For the past five years I have been serving on the Classis Georgetown Ministry Board.  During this time I have been responsible for trying to get new churches started in our Classis.  What we did at first was to hire a consultant to help us determine the need for a new church.  After finding out that there were over 30,000 people in our area who did not attend any church we then began to talk to the churches about the possibility of starting a new church that would hopefully be more apt at reaching this large population around us...

Most of the churches I talked to were not very interested in starting a new church.  However, the leadership team of First Jenison Christian Reformed Church was very interested.  So we began meeting with them and helped them come to the point of getting a group together to begin a new church in Jenison. 

Then in December of last year, Ridgewood Christian Reformed Church decided to call Terry Scholten to be the pastor of this new church plant.  He was installed at Ridgewood in January and began to develop a core group which soon began meeting together regularly.  They were also able to purchase the old Georgetown Township building and began to renovate that to accommodate their needs as a church plant.  Then, just this past week Sunday, they held their launch service.  They have already been worshiping with about 170 people.  Each person in their core group has been encouraged to have a fab-five.  This means that each person is asked to contact five people who are unchurched to begin praying for them and, if possible, disciple them into the family of God. 

This is an exciting adventure for our Classis to embark on and it will be a joy to see how God will use Alive Ministries to lead more people to Christ.  Please pray that their ministry will have an important impact on the 30,000 unchurched people around us.            ~Pastor Gerry Koning