February 2025 Newsletter

Friends of Shalom,

Is ordinary okay?

Looking back on the month of January I'd say it was an ordinary month of ministry. We continued to gather each week for Word and Sacrament. Relationships continue to grow deeper. Individuals are growing and wrestling with God. Folks are serving. In other words, the ministry goes on.

I don't have anything earth shattering to report. Or do I? Perhaps what I just wrote is earth shattering because simply by being the church in our day as an outpost of the Kingdom is not ordinary!

Updates:

I was able to have a lot of rich one on one's this month. One thing I've learned is that people really appreciate having a pastor and being pastored. I haven't always been able to pastor in past ministry rolls the way I'm embracing as an Anglican priest and I'm really grateful for the change.
We've been experiencing some slow and steady growth with a few new folks joining with us.
We have a young couple who have been opening their home for dinner and compline to others in our church community.
We've had a few new folks begin giving.
This Sunday is World Missions Sunday and we'll be having our second baptism!

Prayer Requests:

Please pray for a season of repentance and devotion to take root in our church as we enter into this lenten season. We'll be having our first Ash Wednesday service on 3/5 at 7pm.
Pray for wisdom around the next phase of development for our church plant.
Pray we could continue to reach our friends, neighbors, and families with the good news of Jesus.

Thanks again for your support and prayers!

For the Shalom of Kitsap,

Father Rob Steinbach

Comments

July Newsletter

Friends of Shalom, I’m sorry that it’s been 2 months since my last newsletter. From here on out I hope to send at least one a month. Personal Update Beth and I have had one of the richest seasons of our life. All our kids have had major life transitions. Some of these I’ve mentioned before. Miriam gave birth to our first granddaughter a few days before Easter. Sam graduated from George Fox as a mechanical engineer and got his first “real” job down in Oregon. Ellie got married to a wonderful man who loves Jesus and she is now Mrs. Clark. And Asher graduated from Bremerton High School and is preparing to begin a physical therapy assistant program at Olympic College in the fall! On top of that, my parents came for a 2 week visit as my dad hadn’t been able to travel out here since before COVID. We feel like we’ve been riding a wave of blessings! Shalom Update Since we began Shalom, I’ve often said to Beth after our weekly gathering, “Well, I guess we’ll keep doing this because p...

October Newsletter

Friends of Shalom, Through the years, I've had many friends who are teachers. And what they've all told me is that the first few years of teaching are the hardest part because you have to prepare ALL your lessons from scratch. Of course there's curriculum to pull from, but each lesson must be curated and put together. Once the new teacher has those lessons worked out and developed, the following years are much easier. In many ways, the early years of a church plant are like that. Like a new teacher, a church planter has to develop many "lessons." We have to work on websites, discipleship plans, policies, statements around key practices/beliefs of the church, etc. And that's the work I've been doing over the last month and it will likely continue for some time. Of course this work only makes sense if you have a "class" to teach. I'm so thankful that we have one! Over the last few months I have consistently heard from our folks how much they ...

June Newsletter

My wife and I have been building a garden… well, mostly my wife ;) I underestimated how much work it would be. We had to get stones out of the soil, lay down Beth's Garden mulch, then build a fence to keep the deer out. After that there was ordering dirt, wheelbarrowing the dirt, building planters, filling the boxes, and finally planting. This got me thinking about the work of ministry and specifically the balance between working hard, but then trusting God with the growth. In our garden we are working hard, but after we do our work we can’t make the plants grow. That’s outside of our realm. This partnership we have with God that began in Eden is a hard one. It seems like we’d rather just work hard and make it all up to us… or throw our hands up and just “let go and let God” to do it all. But neither is how it all works. We do work hard. We do build. At the same time, only God brings the growth! We see this in a wonderful text in Paul’s first letter to Corinth. T...

Shalom Anglican

Search This Blog