Welcome to our first E-ToolsNewsletter of 2010! This monthly TCC field report also includes strategic outreach resources to encourage, equip, and empower you to more effectively share the Gospel with all the loved ones in your life as we faithfully serve Christ in Canada together.
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Keeping the Cross current…through current events!
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I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
(1 Corinthians 9:22-23)
TCC exists to equip the Church to keep the Cross current in our culture, both for the sake of the Gospel and for the salvation of the lost.
Keeping connected with current events in the news can facilitate fantastic ways to become all things to all people, so that by all means we might save some.
World Class Witnesses
First, through keeping connected with current events, God graciously allows us to become “world class witnesses” for Him who love the lost beyond just our own Jerusalem into the uttermost part of the earth. This results in a commitment to pray for the salvation of souls all around the world and for the missionaries who have been called to reach them.
It’s also been our experience that the eternal impact of becoming world class witnesses often extends beyond our personal life and witness into our family life and witness as well! For example, to keep the Cross current with current events, one of the evangelists with TCC now leads his family to set aside the first workday of every week as “Missions Monday”. This involves his children doing basic research on a country and their family taking the week to pray together for God to grant repentance to those who live there.
Conversational Common Ground
Second, through keeping connected with current events, God graciously gives us the conversational common ground we need to relate to as many people as possible in our own local mission field about the bigger matters of life, death, and eternity. The recent earthquake tragedy in Haiti continues to facilitate many such opportunities for Gospel outeach…
By now you have likely been exposed to many of the horrific images of the devastation in Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, after the city was hit with a 7.0 earthquake. As local missionaries, it’s times like these that we can feel as helpless as the rest of the world in the wake of disaster.
However, in addition to continuing to pray diligently for the physical needs of all those involved in this tragedy, as per Jesus’ words in Luke 13:1-5, we have also been using this current event as conversational common ground to share the message of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ…while there is still time.
In effort to more effectively equip the Church to “normalize” evangelism with loved ones and strangers, TCC is now developing a special section of our Studio/Street Blog called “Current Events”. Here we will post field reports and audio files of our radio reps using current events in the culture as conversational common ground to lead the lost to the Cross.
We sincerely pray that these “Current Events” encounters in evangelism will serve to help you continue growing strong in your own evangelistic giftings!
TCC Radio LIVE: When sharing the Good News goes bad
TCC Radio host Cory McKenna is thanking God for “nine lives” – but not in the way you may think. Not only has He now allowed us to broadcast nine live radio shows, but He also continues to show Himself strong on our behalf…even when doing the right thing seems to go wrong.
Right: Norm Millar of Harvest Bible Chapel of London was our most recent special guest on TCC Radio LIVE
On this month’s episode of TCC Radio live, we extended the program to one full hour in hopes of helping Pastor Norm Millar and Harvest Bible Chapel of London spread the life-giving message that Christians need never be silent about the Gospel. In addition to dialoguing in the studio about various aspects of biblical life and witness, we also enjoyed another real-time Gospel conversation from the studio to the street via cell phone in a segment that we call “wireless witnessing”.
What would you do if things got tripped up by circumstances out of your control when sharing your faith?
Let’s continue partnering together to keep our prayer pulse for TCC and the Church in Canada strong! This month we have a praise report and TWO main prayer points that we humbly ask you, your family, and your church to remember for us in February.
Praise Report from “Urgent Ministry Need”!
In late December, Cory and The Cross Current Team sent out an important message inviting all those on our distribution list to pray about sowing into an urgent ministry need. We praise God for the faithful response of so many of our partners in the Gospel! Thanks to you, we are now in production for The Cross Current TV show after having received sufficient donations for acquiring the computer we need for video editing!
Prayer Points
Expansion & Exposure
Expanding our ministry of equipping local churches in cities across Canada to more effectively share the Gospel message with loved ones and strangers, and
Exposing The Cross Current Radio Show into more markets to facilitate greater Gospel preaching coverage and support for the local churches we partner with
In response to several requests, The Cross Current has now added Automatic Funds Transfer (AFT) as another way to simply and securely give to our local missions ministry in Canada.
For more information on how your tax deductable donations can be set up to transfer automatically between your bank account and TCC, please call our office at (226) 663-1822 or email us at admin@thecrosscurrent.com.
Donate to our mission in Canada
We again thank God for you and for your ongoing partnership in preaching His Gospel in Canada.
