Dear Friends,

Lisa and I hope that all is going well in your world despite the apparent craziness that is swirling around the globe these days. Very little of what we see in the news makes much sense right now.

Fortunately we have God’s word to stand on. No matter how chaotic things get as darkness lashes out, we have His light to show us the way forward. God’s word is faithful and true, and His promises endure forever.

A fair amount has happened since our last newsletter. Here’s the latest.

Graduation

We had our graduation ceremony for our Bible college students last month. Because we are still in lockdown here in Scotland, we held our graduation via Zoom.

It wasn’t ideal. But our team was able to make it a special event just the same. We promoted 13 first year students into the second year program, graduated 8 students from second year, and an additional 10 students from our third year leadership program. That gave us a total of 31 students who completed the school year in Dumfries.

We had an excellent turnout for our graduation. In fact, there were far more people attending our Zoom graduation than we would have been able to seat in the main room of our facility!

Continued Lockdown

As I write this we have completed our 12^th week in lockdown due to coronavirus in Scotland. The Scottish government is taking an extremely cautious approach to opening things back up. Scotland is opening even more slowly than England is.

We are allowed to go for exercise walks. So one of the highlights of our days is walking in a field behind our neighborhood to see the cows in the next field. Lisa likes to call them over to the fence to say hello. I joke that she’s becoming a bit of a cow whisperer.

At this point we still don’t know when/how the government will allow people to move about the country more freely. And we have no idea if we will be able to come together with our Bible College students by the time we start back for the new school year in September.

Therefore we have been working on developing a plan for what we are calling a “Virtual Campus”. It’s a plan where we accomplish everything we already do via our existing Hybrid program using various online tools. Our plans include two weekend intensives where students will come into Dumfries for a Friday evening, Saturday morning, afternoon, and evening, and Sunday morning to get some live teaching.

We’ve actually created two sets of plans. One has us starting the school year entirely online. The other plan involves running a Virtual Program alongside the Hybrid program we’ve been doing.

It may be that some students will be permitted to meet on campus, while others whom the government perceives are more vulnerable might continue to be restricted longer.

Since we have no idea what the government will actually do, we are developing flexible plans we can adapt to whatever requirements we face. We’ve already submitted these plans to the leadership of the Bible Colleges here in the UK for approval.

Summer Plans

Normally Lisa and I travel back to America for a few weeks at this time so we can attend meetings, connect with ministry partners, attend to some personal business, and such. We usually minister at some churches while we are there too.

With the uncertainty around the whole coronavirus situation, we won’t be making that trip this summer.

Instead we continue to minister here from our home with our weekly Charis Facbook live Bible study, and our Financial Friday live stream. We are also holding a Zoom meeting for students, alumni, and guests each Thursday evening, and alternate Saturday mornings through the end of July.

Lisa and I had the blessing of ministering to Majakka Church in Finland for their main church service over three weekends. They’ve been using Zoom for their main weekend service. Since we’ve also been using Zoom heavily, it was easy for us to join them and share the goodness of God with them.

The pastor, Vesa Seppälä, asked us to minister on the material in our Rejecting Mammon book. It was a blessing to share with people who are hungry to experience the best God’s Kingdom has to offer in their finances.

Video Equipment Purchase

As I’m sure you can appreciate we are doing a whole lot more with video now than we did even a few short months ago. Therefore we felt it is time to increase our ability to produce higher quality videos, including both live streams and recordings.

So I went ahead and purchased about $2,000 in video equipment, which all just arrived this week. We’ve been so busy, I haven’t even had an opportunity to unpack any of it yet.

We will make this new equipment available for use at the Bible college at no charge. It will help us with the new Virtual Program. Plus, we expect this additional gear will enable us to live stream public events from our campus now too!

Fortunately God has blessed NewCREEations throughout these uncertain times. So the money was already there for this new equipment. Even so, if you have a desire to see us reach more people online with the good news of the Kingdom of God, then I encourage you to use the green "Click to Give" donation button at the bottom of this newsletter to make a donation to help offset these additional costs.

Lisa and I also encourage you to pray about becoming a monthly partner with NewCREEations. God continues to give us ideas on how to expand our reach to impact even more people with His goodness.

Like we teach our students, you will always need provision to bring about a God-sized vision. NewCREEations benefits from your donations and partnerships by increased capacity to reach more people for the Kingdom.

At the same time you benefit too, because of the promises God makes for the various ways He put in place for us to give in His Kingdom. For example, those who partner with us share in the missionary’s reward:

So Jesus answered and said, "Assuredly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands, for My sake and the gospel’s, who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life.— Mark 10:29-30 (NKJV)

Not only do we share in the reward when we partner with ministries, but we also share in their anointing too. If you like what you see in NewCREEations, I encourage you to come alongside us and join what God is doing.

As I close out this newsletter, I want to especially thank all those who partner and donate to NewCREEations already. We could not accomplish all that God has us doing without your support. Your generous faithfulness during uncertain times is an incredible testimony to God’s goodness in your lives. Thank you again for your love, friendship, prayers and faithful financial support.  We are eternally grateful!

Abundant Blessings,

Chris & Lisa Cree

P.S. Lisa and I would like to bless you for reading all the way down to the end of our newsletter this month by giving you a free copy of the eBook version of Rejecting Mammon. To get it, click here and then change out the $9.00 in the “Set Your Donation” field to $0. Next, click the “Add to Cart” button and complete the transaction in our e-commerce cart to access the download link for free. We pray you are blessed by learning these Kingdom ways as much as we were when we learned them!

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NewCREEations Ministries
953 Forest Edge Rd
Woodland Park, CO 80863