The Call:

My wife Terri and I are Jewish believers in Jesus, who have sought to serve the Lord in various ministry settings over the past 20 years, particularly in the area of music and worship.

When I first drove into Rutland with the senior pastor of our church in 1997, little did I realize how dramatically my life was about to change! Even then I sensed something different about Rutland, and soon everything in our lives started pointing towards that city! On one of my many subsequent visits there God spoke to my heart, "As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds His people!" and I knew this was God's 'Promised Land' for us in this new season.

What I did not know, when my family eventually moved to Rutland in 1999, was that, despite all my intentions of building a church here, that was not God's will for us at all! Nobody could have been more surprised than I was when God showed up in the study of our new home in Rutland soon after my arrival. Despite all my eager church planting training, undertaken with the blessing of my church denomination, I found myself being set on quite a different course after this encounter with the Lord. His presence enveloped me with such a holy sense of awe that I could barely move, as He spoke deeply into my heart igniting it with a passion that burns to this day. What He told me to do, was to plant, not another church but a House of Prayer right in the heart of the city for Him. I have to confess that I struggled with this new directive, but once I surrendered to His will there was such a peace, and such a sense of the hugeness and destiny of it that I am still gripped with it to this day!! I realized that this move to Rutland was just the first step of a journey the Lord was to take me on, which would take me the rest of my life to complete!

As I look back over all the blessings and struggles of the past few years I continue to be amazed at the signs of His sovereign will and grace. It was not long after my decision to build a House of Prayer that God provided us with an incredible building right in the center of Rutland that seats 200 people, rent free! Not only that, but the Lord provided us with $10,000.00. to make the necessary improvements to the building so that we could have our grand opening there in September 2000, on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year!

Since that time, the Lord has continued to send His anointed servants to help us move forward with the task of forming a team of committed intercessors, and of building a House of Prayer that serves the community and intercedes for the Bride here in Rutland. Now, as we see a new season opening up before us, our hearts continue to burn with longing to build bridges to the local churches and community; to reach out to the poor, as well as to see new levels of passionate bridal intimacy being released in fellowships across the land, as God brings us into new revelations of the ravished heart of the Son for His Bride, the Church.

 
PO Box 2181 • South Burlington, VT 05407 • (802) 342-0579 • information@prayerandworship.com