GRACE MISSIONS
Imagine a ragtag collection of surrendered and transformed people who love God and others and actually go and do something about it. We are mesmerized by the idea that Grace Missions is not about us, but all about Jesus. We are transfixed by His story and His heart for the world that we get to serve. We are seedthrowers and firestarters, hope peddlers and grace-givers, risktakers and dreamers, young and old. We link arms with anyone who tells the story of Jesus. We strive to equip those in persecution, empower those in poverty and encourage those in discouragement. We serve together, play together, worship together, live life together. Their world will change because God sent us. Imagine a world in which all nations have access to the gospel.
— Pastor Mike Acosta
1. GRACE DREAM CENTER
The Grace Dream Center serves as our hub for all Local Missions outreach as well as Disaster Response. We are focused on providing support to those affected by homelessness, hunger, and human trafficking through various community outreach programs. We also provide support to local underserved schools and their students on a need-by-need basis.
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Anti-Human Trafficking – Through awareness campaigns, prayer and various outreach initiatives, the Anti-Human Trafficking Ministry of Grace works to bring the gospel of Jesus Christ to the men and women lost in the darkness of Human Trafficking.As the body of Christ, we are committed to shifting culture through the freedom, salvation, and discipleship of those enslaved in Human Trafficking.
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Backpack Buddy Feeding Program – During the school year, Grace Church Liberty works together with the Houston Food Bank to provide weekend meals to children in need in the Liberty County area. We partner with schools throughout our service area to provide food for children who participate in free and reduced meal programs during the week but are at risk of going hungry on weekends and holidays. Caring teachers and staff members identify children who are showing signs of hunger or malnutrition, and discreetly distribute a backpack of food for them to take home. The backpacks are delivered from Grace Church Liberty filled with nutritious, easy-to-open food that does not require stove-top cooking. Empty backpacks are returned by the students and refilled for the following weekend. Since we began in 2016, thousands of meals are re-bagged each year and delivered by our Grace Church volunteers. On average, we provide meals to 150 students each week who would otherwise experience hunger over the weekend.
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Mission Greenspoint – In September 1996 a group of individuals from Louetta Road Baptist Church and Spring Memorial Baptist Church began three apartment congregations. As these groups grew, the awareness for meeting physical needs also grew. Through the next year a group from these two churches and others came together to start Mission Greenspoint. Through the years, Mission Greenspoint has had its chief aim to “take Jesus to the people.” The point of focus has shifted from time to time in how to accomplish that and will continue to do so as a necessary part of growth and change. However, there has always remained the constant purpose to share Christ with everyone who walks through the doors. Mission Greenspoint has come to be known as a “helping place” for low-income individuals and families. They help those living in the Aldine/Greenspoint area of north Houston. Mission Greenspoint does not charge for any of its services and ministers to the people regardless of race, creed, ethnicity, or religious affiliation. Last year, more than 200 volunteers and a small staff helped to provide over 12,000 individuals with material needs they could not afford. They are located in the Aldine Independent School District where 84 percent of the school population is at or below the poverty level. Their mission is to help people love God, His Word and His creation; to help them become more self-sufficient and family-centered; and to under-gird the establishment and growth of the local church. Grace Church partners with Mission Greenspoint every November in collecting Thanksgiving “meal in a bag” donations as well as providing volunteers for numerous outreach activities throughout the year.
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Disaster Response – the Grace Disaster Response Team helps in times of crisis with a simple plan: rescue, recover, rebuild. We will do all within our power to help assist people escape an urgent disaster situation. In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, we will help those affected stabilize their situation, and we will help provide means to rebuild. There are various ways in which we accomplish this goal which may include: offering emergency shelter, providing emergency supplies and/or funds, securing rebuild supplies and providing volunteer teams to assist in clean-up and rebuild efforts. The Grace Disaster Response Team has been deployed in the aftermaths of Hurricane Harvey, Tropical Storm Imelda, Hurricane Laura, Hurricane Delta and several local flooding events.
