Seek HIS Kingdom First – Prayer Goals for 2012!

John 14:12: Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father.

Someone once said that if you aim at nothing, you hit it every time. Unfortunately, so many churches and individuals fail because they fail to dream. Here in Orlando International Christian Church, we have many dreams for the coming year. We have group goals and individual dreams for our families and our communities that we all want to see happen in 2012! We are very excited about Matt and Helen Sullivan moving to Orlando in August to lead Orlando and oversee the Southeastern US churches! Along with the Sullivans, we are excited about 15 disciples from Washington DC, Los Angeles, and North Carolina moving here to accelerate our growth. The plan is to evangelize Orlando as well as the Southeast starting with planting Atlanta and Miami in the near future! As we soar into 2012, let us pray faithfully over our goals and live each day full of faith, making a unified effort to advance God’s Kingdom!

2012 Prayer Goals

1. Just as one disciple multiplies and becomes two disciples (Matthew 28:18-20), one Bible Talk will multiply and become two Bible Talks. God has multiplied the church from 2 disciples to 33, with an average Sunday attendance of 60 members, children and visitors. We will begin the new year with 33 disciples and 5 Bible Talks. It is our prayer that God will multiply 33 into 60 and double our number of Bible Talks to 10 by the time we attend the 2012 Global Leadership Conference in Los Angeles Aug 5th – Aug 8th! (Start planning your vacations around those dates now.) Being that Orlando is the home to 2,134,411 people, a goal of 60 disciples with an average attendance of 120 on Sundays seems like a drop in the bucket. We need to pray for God to send us workers!!
2. Our goal is to raise up new Bible Talk leaders to lead these 5 new Bible Talks!
3. With 5 new Bible Talks by August, as well as calling all members to sacrifice, our goal is for our regular weekly contribution to be $2000 a week by August, 2012. The Bible commands sacrifice, and we call all disciples to imitate the 1st century church and to begin giving at least a tithe.
4. Our goal is for each individual to raise 15 times their weekly contribution for the 2012 Missions Contribution, totaling $16,500. This contribution will go to OICC to supplement our weekly contribution for staff, to fund interns, and to meet the needs of church operations including a place to meet, Kingdom Kids supplies, equipment, books etc. By August, if not sooner, we will need to pay for a midweek location. The women are packing out the house right now! The history of our churches is rich with stories of the generosity of members in giving money to missions and sending members to help plant churches all over the world. This doesn’t happen without sacrifice.
5. As mentioned above, we want to fund 2 summer interns for UCF through our Missions Contribution.
6. OICC disciples have been active volunteers for MERCY Worldwide for the last 3 years. We firmly believe in meeting the needs of the youth, the poor and the elderly. We will continue our volunteer efforts with 2 MERCY projects during 2012. We will also appoint a MERCY Coordinator!
7. As Jesus provided extensive training to his 12 disciples, we will continue to train our Young Zealots on a regular basis, preparing those who dream of being in the ministry!
8. We will continue to strengthen our Preteen Mentoring Program that we put into place last year. Each mentor will continue to meet with the preteens, doing character studies and having fun time with the preteen they are mentoring. These are the leaders of our future and we must give them our heart! We also will have a father/son trip and a mother/daughter sleepover for the preteens!
9. With Orlando having a 57% Hispanic population, our goal in 2012 is to have a Spanish speaking Bible Talk by August.

10.  UCF has almost 60,000 students, and is the second largest public university in the nation. Along with Valencia College and Seminole State College, we have the lofty task of reaching out to over 100,000 students!  Currently, our campus ministry has 9 disciples. Our goal is to double that number by August to 18 disciples at UCF, Seminole State and Valencia Community College!
11.  As a church we understand how big God is and how small we are! Therefore, our goal this year is to spend time regularly praying together as a church. We will be implementing a weekly prayer group that will be open to all members! The Holy Spirit was unleashed on the disciples when they gathered together in prayer. Our goal is to rely on God this year and watch God work like never before!
12.  Melanie and Steve Coyle have been training as shepherds for the last year! Our goal is to appoint them Shepherds this year! We would also like to add another 2 couples to our Shepherds in training.

We must ‘Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.’  Brothers and sisters, if we work together and lay our lives down as Jesus did, we will be very proud of our church in 2012. We will see new churches planted, new men and women going into the full-time ministry, and many more men and women raising up to lead Bible Talks in their homes in order to help spread the gospel all over the world. To God Be the Glory!

Anthony and Elizabeth Eckels