Faith Lutheran Church

Dartmouth, Nova Scotia

Ministry Update

January 20, 2004

Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

If my records are correct, it’s been a long time since you last heard from me, two years and six months to be exact. Some of you have heard bits and pieces about the work here in Dartmouth through the District but most of you probably have not. I apologize for the lack of correspondence. I don’t really like to write so I easily put it off.

I will not try to cover the last two years. Let me just say a bit about more recent events.

VBS and Sunday School

Numerical growth is no doubt the main concern of a mission. We need people to have a church! That has not been easy, but there have been a couple small advances. Notably, we have been encouraged by VBS and Sunday School. Again this past summer, we were blessed with a VBS team from Redeemer Lutheran Church in Waterloo, ON and Historic St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Kitchener. Thirteen wonderful people made the long trip to Dartmouth and literally put on a VBS for us. We had 24 children, 19 of whom were from outside the church. The best part is that their efforts have made a difference. We now have some of those children and others in Sunday School.

Since September, we have had 6-12 children from outside our congregation in Sunday School every Sunday. We have them divided up into two classes, up to 8 years old, and then 9-12. What a blessing it is to share the Gospel with them! Our teachers have remarked that it is a rewarding challenge working with these children, because they know nothing about Jesus or anyone else in the Bible. The kids seem to love it and were disappointed when we didn’t have Sunday School for a couple weeks over the Christmas holidays. We even pulled them together for a simple Christmas pageant which some of their parents attended.

Slowly we are teaching these children. Their interest is growing and they are asking about things like baptism because they are not baptized. Two mothers accompany several of the children each week. They come and stay, watch and listen. They seem to be very interested in the church but are very shy. We are praying that they too will ask more questions and that we will be able to share the Gospel also with them.

Adult instruction

In addition to that, we now have three adults taking instruction. My own son Jonah will be ready for confirmation on Palm Sunday, and I’m hoping that these three others will also be ready. That would make for a joyful celebration! I might note that I met all of these people going door to door inviting people to church. Two of them are a couple who originally asked me about marrying them. We have met to talk about that and they are now planning a July wedding. (That will be our second!) In the mean time, we have begun adult instruction. They have three children, a teenage daughter and two young boys. Pray that the daughter too will ask for adult instruction.

Odds and Ends

We tried a new media technique, a radio ad. Lutheran Hour Ministries has some prepared radio spots that offer one of the booklets in the Project Connect series. A local radio station gave us a pretty good rate for a short campaign, about 90 spots over four weeks. The response was a bit disappointing, only four calls for the booklet and only one followup visit with one caller. Nevertheless, I would like to try this again and hope that hearing our name during a second campaign will generate more confidence and more calls.

I continue to visit at the community college a couple times a month. I attend the student association meetings and some of the events they put on. The student counsel really likes the Project Connect rack, so we keep it in the hallway outside their office. I try to keep it stocked with booklets that I think would most respond to student interests and needs. So far, however, this has not led to any contacts. Maybe we’ll try it for another year and then decide if it’s worth the expense.

Thanks to one of our members, we now have a nice web page located at http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/faith.lutheran/. We’re working on adding content and keeping it up to date. We had a small problem when the man who set it up had a fatal computer failure! He hopes to be back up very soon.

As always, please keep us in your prayers. Planting a church here has been much slower than I anticipated. I and the other members here do sometimes get discouraged.

If you have any ideas for outreach or would like to discuss any of the things we are doing or have done, please just write or call us. We would very much appreciate your input.

The Lord be with you all!

In Christ,

Pastor David Maffett
36 Attwood Crescent
Dartmouth, NS B2V 1G7
902-433-0757
faith.lutheran@ns.sympatico.ca