2. GLOBAL MISSIONS
Haiti – As the survivor of a building collapse in the 2010 earthquake and later a gunshot wound during an armed robbery, Benite Jeune knows God has a destiny for his life. His higher education was completed in Canada and the US, but he and his wife, Michaelle’s, calling is to the people of Haiti. He often says if you were to put a piece of gold into a bucket of mud and ask a Haitian child, “Which are you? The gold or the mud?”, the child would invariably say, “The mud.” His obsession is to make Haitians see that they are, in fact, the gold. The ministry of R.I.S.E. Haiti encompasses a dynamic church of more than 400 members, the Esther and Jabez Children’s Home currently housing 16 girls, Institution Classique Chretienne de Vignier – a school for more than 800 children from the ages of 3 to 20, and a feeding program that nourishes over 900 students and school employees daily. Benite Jeune also chairs an association of pastors with several hundred members, speaks at conferences frequently and is heavily involved in community development in Vignier, Arcahaie and throughout the country of Haiti. Grace Church partners with R.I.S.E. Haiti through sponsoring and facilitating an annual leadership conference serving on average 700 pastors and an annual youth conference serving about 700 young adults. Grace Church participates in giving funds for the feeding program, provides training for teachers, hosts appreciation banquets for school employees each December, and has contributed construction labor and funding for building the school and orphanage.
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http://www.risehaiti.org/index.html
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India – Kashmir Evangelical Fellowship exists to serve the unreached people groups of the Himalayas through community development, disaster relief, leadership training, and education. Its prayer is to be a beacon of light in Northern India. The ministry has spawned a network of hundreds of village churches, whose pastors come through a training program at KEF’s headquarters near Amritsar. These villages are remote and isolated much of the winter, being located at high elevation on treacherous roads. They stretch along the Himalaya Belt of India from the western border with Pakistan to the eastern border with Tibet and Nepal. Through a partnership with the Indian Armed Forces, KEF provides disaster relief in the form of blankets and care packages. It has a dynamic model of community development, women’s empowerment, children’s ministry, educational support and occupational training. Grace Church partners with KEF by providing annual leadership conferences to unite and encourage hundreds of pastors and their spouses. Humanitarian aid includes supporting occupational training centers focusing on sewing and computer labs, along with supporting the needs of leper colonies and supplying motorcycles to be used as transportation by the village pastors.
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Tanzania – Based in Itigi, Tanzania, Unreached Peoples Mission exists to do just that - reach the unreached people groups in Tanzania to introduce Christ to them. The ministry supports 154 full-time missionaries and is training many more in its six-month Discipleship Mission Training School. UPM also reaches out to the unsaved poor by offering instruction in eight different vocational skills that can be used to provide for their needy families. To date, 182 missionaries have graduated from its vocational Bible school and the number of full-time workers stands at 214, including the missionaries overseeing church plants, 24 evangelists, 15 schoolteachers and 22 in other capacities. Grace Church partners with Unreached Peoples Mission by supplying leadership conferences for pastors and lay leaders. Additionally, Grace Missions has helped fund the construction of the main multi-purpose worship center, churches in the bush and a medical clinic. Additionally, Grace Church has provided equipment used in its vocational training programs.
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Cambodia – Raven’s Hope International is a Christ-centered resource center that offers spiritual growth, leadership development, and mission opportunities to young women 18-30 from around the world. RHI believes understanding is primarily shaped by environment. People are a product of what they see, hear, and feel. By temporarily relocating the girls from their country, we can give them an opportunity to grow beyond their environment. RHI believes that though food, clothing, and shelter are necessities, they are perishable. However, wisdom and understanding are everlasting. Grace Church partners with RHI by hosting young women from Cambodia and beyond for two to four months at a time when they travel to Texas, providing leadership training, Biblical studies, mission opportunities, and life skill classes such as hospitality and cooking American style food. Through their foreign travel, improved English skills and leadership training, the young women can earn as much as five times their former salaries upon returning to Cambodia, lifting themselves and their families from poverty. Their leadership experience extends to strengthen the reach of their churches communities.
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One Child – We’ve found a new and exciting way to demonstrate over-the-top crazy kind of love through the work of One Child, a ministry that brings hope, truth, life, love and mercy to 40,000 children living in poverty around the world. One Child equips these children to reach their God-given potential by creating opportunities for transformational development in spirit, mind and body. Like us, One Child believes God has a purpose for everyone and they approach their ministry to children around the world in the same way. They look for like-hearted people who are willing to change the world for one child through sponsorship. We’re excited that Grace Church is able to partner with One Child because sponsorship is the perfect opportunity to make a lasting impact on the life of a child. With your help, a child can receive nutritional support, medical aid, educational assistance and lasting hope in Jesus Christ.
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Jordan – Peter and Tanya Omran lead Heart of Mercy (HOM) ministry in the Middle East, putting primary focus on refugee care and reaching children in the region. Nearly 36% of Jordan’s 5 million plus population are children under the age of 15. It is HOM’s mission to prepare these children physically and spiritually through child sponsorship programs, educational opportunities, teacher training and summer Christian camps. Additionally, HOM provides medical care and humanitarian aid to the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees now living in camps in Jordan. The Omran’s fund a portion of the ministry through business ventures, including olive oil manufacturing (sold in The Shop at Grace!) and also a coffee plantation in Ethiopia. Grace Church partners with Heart of Mercy by helping facilitate summer Christian camps and providing mutually mentoring relationships with business leaders.