As our team of radio reps gathered together to pray before we went out for our weekly witnessing, a thought occurred to me. Haiti had just experienced one of the greatest earthquakes in recorded history. The people there had lost everything: family, friends, all their possessions. It also occured to me that they would probably give anything to be where we are right now.
God has graciously blessed us with so much in this country, and what can we do to say thanks? Well, we could start by doing what He has commanded us to do – go out and preach His Gospel to every creature. Not that we need to pay Him back for His grace (and not that we every could), but if we are truly thankful to the God Who has given us so much, why would we not all want to please Him by doing the very thing He has commanded us all to do?
What if tomorrow was our “Haiti experience”? What if we were in their shoes tomorrow? This overwhelming thought drove me, and the rest of our team, to step out in faith and talk about the Haiti earthquake with the people in our community and to more boldly share the Hope that is within us. If tomorrow we knew people were going to die in an earthquake here, where would these people be going when they died? Do they know the Lord Jesus Christ?
We had some great conversations with people and our hope was that they would see that in a blink of an eye, everything could be taken away…even their life! What are you hoping in, or more importantly, who are you hoping in? We need to plead with people to see that in their current state, they have no hope (or a false hope), and true hope comes only with repenting and trusting in Jesus Christ. So, if we lost everything here tomorrow like Haiti has lost today, we could rest in our eternal security even through a temporal disaster.
Welcome to our very first e-Newsletter! These bi-monthly email messages will give you all the latest and greatest happenings, highlights, and Gospel glory stories we encounter as we serve to help the Church in Canada keep the Cross current in our culture!
Thank you in advance for your partnership in the Gospel.
2008 in REVIEW!
We thought it best to first give you an overview of how the Lord moved through our ministry over this past year. Here are some glorious highlights of 2008…
Our Mission
The Cross Current was officially founded in April 2007. Since that time the Lord has been graciously helping us refine and define who He has called us to be as a ministry. We praise Him for making our mission clear this year!
His Gospel. His Gifts. His Glory.
The Cross Current (TCC) is a local missions ministry and radio program bringing glory to God’s Name in Canada by unifying His Church in His Gospel and helping pastors equip all Christians under their care to be His witnesses everyday, everywhere, to everyone, as one body serving in accordance with the various gifts He has given each.
The development of www.thecrosscurrent.com is yet another praise report of how God always provides for His people – often in very practical ways! Not only did He bring a very technical and talented web designer our way by the name of Duncan Freeburn (www.freeburns.ca), but the story of how he helped us secure the privileged .com web extension is nothing less than, well, a miracle! In early 2008 www.thecrosscurent.com was due to expire and would then be available for purchase. We backordered the site address and were emailed confirmation that it would soon be ours for the typical purchase price of about $15.00. However, immediately after the extension expired, another buyer somehow slipped past the system, bought the extension, and then tried to sell it to us for almost 50 times the typical purchase price! Though we quickly rejected the offer, as you can imagine, we weren’t too impressed. Not only had we lost the .com site we were patiently waiting for and were told was ours, but we were also being bribed in the process! But God obviously had a different plan. Within just a few weeks of rejecting the “rip off” offer, we received confirmation that the extension was ours if we wanted it…for only $15.00! Praise God that www.thecrosscurrent.com officially launched very shortly afterwards and has been going strong every since!
LondonChineseAllianceChurch (February)
Having not yet turned two years old as a ministry, 2008 was another year of “firsts” for The Cross Current. This past year TCC went multi-cultural and were very privileged to receive our first invitations to train believers at both Chinese and Korean churches!
Ark Aid Mission (February)
This year was also the first time we partnered together with a meal provision ministry to share Christ while serving the physical needs the disadvantaged in our community. Special thanks to the ministry team at the Ark Aid StreetMission for training our clueless crew of TCC Reps how to serve at “the Ark” and allowing us the privilege of sharing the Gospel with your guests.
Portico Youth Conference – Mississauga, ON (March)
In March of this past year, TCC was invited to train the youth group of a large church in Mississauga. The event took place over March Break and involved interactive learning on Friday and early Saturday, followed by a priceless preaching adventure at Square One shopping centre at the heart of the city Saturday afternoon. Cory was also invited to preach on Sunday morning.
