MINISTRY// Challenge grant is fully funded

Wonderful news!

At the beginning of June, two very generous donors provided 316NOW with a $9,000 challenge grant. This husband and wife promised to match–dollar for dollar–every gift given to help cover the cost of sending teams of 316NOW’s teachers to China this fall. The deadline for donations was set for July 15.

The importance of travel to China

The head of our online Bible institute explains why these trips are important. “These teaching trips demonstrate to our students that their online teachers care deeply about the gospel and about them. They also encourage other Chinese Christian leaders to get to know us and to begin attending our online classes. In addition,  when our faculty members spend personal time with our students, the challenges and the heartaches Chinese Christians face can be addressed with God’s grace in ways that online communication doesn’t allow.”

How wonderfully the Spirit blessed this grant!

Before the end of June we received over $9,000 toward fulfilling the grant. The donor couple was so pleased at that response, they committed another $1,000 to their challenge for a total of $10,000. They extended the deadline to July 31.

By July 11 our donors more than matched the new $10,000 limit of the challenge grant!

We can now confidently plan to send four of our pastors to China in October and November. They will teach in more than a dozen cities where 316NOW has students. In addition, while they are in China, two of our teachers will represent 316NOW at a coordinating meeting of all of our denomination’s groups that work in China.

Thank God with us

Please join us at 316NOW in thanking God for this generous outpouring of his goodness. Thank him, as well, for those who donated to our fall travel program. 

And would you also pray that

• our pastors are able to travel in safety, 
• our students are empowered to understand and share what they are taught, and
• many more Christian leaders in China–along with the souls they lead and the souls they reach–are benefited by 316NOW’s ministry in the years to come.