June 2008:

        Our Ministry Staff Continues to Grow:

        We welcomed five new Ministry Staff members to PEM in the last several months. We are so blessed that God continues to call incredibly dedicated and gifted people to be part of our ministry. They are:

Rev. Jim Burt, Director of Ministry Development; Lois Burt, Laity Staff; Crystal Barham, Laity Staff; Suzanne Zipperer, Laity Staff; and Lamarr Stevens, Laity Staff. Each of these dynamic Christians bring a variety of gifts and strengths to our Staff and will be working with us in our Training Units among our present and future Covenant congregations.

        Rev. Jim Burt - Our New Director of Ministry Development...

        Rev. Jim Burt joins our Staff FULL TIME as our second, fully ordained, experienced Clergy. Jim served as a Senior Pastor of Baptist churches, primarily in the northern U.S., for more than 25 years. He then went into teaching and administration in higher education for a few years before feeling called to become part of our ministry staff. Jim is a very gifted preacher, teacher and consultant in ministry. He is working with us as our new Director of Ministry Development, as we begin more new relationships with churches across America through our Ministry Covenants.

        Jim will also be heading up our newest national Prayer Ministry focus - "Our One Hundred Pastors Covered in Prayer." We are reaching out to Pastors of churches that we have worked with as far back as 1993, and re-connecting with them. We are asking Pastors that have been in a relationship with our ministry to join our group of 100 Pastors who our ministry will be praying for consistently. We will have our Staff stay in contact with these clergy each month or so by phone, learn specifically how we can pray for them, their families and their ministries, and also be available for them to alert us to prayer needs that arise in their lives going forward.

        Jim is also leading Times of Envisioning with churches who are new to our ministry and leading our Town Hall Sundays in many churches as well. Jim enjoys fishing, riding bikes (with Rev. Jim Hollis and others...), running, and most of all his relationship with Lois and their four children, now all adults. The churches that have had Jim work with them have shared with us an often repeated statement concerning Jim, "We would love for him to come back and work with our church as often as possible."

April 2008:

          PEM is now working with ten churches in Ministry Covenants around the nation.  We are providing training, support and ongoing consultation for churches in North Georgia, North Alabama, South Georgia, Indiana, Florida, South Carolina, and Delaware.  In this group there are two year and three year Covenants. 

          Our Ministry Staff has also grown to 22 persons as of April 2008.  We now have Staff in North Georgia (where our Ministry Offices are located), Florida, Illinois, and New York.  We are also seeing an increasing number of lay volunteers who travel with us in our ministry. 

          Several years ago we were praying for God to expand our ministry opportunities and grow our ministry.  Praise God for answered prayers.  We ask each of you to continue to pray for our Covenant Churches, our ministry staff and the incredible doors that God has opened for us all. 

Evangelism Mission to Budapest, Hungary

                 Seven of us recently returned from an evangelism mission trip to Budapest, Hungary.  We worked in partnership with Campus Crusade for Christ headquartered there and focused our efforts for the seven days on university and high school students. 

                As many of you may know, Hungary is a post-communist country.  The new government there became very concerned about the level of morality in the country and was in great fear of the spread of aids.  It had not become a problem and their plan (out of great fear in knowledge of other young countries with new governments) was to have morality taught in ALL of their schools.  Campus Crusade wrote a nine part, educational syllabus that taught Christian morality which could be used in the schools.  The government had them present it and accepted it fully.  Campus Crusade told them they would provide it for them IF they could also share “The Gospel of Christ.”  The government wanted to have clarification on this. 

                The leaders of Campus Crusade made several major presentations of their syllabus AND The Gospel message to the governmental leadership.  A number of leaders came to faith in Jesus and it was strongly approved for The Gospel to be shared as well in all their schools!  Amazing!  Now the government teachers are teaching this syllabus, including the story of Christ. 

                We found the university students to be very open and receptive to sharing about faith and spirituality.  We worked with them, giving them “student survival kits” which we helped prepare.  We also spent many hours with hundreds of them in listening to their personal histories and stories, sharing with them about Christ and building some neat, new relationships.  It was a tremendous blessing!