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We were holding it in peoples house, and then we began holding it here - outdoors - now
that its nice out.
I usually drive a pickup, its in for repair, so I got a rental car. I bring the battery
and the power inverter and run the light. We meet until about 10:30 in the evening.
I’m divorced, my parents are dead, my sisters in Savannah - I’m pretty much alone. So
this is something I look forward to every week.
We didn’t come in here to tell them anything, or with our own agenda. Our agenda was to
hear them, and to hear what their heart was. What it was saying - what their hurts are,
their struggles are, what was going on in their lives.
We’re here in a community just North of Atlanta. Pastor Bill Levin and his wife Jan
have a ministry to the people in this community. Bill, for many years has helped coordinate
church planting and evangelism throughout the district. But he felt a special call to
ministry – and he and his wife came here, they didn’t know what God wanted them to
do, they just walked the streets, they prayed, and slowly doors started to open. They started
making friendship. And from there have built something quite beautiful as lives are being
changed through their ministry.
We were looking for where God was leading us, and so we started praying. And we felt
convicted that we need to look for different avenues in this community, in Forsyth county
because we lived here. And so one of the areas we came across was Crystal Cove. When I was
riding with the police man, he identified this area as a troubled neighborhood. And
as he was talking about Crystal Cove he said, well we’ve nick named this area Crystal
*** Cove, because we’ve busted so many drug labs here. There are so many challenges
- he said most people in the homes here have been in jail at one time or another.
Today, the small ministry has been given an abandoned lot in the neighborhood by the county
government.
We’ll end up with about 30 or 40 people tonight. They come here for song, for fellowship,
and then we get into a study, and just sharing the word. And the study is about drawing the
people out, and letting them tell their story, tell what’s going on in their life, tell
their struggle, their issue. And being heard, being prayed over. And love on. And the people
know that we’re here to love them.
One of the first people Bill and Jan meet during their prayer walking was Pricilla,
and she is now a vital part of the team.
I had never seen anybody care that deeply about doing anything for the kids in this
community because they were looked down on so bad.
They were going to meet on the next Friday night for a unique style of church. Well...
my husband had got turned away from the church. He didn’t want anything to do with, so at
that time I was desperately seeking for God to get us back into church - because we were
about to go through a divorce. And I was begging God to get us back to where we needed to be
so that that divorce wouldn’t happen. I had never seen church done that way before.
But it was the most beautiful thing too. I absolutely was drawn to it from that first
Friday night.
As I talked with Pricilla she told me more about the mental, physical, and *** abuses
that many people in the community she has met, have dealt with in their lives - and
the resulting drug and alcohol addictions they still suffered from.
Everybody I’ve meet is just chained down. And from what I find out from meeting them
and talking to them, is this has happened three, and four, and five generations down.
That these abuses are rampant in these families.
This community to me is like Ester in the Bible. This Crystal Cove community is the
Ester that He is raising up to bring is favor down on and to break the curses, the chains,
and the boundaries that are holding them. Because it seems like everyone I’ve meet
is just chained down.
God has just brought all us us together, and He’s bonded us because we are from the same
background, and He is showing us truly what Isaiah 61 and Luke chapter 4 is - that He’s
come to heal the broken hearted.
The church needs to be doing the work of Jesus. The church needs to be the hands and feet
of Jesus. We need to be salt and light in our communities. Crystal Cove is one community
amongst thousands. And if our church would be out doing this, what a difference we could
make.