Ruth and I are now in Birmingham, Alabama. We still have our Colorado cell phones (Cingular). E-mail us if you'd like the number. We'd love to meet with as many of you as we can fit in during the next couple of months. In addition to our Alabama churches, we'll be traveling to North Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana for church conferences on the weekends. Mid-week, however, our schedules are more flexible.
As you may know, we traveled to Germany for meetings the first couple of weeks of January. It was so good to reconnect with fellow missionaries to plan and pray for the coming year. Out of that visit two very significant decisions were made.
First of all, we at CreativeWorks decided to launch a new Europe-wide ministry that for the moment is being referred to as GEM Media. The ministry differs from CreativeWorks in that its primary focus is producing professional media FOR churches and for promoting GEM's ministries in North America. Because of the concentration on production rather than training and mentoring churches in creative ministry, we felt it best to make it a separate ministry from CreativeWorks. Jim Meyer whose background as an advertising art director for companies like Wendy's and Kellogg’s has been asked to direct this new ministry.
Secondly, we (GEM and CW leadership) have decided that CreativeWorks will be relocated to Dublin, Ireland, after seven years in the Black Forest area of Germany. Our focus remains to help churches across Europe to leverage creativity in ministry. We believe this new location will also prove invaluable for influencing the growing movement of church planting in Ireland while deepening our ability to influence church planting Europe-wide. My relationship with leaders in Ireland over the past 14 years has opened opportunities for partnership with Church Planting Resources, the Evangelical Alliance of Ireland, Operation Mobilization and opened up a chance for me to train new leaders at the Irish Bible Institute.
Ruth is applying to a masters program in European Studies at University College Dublin to strengthen her skills as research coordinator for GEM with the hopes of doing the one-year program this year or next. She is also busy collecting data for an update on the European Believers Report she hopes to release later this year. You can read her publication, “The Ambassador's Briefing,” to find out how social trends are affecting ministry in Europe. http://www.gemission.org/News/AmbassadorsBriefing.asp
Please pray for our financial support. We need several hundred dollars of new or increased support before we are allowed to return to Europe. Also, we will need some additional funds for our moving costs from Germany to Ireland. Thank you for the part you play in making our ministry possible.
Finally, pray for our housing needs. We must find renters for our home in Germany to afford rental prices for a small apartment in Dublin. (Modest 2-bedroom apartments go for $1500-$2000 per month.) Trust him with us to meet that need.
Serving the Lord with you,
Durand and Ruth Robinson
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Durand, I am excited about you coming to Emmanuel on Sunday. Know that you and Ruth will be in our prayers. I look forward to continuing our partnership in the days ahead. Blessings! Pat
Ok, so I'm a bit behind because I just recently found your blog through Phil Kingsley's blog, but I had to write because I feel that God has just majorly confirmed something to me through you! Matt and I are raising support to do church planting in Dublin (we just recently began doing this full-time in the hopes of being there within the a year). Anyway, so God has called us to Ireland and my husband's passion is truly for church planting, so that will be our primary focus. But God has also given me my own passion for music ministry, graphic design, and publishing type stuff, and I have felt for some time that our ministry in the future might bring us to Creative Works so that I might be a part of it... just a dream that God whispered in my ear, and figured maybe one day we'll get around to Germany, but who knows... anyway, so I now see that Creative Works is relocating to Dublin! Evidently the word did not get around to us, but that's OK, because today was the day that I needed God to reveal that to me and it has given me such joy! So all that to say is, I hope that by the end of 2007, we will meet you in Dublin and maybe, just maybe, the Lord might have a niche for me there, too... Blessings! Karen Huber