Author: Jacob & Samantha McRae

Click the link below to watch a short testimonial video about Emmaus Ministries!
Watch Testimonial!

In the beginning of August 2017, our team spent weeks looking for ways to enhance our programs and create a more accessible and efficient ministry in our local community. From that point on, there has been a lot of planning and work going into this new vision for the ministry as we worked to make it into a reality.

As a short recap, we shared in one of our previous blogs that we felt God was calling Emmaus Ministries to change (click here to read that aforementioned blog). That being said, our mission: “To equip the body of Christ with the Word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ…” has not changed in the least. But we did come to realize that we could be fulfilling this mission more effectively. And we are now REALLY excited to share with you the particulars of the Emmaus Ministries relaunch:

The following 3 programs are the major ways we seek to work with the body of Christ, both far and near.

School of Biblical Studies
From August – May (10 months), students of our School of Biblical Studies will journey through the entire content and narrative of the Bible. Students utilize the inductive method (IBS) to study each book of the Bible through our classroom, seminars, and retreats. For 20 hours a week, this program integrates academic and spiritual development through one-on-ones, weekly worship, and community meals. On-campus housing is available for students desiring a truly immersive and communal experience. Along with participation in the School of Biblical Studies, students have the opportunity to pursue an internship in a local church through our ministry partnerships. Thinking about pursuing an education through Seminary? Our students will also have the unique chance to gain a seminary scholarship with Asbury Theological Seminary through our program.

Biblical Narrative Series
The Biblical Narrative Series takes participants on a journey through the Bible alongside our School of Biblical Studies students. This monthly series tells the story of the Bible through 10 evening lectures, which provide an overview for understanding the Bible as a whole. These lectures will also explore the themes and settings of the books which make up each part of the story. The Biblical Narrative Series is designed to be open to the public and accessible to all types of learners. No experience required!

Biblical Literacy Program
Emmaus believes in partnering with the vision of local churches and ministries in order to see every believer equipped with essential tools to engage their Bible. This program is brought directly to the local church through our seminars and retreats, designed specifically for congregations. The Biblical Literacy Program consists of the following seminars:

• Why the Bible Matters: Find out why the Bible is essential to the life of a follower of Christ
• Bible Overview: Understand the history of God and His people from beginning to end
• How to Study the Bible: Learn how to observe, interpret, and apply the Scriptures for yourself using the inductive study method
  

If you or anyone you know might be interested in these programs, please contact us at any time. You can reach Samantha and I through the options listed here. Or, you can also find out more about tuition costs, contact information, and opportunities that are available through our ministry partnerships by visiting the official Emmaus Ministries’ website. We’d love to hear from you!

Prayer Requests
-Samantha and I are continuing to raise support in order to help us work to the highest level of efficiency in this ministry. Right now we have a support income of about $1,200 a month and our required goal is $3,000. We need to add at least an additional $800 to our current income by January. If you don’t feel you are able to give in support, perhaps you know someone who might and would be interested in hearing more about our ministry? We’d love to chat! If you would like to talk to us about it or are interested in giving, please contact us or follow the donation directions here. Thank you!

We love you and God Bless,
-Jacob and Samantha McRae

 

Hello all!
We are here in Florida and we are well! Although we usually stick to one update a month, we wanted to give you all an early greeting, given the recent circumstances surrounding hurricane Irma. For those of you who don’t know, Samantha and I are based in Oviedo, FL, which is about 40 minutes outside the city of Orlando. In the weeks building up to Irma making landfall, we were continuing our usual work with Emmaus Ministries and also working with Canterbury Retreat Center (where our base is) in order to make it as storm-proof as possible. After continuing to watch the news and talking with friends and family, Samantha and I decided to play it safe and take one of our co-workers up on their offer to weather the storm with them and their family in Atlanta, GA. So, on Thursday (the 7th) we drove a grueling 14 hours (usually 8) to Atlanta and spent the weekend with some wonderful people. While we still ended up experiencing lots of rain, strong winds, and losing power in Georgia, we feel like we made the best choice and God really blessed us with an unlooked for mini-vacation through that trip!

We drove back to FL on Tuesday (the 12th) in order to assess the damages and help our community get back on its feat. Thankfully, our facilities suffered no extreme damage internally. Still, one of our buildings did receive some serious external damage, and all of the campus grounds were completely hidden under MANY downed trees and MUCH debris, including a tree right outside our bedroom window (Praise God it fell the other way!).

