The Brethren Church

We have been very busy with visitors from the states and hosting two consecutive youth events in our home in the last week. These are some of the last youth events that we will be leading in Ireland, so they have been particularly special and enjoyable. We are grateful for the years of opportunities that we have had to be involved in mentoring and challenging our young people, and we are looking forward to the changes being implemented in our youth work. As mentioned in our previous update, we are moving away from typical youth programming with the aim of concentrating more on discipleship with the younger generations. We are trusting the Lord to open up these doors even as the door of youth programming is closing for us.

Our themes for our youth weekend events has been Risk Becoming: Moving from Existence to Life. We have been challenging the prevalence of no-risk, no-cost faith in a lot of Christian thinking and encouraging them to walk into the high call of God on their lives. We have enjoyed our time with them, and our conversations over the weekends have been fantastic.

Please continue to pray for the young people of Ireland! This week, more statistics have been released about the tragic death rates among young males in this country. Death seems to be all around us. Even this week, we have attended the funeral of a boy up the road who was killed when he fell into a tangle of ropes and died from strangulation. On the surface, it makes little sense to us that we should be taking a step back from youth work when the need is so great, but we believe this is the right decision. We want to increase the influence by focusing much of our efforts and attention on raising up many others who will be able to approach this generation with the hope found in Christ. By ourselves, there is little we can do — releasing others enlarges the scope of hope.

While starting a church for people who share our love for God and heart for others is important to us, our first love is still raising up and releasing people into the purpose of God for their lives. Helping people experience God’s love and grace and releasing them to participate in God’s heart for humanity is important to us…and that’s why we give so much time and effort into growing these people. Our internship and discipleship will continue to play a very important role in our lives in Ireland. In fact, we think it’s crucial for this country.

Please check out our blog at http://hopeofireland.blogspot.com to keep updated on what’s happening with our church. We have also put together another blog for those wanting information on our internship. That blog can be found at http://hopeinterns.blogspot.com.

Thank you for your continued prayers. Brenda and I are doing well.

Adding our love to His,
Mark & Brenda Ray