July 1, 2011
Do very hard things in really tough places
so God gets all the glory!
After much prayer and counting of the cost Cathy and I want to share that we are accepting God’s gracious invitation to partner with Him in making disciples by moving to Las Vegas, Nevada next summer to launch the Grace City Church. (www.gracecityvegas.com)
Our prayer is that we can spend the rest of our lives doing very hard things in a really tough place so God gets all the glory! We want to see the church that Jesus builds kick down the gates of hell.
One of the hardest things I can think of doing is starting a new church from scratch. One of the toughest, “gates of hell” places I can think of is “Sin City” - Las Vegas, Nevada.
The Las Vegas area has 2 million people yet only 4.5% of the population call themselves Evangelical Protestants. In Las Vegas there are 275 Evangelical Protestant churches – 1 church per every 7,275 persons.
The area where we are looking to plant, ironically known as Paradise, includes the notorious Las Vegas Strip, the campus of UNLV and the nearby neighborhoods to the east of the Strip. This area has 30,000 people and only one evangelical Protestant church!
It does have three Mormon “churches,” three New Age “churches” and three Roman Catholic churches. It does have 37 casinos, 29,000 commuter college students driving in for classes at UNLV, there are five strip clubs, (plus many, many others nearby), many urban poor and broken people, but only one church!
Our passion is to plant a church that is highly devoted to prayer and leadership development. We hope to cooperate with God in raising an army of young radicals for Jesus who will take the gospel all over the world or die trying. We want to establish an intense learning lab for future church planters, pastors and missionaries.
Yes, from a certain perspective what we are doing is crazy. But in light of eternity and the need, we would be crazy to do anything else.
So with all that said, we ask that you would please pray for us. The financial challenges of doing this are staggering. The level of spiritual darkness in Paradise is oppressive. The need is overwhelming.
We are asking for daily prayer partners. We also need some of you to become “Aarons and Hurs” who will make interceding for us a major part of your life. We need you to pray that God will open doors for us so that the message of the Lord may spread rapidly through Paradise.
Please reply if you have questions or if you want more information about praying for the Grace City Church, are interested in receiving our newsletter, would consider financially supporting this venture, or becoming a part of our launch team.
You can check out our website at www.gracecityvegas.com
Yours for Eternity,
Dave and Cathy Earley