Here is what the conference youth pastor had to share about their experience with TCC:
We had The Cross Current team in for a weekend of training and evangelism with our high school students. The training sessions were extremely practical and held the attention of teenagers and adults (not an easy task by any means). The best part was getting to apply everything we had just learned right away. Our entire team had the opportunity to “get out there” and start faith conversations with unchurched people. It was exhilarating and rewarding all at the same time. We had the chance to pray for salvation with three students out in front of the DQ! ~ Rev. Rick Carroll
OCHEC Youth Conference (March)
Undoubtedly, one of the greatest glory stories of 2008 for TCC was our journey into the heart of Hamilton to seek and save the lost with an army of budding street preachers. Over a period of two days, we were invited by the Ontario Christian Home Educators Conference to motivate, mobilize, and mentor close to 100 young people (and around 25 adults) in a soul-winning street invasion like Steeltown had never seen before…in Jesus’ Name!
Of the dozens of praise reports and testimonies we received from the training graduates, one of the most powerful was how a teenager by the name of Andy encountered God on the streets of his hometown. After a TCC Rep had personally shared the Gospel and prayed with Andy and his pregnant girlfriend, the couple walked away thankful, but seemingly unrepentant. However, little did our Rep know, Andy was approached a second time by one of the young evangelists that TCC had just trained. After hearing the Gospel again, young Andy hit his knees in the middle of the park, tearfully repented of his sin and put his trust in Christ alone to save him. Praise God!
Last June we stepped out into our very first Xstream Team Mission (XTM) to Ottawa for Canada Day weekend to share the truth of Christ’s dominion on the crowded streets of our nations’ capital. Not only did the Lord enable us to pass thousands of tracts and share the Gospel one-to-one with countless Canadian flag-wavers, but we also had the opportunity to open air preach by parliament hill and even video record the entire trip in preparation for our first XTM DVD documentary for release later this year!
This summer TCC was privileged to receive a second invitation to teach at the 2008 Christian Youth Worldview and Leadership (CYWAL) Conference in Cambridge, ON. Cory moved the students through our Witnessing Workshop training followed by an evangelism experience of applied apologetics at a local shopping mall. The conference concluded with Cory hosting the students to a bit of hot topic hang-time as he answered the most common questions we encounter on the streets when sharing the Gospel. Congratulations to all CYWAL graduates who also became credentialed TCC members upon graduation.
Here is what the CYWAL Executive Director had to say about her experience with TCC:
“TCC’s training fit beautifully with the objectives of CYWAL! With TCC there are no more excuses! This is training I would recommend to all churches and youth groups!” ~ Gisele Baribeau, Executive Director, CYWAL
Gay Pride Festival – London, ON (July)
Sharing the Gospel at the Gay Pride Festival was perhaps our most stretching evangelism experience of the entire year! However, we praise God that He empowered us with the balance of grace and truth we needed to relationally preach His Word to several homosexuals without compromise. In fact, the rapport that the Lord allowed us to develop resulted in several Gay Pride participants even volunteering to be part of the most ground-breaking TCC Radio series to date and we have been keeping in touch with one of the interviewees over email.
Xstream Team Mission (XTM) Niagara Falls, ON (August)
This past August another team of witnessing warriors hit the streets of the “honeymoon capital of the world” to take part in our second annual XTM Niagara Falls. The Lord again graciously allowed us to personally share the Gospel with a couple hundred people and pass a couple thousand tracts. However, the highlight of this team trip was witnessing the Bible sword skills of evangelist Tom Briggs. We are told time and time again by “expert” Christians that contemporary culture is antagonistic towards Christ and it’s just not possible to share the simple truth of the Gospel on the streets straight from Scripture. Well, perhaps Tom “missed that memo” when he invited an entire family to “gather ‘round to read God’s Word together” while on vacation in Niagara Falls! As the picture of Tom opening the Bible with them above clearly shows, God’s Word will accomplish whatever He wants it to, whenever He wants it to, with whoever He wants it to…He just asks us to share it!
Witnessing Workshop – Harvest Bible Chapel London (September)
Though TCC has had the privilege of helping unify several churches in the Gospel through our one day team-building and witnessing workshops, our training time this past September with Harvest Bible Chapel in London needs to be mentioned a very important reason.
This workshop was the first time that we had a senior pastor and an elder take part in both the onsite and offsite evangelism training! After all was said and done, here is what HBCL’s senior pastor had to say about his ongoing experience with TCC:
We continue to experience first-hand how TCC helps pastors motivate and mobilize their churches to faithfully share the Gospel in all their relationships and beyond. I strongly recommend this ministry to all Christians serious about fulfilling the Great Commission.
