Community Engagement is the lifelong calling of every Jesus follower. As we love our community and start to live life with people and make disciples, this creates pockets of the kingdom of God coming to earth. All throughout the Bible, God tells us to love the oppressed: the orphan, widow, refugee, and the poor. The marginalized in society are largely forgotten about and neglected in the world's eyes, but God has not forgotten about them (Leviticus 19:9-10, 33-34; Deuteronomy 15:7; 24:17-21, 27:19; Psalm 68:5; 146; Proverbs 31:8-9; Isaiah 1:17; 10:1-2; 25:4; 58:6-7; 61:1; Jeremiah 5:28; 7:5-7; 22:3, 16; Zechariah 7:10; Matthew 25:31-46; Luke 4:18). He is already moving in our communities and so our responsibility is to join in wherever the Spirit of God is moving and bring shalom into our communities. Below are some ministries that Forest Baptist Church has decided to embrace as to where God is moving in the Newburg community. 

To Subscribe to the Director of Community Engagement (Alex Tenenbaum) Future Monthly Newsletters (you will start to receive next month's newsletter when it comes out), click this link or scroll down to fill out the form at the bottom of this page with your first name, last name, and email address.

Host Live the Gospel Church 

The pastors of Live the Gospel Church approached us in 2022 about partnering together for the purposes of kingdom ministry, where we can host them in our church building so that they can have their church services in the afternoons. Now, they worship in our church building each Sunday and it has created opportunities to do ministry together as we plan to reach the nations around us. We are so excited for what is to come as we continue to build our partnership for the glory of God. We sometimes combine worship services to glorify God together with translation and also have a desire to partner together to evangelize the community as we make disciples of all nations. Below is their choir singing "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus."

A couple of times each year we will have community picnics to meet new people who live in the community. Food is a great way to bond with strangers and hopefully initiates the start of deep friendships. We see in the life of Jesus that food is a huge part of His ministry and see Jesus' willingness to eat with anyone. As followers of Jesus, this will shape our perspective to love our neighbors and eat meals together. In the photo album below, there are pictures from these community picnics. During this time, we try to intentionally share our faith whether person to person and also sometimes a formal gospel message with a microphone. Our goal is to also partner with other churches to help out in this effort as we can reach more people collectively.