Gilson Family News

Here’s Life Inner City

• Tom just completed a strategic planning session with leaders of this nationwide ministry. HLIC is partnered with over 1,400 urban churches in America providing compassionate aid, after-school mentoring programs, leadership and character development programs for adults, and training in ministry for church leaders. All of this comes in the name of Jesus Christ and with an explanation of who He is.
• Our strategic planning work focused on developing a younger generation of leadership, on recruiting, on making HLIC’s expertise more broadly available and widely known, and more.
• In the process, Tom also brought a potential part-time team member along to orient him in ministry strategic planning and explore the possibility of him helping in the future. This proved very positive, and is likely to expand our own team’s effectiveness over the years to come.

Bright Media Foundation

• Brad Bright’s newly revised God Is the Issue: Recapturing the Cultural Initiative has just been mailed to 10,000 pastors in the U.S. now. (Our team was closely involved in strategizing for this and other Bright Media Foundation initiatives.)
• This book is not yet available for sale to the public, though soon it will be.
• Tom has spoken and written on this topic recently, and has submitted an article on it to a nationally known outlet. (A link to the talk will be added by Tuesday.)

Ministry Partner Development

• We are concentrating for several weeks on strengthening our team of ministry partners and our financial support for ministry.
• At this time we are in need of approximately $900 in new monthly support.
• The President’s Office matching grant is still available for new ministry partners, or for increased pledges from current partners.
• We are very encouraged by the progress we’re making, but we have considerably more distance to go with this.
• Our prayer is to see the full $900/month pledged by the middle of November.
• Please contact us if you have questions regarding the matching grant.

Community Ministry

• Sara is leading a women’s Bible study, helping them to understand basic and not-so-basic truths about faith and about God’s work in us through the Holy Spirit.
• She continues to be involved with youth through a local Christian club in Lisa’s school.

Family News

• Jonathan is learning Spanish through an independent study/tutoring program; he’s doing well in school.
• Lisa is having a great year, enjoying being in band and in stage band. She just submitted a homemade video to the PTA’s “Reflections” contest. She shot and edited it. The subjects of the video were Jonathan and a friend, both of whom have become rather accomplished jugglers.
• Michigan State (we’re all fans) is having a great football season!