~ Norm Millar, Senior Pastor, Harvest Bible Chapel London
TCC Radio has been broadcasting over the airwaves in London, Ontario since April of 2007. However, in October of this year we officially started podcasting the program! That means people anywhere in the world can now find our show on the iTunes website and automatically download it into their portable audio devices each week – along with any TCC teachings, Quick Q & A, etc.
Do you know that one out of every four babies in Canada are aborted? That’s approximately 385 lives destroyed every single day across our country! 2008 was also the year that TCC took the responsibility to speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves by taking part in our first pro-life rally. I think I can speak for our entire team when I say that the radio series we produced on abortion had a profound impact on all of us to the point that we will continue to pray for and support our ministry partners who specialize in this vital service to Christ’s Kingdom! This issue is undoubtedly at the heart of God and His Gospel and we trust that you, too, will get involved in pro-life ministry.
Last year ended with yet another praise report when a Christian professional graphics designer contacted TCC to let us know that he felt the Lord leading him to donate his services to help us develop some solid, promotional resources. Praise God…because He knows we need them!
2009 in VIEW!
The Stream TV
The Stream TV (www.thestreamtv1.com) is more of a media centre than a website. It is a program producer that buys time on TV stations and networks for the purpose of broadcasting quality Christian programming. It is owned and operated by Quick Study TV, a daily television program designed to take viewers through the Bible in one year. The Stream TV website enjoys thousands upon thousands of hits every day and thousands of Internet surfers also download programs from the site on a daily basis as well.
Late last year Cory and John of TCC enjoyed a wonderful time of fellowship and ministry discussion with Rod Hembree and Simen Solberg, the president and studio manager of The Stream TV. The organization has agreed to start broadcasting TCC Radio immediately and has also graciously offered to help The Cross Current launch a reality TV show this year as well! Please pray that the Lord will help us put this show together and that He will use these powerful points of human contact to give His Gospel maximum exposure within both the Christian and non-Christian marketplace!
Currently people can hear TCC Radio on 90.1 FM locally in Orangeville or by visiting the “IHear Radio” section of www.thestreamtv.com every Monday and Tuesday at 11:30am EST. As we move forward, please pray that this strategic alliance between The Stream TV and TCC will greatly impact our mission of partnering with leaders and their local churches to spread the Gospel in Canada.
Creation Magazine Live
Creation Magazine Live, a project of Creation Ministries International (CMI), is one of the top rated shows on The Stream TV. CMI has invited our very own Cory McKenna and The Cross Current to sit in as an “expert witness” for their upcoming special episode on evangelism. The episode will be answering questions and sharing Gospel glory stories in the studio and also playing uncut evangelism video footage from the street. We trust that this guest appearance will also provide timely and effective promotion for The Cross Current television show as well. This episode of Creation Magazine Live is scheduled to broadcast early this year.
Teen Challenge Farm Training
Late this year TCC also received an invitation from the evangelism director of the Teen Challenge Farm (http://www.tcfarm.org/) in London, Ontario to conduct a Witnessing Workshop for their residents early this year. What’s especially exciting about this opportunity is that the director’s vision for the training is not just to have the students sit through a one-day event, but rather to inspire and instruct the infrastructure of a local missions team that will consistently hit the streets to share the Gospel each week!
Through the Roof (UWO)
Current statistics indicate that as many as 80% of students leave the Christian church forever after getting lost amidst the spiritual myriad of post-secondary education. Thorough the Roof is a ministry on the campus of the University of Western Ontario that’s trusting God to redeem that stat through their efforts to create a consistent opportunity for people from all walks of life to come and be challenged by the message of Jesus Christ. Cory will be preaching that message at this event early this year.
CANADA Needs CHRIST.
May he have dominion from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth! ~ Psalm 72:8, ESV
Do you agree that Canada needs Christ? If so, please take 5 minutes to watch this short video invitation to carry the Cross with us in Canada.
Why has it been a little while since we’ve emailed out TCC news and updates? Thanks for asking! It’s because we’ve been getting our “technological game” on in preparation for our brand new online e-Newsletter!
World Class Witnesses
However, in addition to continuing to pray diligently for the physical needs of all those involved in this tragedy, as per Jesus’ words in Luke 13:1-5, we have also been using this current event as conversational common ground to share the message of repentance and faith in Jesus Christ…while there is still time.
Here is what the conference youth pastor had to share about their experience with TCC:.jpg)
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Though TCC has had the privilege of helping unify several churches in the Gospel through our one day team-building and witnessing workshops, our training time this past September with Harvest Bible Chapel in 
