingual white folks and some white folks who aren't bilingual. We're hoping to hear more feedback regarding our bilingual format. One of my favorite moments was a women responding in Spanish to a question asked during the message.

Our connecting card has a place to respond to the service. Here’s a few responses from the section entitled "I'm inspired to:"

• live outside my comfort zone
• practice-learn Spanish
• ser como cristo (be like Christ)
• mentor someone to walk with God
• start each day new

God is moving and his Spirit is inspiring people to serve and connect.

We’re looking forward to our next monthly service on March 27th. These services are a great opportunity people to see the vision in action. Hope to see you there!

preparing to worship

This is such a busy week! We are going monthly, meaning we are starting regular, monthly worship services. We had hoped to have a site (not our home) for these services, but the one we hoped for ended up with a zoning issue. We are happy to have it here (we fit 60 people here for our Christmas service!), but our stuck between praying for more people and not wanting 20 folks standing without a chair!
Please pray for us as we begin our last Sunday of the month services. This Sunday, the 27th, will be a great learning experience for us and those dedicated to helping this church plant go. Pray attenders will come away with the peace of worshipping in community, a greater sense of God's work in them and around them, and maybe even thinking this may be their new church!

Lots of Good Things

Hi Friends. A lot of good things have been happening! The best place to find the latest news is through the Past Issues link on this page.

• A HUGE item is that the FHL Project is now officially Bridge Covenant Church and or Puente Covenant Church. We'll leave the translation to you, but you should know that the two will be used interchangeably. We are working on a new logo, and will soon be moving the information on our blog to an official website. We'll release that information soon, but we wanted to give you a heads up. We are very excited about the name of our new church. Puente fits beautifully with our Vision of "connecting & serving God & people."
• Next, did you read about our first worship service? We hosted a Christmas Service after our "Four Evenings of Advent" on the 23rd of December at our home. Sixty people attended! The worship was a rich time of song, participation, and communion. Thank you! It was a great service. Read about it! See the pictures!
• Finally, Salem hosted the 4th Annual Manuary Mustache Bache. Fifteen Mustaches attended. It was a ton of fun. People were connected to each other and to the people and vision of Bridge Covenant. Kids (and adults) decorated cupcakes with sweet Mustaches, we played "Pin the 'Stache on Selleck," and created hand-crafted Mustaches. Take a look at the fun!
• Slow but sure, but this church plant is growing. Thanks for supporting us. We are watching our prayers move into praises every week, and that's so encouraging.