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Russia – Pastor Yri and his wife Zhenya began pastoring Kemerovo Christian Center (KCC) in 1997. In 1999, KCC opened its first drug rehab center in the village of Zmienka. The church realized they could help minister best to the city of Kemerovo by meeting the needs of the people, thus leading entire families to Christ. Since then, Pastor Yri has sent out missionaries to nine different cities where they have followed a dual model – opening both rehab center and church simultaneously. The current government does not have a system of rehab centers in place to properly help drug or alcohol addicts. More than 70,000 people die each year in Russia from drug abuse, about 30,000 of them from heroin. Millions more suffer from dependency, with an estimated 8.5 million drug addicts in 2013. The rehab centers run by Pastor Yri and his daughter churches have found great success that the Russian government has not been able to find. In 2014, during the 20-year anniversary of Kemerovo Christian Center, the rehab center in Zmienka celebrated 1,000 participants who successfully finished the nine-month program to find true healing and freedom from drug and alcohol abuse. Pastor Yri and his leadership team continue to provide this program at no cost to participants. Grace Church partners with KCC by providing leadership conferences for the staff, lay leaders and church membership, and through facilitating young adult conferences. Additional support is given by providing inspirational speakers for the recovery program participants.
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https://kemerovo-christian-center.ru/
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Ghana – Markaz al Bishara exists to work with the poor and marginalized to promote human transformation, train and equip members of the Church in Africa holistically for missions and to create the enabling environment for interdependency. The ministry of Markaz al Bishara is an example of Business as Missions. The Asare’s live and work in northern Ghana, on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, where the population is 98% cultural Muslim. Their focus is to use business opportunities to form long-term relationships with associates who might be employees, customers, or vendors. In doing so, they believe they can gradually build a bridge that will make it possible for those people to come to Christ. Markaz al Bishara includes a wide variety of businesses, from a hotel and conference center, to a Bible college, to a radio station reaching more than 2 million people, to a warehousing facility and shea nut and cassava farming interests. The ministry offers support to rural housing options, orphanages, schools, subsistence farmers and a variety of other people living on the edge. Grace Church partners with Markaz al Bishara with leadership conferences and through facilitating an annual five-day live-in Kids Camp that introduces Christ in a dynamic way to 400-500 children from both Muslim and Christian backgrounds.
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https://markazalbishara.wordpress.com/about-2/
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Mexico – Victorious Christian Harvesters (VCH) is a Latin American ministry with a focus on taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ world-wide. It was founded in April 1992 by David and Donna Blanchard. The U.S. offices are located in Laredo, Texas and the international offices are across the border in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. The International Harvesters Institute began in September 2001. This evangelistic, ministerial training center, trains leaders to become dynamic and effective ministers. VCH has a five-fold strategy pursuing the God-given vision of One Million Bibles/One Million Souls. As of December 2020, VCH has distributed 1,759,733 Bibles and has seen 1,287,510 souls saved! Grace Church partners with VCH by providing guest lecturer/Bible teachers at the International Harvesters Institute. We also participate in INVASIONS, in which large groups of missionaries hand out Bibles, perform skits and pray for people in a targeted effort to reach as many people as possible in a short amount of time.
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Elam – Elam Ministries began in 1979 the year of the Iranian revolution. Its vision is that all the people of the Iran region would have the opportunity to come to know the Lord Jesus Christ and follow Him as a disciple, and that Iranians would be instrumental in taking the Gospel to other Muslims. To achieve this vision, Elam trains leaders for fruitful, effective ministry in the Iran region, equips the Iranian church with Bibles and resources for evangelism and discipleship and sends the Gospel into the Iran region through trained evangelists, church planters and Christian media. Elam believes such is the openness of the Iranian people that wherever there is a witness to the Gospel, individuals, families and even communities are coming to Christ. The ministry uses satellite TV and Internet technology in an impactful way to reach the unreached within Iran, alongside disciples and new converts. It has high-quality media programs designed individually for reaching men, women and children. Grace Church partners with Elam Ministries by providing in-depth Bible teaching, leadership training and encouragement to Iranian Christian leaders who have traveled to safe locations outside the country, before returning to the country. Grace Church supports its own missionary placed within the ministry. Additionally, Grace Church has provided more than 20,000 New Testaments to the ministry for use in street evangelism.
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