Now that we are back, we have gotten straight to work. The past two days since we’ve been back have been filled with a lot of hard work around the campus, trying to clean up our home here. One of the most incredible things that has come from this experience has been witnessing the faithful friendships and community around us. If you’ve read any of our previous blogs, you might remember how we’ve talked about being very surprised and impacted by the amount of unity and depth in the local church relationships here. This week, it has shown! More than 60+ people, from multiple churches we’re engaged with, have taken the time out of their own troubles to come and work with us here at Canterbury and have made weeks of work vanish in hours!

As the director of Canterbury Retreat Center, Jon Davis, told me, “This is what Kingdom living looks like!”  It has reminded us of this verse: 2 Corinthians 5:1 “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands.” While this verse is actually referring to our earthly bodies vs. heavenly ones, I think the heart behind it is the same in our current situation. Many times, too much of our hope and identity are attached to things of this world and it can cause us to lose sight of what is most important. Having lost nothing but time and energy in this storm, I don’t speak for myself, but for those who left their own damaged homes and properties to come and labor in love for their neighbors. What a blessing!

This past week may have thrown some of our plans and schedules into the grinder, but looking forward, we are getting back into the rhythm of our work with Emmaus Ministries. These next weeks, Samantha and I will continue to work towards removing the damage Irma left in her wake, and also continuing our support raising efforts, with the goal of becoming fully funded, full-time, staff of Emmaus Ministries. Along with this, opportunities have recently opened up for us to be able to work more closely with the staff here at Canterbury Retreat Center and also with the staff at our local church, “Grace Oviedo,” which we are looking forward too! These are part of our efforts to get plugged in with the community here and form more of those “Kingdom-minded” relationships.

We are happy to be back in Florida and are still looking forward to sharing what new things are coming from Emmaus Ministries. Thank you all for your prayers!

Prayer Requests:
-Samantha and I are still not at a sustainable income, we need more monthly supporters. If you, or perhaps someone you know, are interested in our goal of training individuals to know their Bible, in order to cultivate a Biblically literate church body, please get in touch with us! We would LOVE to talk more with you about our goals and mission! Or, to donate now, click here and follow the instructions.

-We recently heard a mystery grinding noise come from our truck and are taking it to the shop this week to get it checked out. Please pray for a miraculous fix, or at least a cheap one!

-Samantha and I are in need of some basic health check-ups (Dental care, new eye prescriptions, etc.) and we don’t have the funds for them with our current budget.

-We were very fortunate to escape most of the destructive force that Irma proved to be, but many of those in our community and churches were not so fortunate. Please continue to lift them up in prayer, and us, as we continue to do our best to help heal the hurts around us.

-Lastly, Sept. 14th is our 4th anniversary! Woo! We’re so thankful for the incredible journey this marriage has already been and we’re looking forward to much more! Please pray for us as couple, that we would continue to grow in our faith and relationship with each other.

-Jacob and Samantha McRae

Psalm 133:1 “Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!”

Hello to familiar and unfamiliar readers! At the end of our previous blog, Samantha and I were still in Virginia, awaiting the birth of our nephew and preparing to give a seminar at our church on the “inductive study method.” Thank you for your prayers! My sister Erin gave birth to a beautiful baby boy, Isaac Richard Nogueira, right before Samantha and I had to leave to head back to Florida. What timing! As for the inductive study method class, Samantha and I were fully expecting to have about 10 people show up, but God threw us a curve ball and we had around 34 people come to study the book of Philemon using the inductive method, how cool is that!

Along with this class, Samantha and I were able to help out with a couple projects around the church, like helping my Mom renovate her new office:
All that to say, we left Virginia feeling very encouraged by all of our friends, family, and church family. Thank you for your incredible support!

We headed back to Oviedo, FL to begin our 2 week planning period, where we were focusing on how to make Emmaus Ministries more effective. For those unfamiliar with our organization, we are a Bible training ministry whose main goal is to combat Bible illiteracy within the Church body. We believe that encountering God through His Word is a life transforming experience that everyone is capable of having! Our typical school of Biblical studies was focused more towards individuals who would come and live as residential students, taking our intensive course that required 40+ hours a week. While this plan was effective for those certain individuals, we realized that the time and financial requirements just weren’t practical for reaching the local body of Christ. This was a problem to us, since our mission as a ministry is: “To equip the body of Christ with the Word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ through: the inductive Bible study, authentic relationships, and community life.” So we brainstormed for hours and days, formulating a plan that will still allow individuals to come and study through the whole Bible using the inductive method AND that will allow us to extend our ministry to the general population of local churches.

We are SO excited for the plans that are in place! Unfortunately, we’re not at the stage where we can make these plans fully public, but we will be, very soon! Stay tuned! We do ask that you would continue to pray for us as we iron out the details and set these plans in motion over the next few weeks. And as we spent the last two weeks talking about our goal as a ministry, I thought it would be good to share this statement, as I believe it really does exemplify what we strive to be:

“We seek to share with our students not only God’s Word, but also our lives, endeavoring to communicate and exemplify Biblical truth and it’s relevance to all aspects and domains of life. We strive to better enable Christians to flourish in the many spheres of life, making no distinction between sacred and secular callings. It is our goal that students leave our classes with a thriving relationship with God rooted firmly in the gospel of grace and equipped with a big picture understanding of the Bible; herein lies the source of healthy relationships and a life led by the Holy Spirit that impacts the world for Christ.”

For the moment, Samantha and I are working full time in this ministry raising support and receiving staff training. Part of this staff training will include learning how to become more effective at discipling others, helping to deliver seminars at local churches, and becoming more familiar with teaching through the books of the Bible using the inductive study method.

As for support, Samantha and I are little over third of the way to our full monthly support goal. Right now, we are just making enough to pay for our rent and car insurance. Over the course of the next month or so, Samantha and I need to find $1,900 in additional monthly support in order to reach our full potential in this ministry and meet our full financial obligations. In this, we humbly ask that if you have not already done so, please consider us and pray about whether you can become part of our financial support team. If you feel ready to do so, please follow the instructions on our “donate” page here, and thank you! Additionally, if you know anyone who you think might be interested in supporting us in this mission, we would love to set up a meeting with them as well! If you’re curious about anything we’ve said, would like to know more about our ministry, or have any questions about donating, please don’t hesitate to contact us through one of the methods listed here. We would love to hear from you!

Prayer Needs:
-Setting our plans for the ministry in place as soon as possible
-Samantha and I reaching our fully funded goal. (On that note, Samantha and I are both overdue for some basic health and wellness needs like: a dentist check-up, eye exams and renewed prescriptions, etc.)

Thank you to our good friend Joy Carter at Joy Elizabeth Photography for these great photos!

Colossians 2:6-7, “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.”

Summer Travels

At the beginning of summer, Samantha and I embarked upon a journey previously unknown to us: full time ministry. As many of you have probably already read from us, we recently felt that the Lord was leading us to be a part of Emmaus Ministries, a Bible training ministry located in Central Florida. None of this would have been considered even close to the realm of possibilities if you had spoken with us just one year ago when we were starting a completely different journey, traveling from Alaska to Florida.

God stirred our hearts and moved our desires towards the mission of this organization, which is: “To equip the body of Christ with the Word of God and the gospel of Jesus Christ through: Inductive Bible Study, Authentic Relationships, and Community Life.” Basically, we seek to impart basic study tools and teachings to other believers, helping them to draw nearer to God through his Word and enabling them to approach the Scriptures with confidence.

Given our new mission, Samantha and I entered into this summer with two basic goals: See friends and family, and seek a support team. We began by visiting Samantha’s home in Homer, Alaska. It was a wonderful time where we were able to speak about our mission in front of more than one church and meet with individuals almost every day to talk about what God has placed on our hearts. We also may have had a little fun with 4-wheeling…

It was amazing how God worked in our hearts as we were there. Samantha and I found that as we continued to meet and talk with people about our new ministry and need for support, the more we ourselves became impassioned with the desire to begin our new work and we also felt that it helped us draw closer together as a couple. A huge thanks to all our friends and family for the wonderful and encouraging support we received in Alaska! 

But eventually, we had to say our goodbyes to Alaska (until next time!) and head to see my (Jacob’s) family in Virginia. And there we are at the present, doing much of the same things, seeing loved ones and working on building a support team.

Future Plans and Prayer Requests

Moving forward, Samantha and I will continue to stay with family in Virginia as we await our soon-to-be-born nephew! We are also awaiting the second week of August where we will begin a planning period for Emmaus Ministries, seeking from the Lord how He would have us best fulfill His calling for us over the next year. We would love to have you partner with us and our team in prayer over this time in the hopes that we will see our effectiveness grow exponentially in the community around us in Central Florida.

Samantha and I would also ask that you pray for us personally, as we are still far from reaching our goal of raising $3,000 a month in order to be most effective in our ministry. And as multiple financial obligations approach, such as insurance and rent, we need your help. We humbly ask for you to consider praying about whether or not becoming a member of our monthly support team would be something you could do in order to sow into the Kingdom. If this is something you’re considering, we would love to speak with you on a more personal level. Please take a look at our Contact and Donate pages.

Finally, Samantha and I are preparing to speak in front of one of our home churches here in Virginia in order to talk about our mission and to give a class on the Inductive Study Method. We would greatly appreciate your prayers over that as well!

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers! (and for reading this!)

– Jacob and Samantha McRae