A Much Needed update!

Blog

Short Version

We know we've not posted in forever. For that, we're sorry. 

1. We've been really busy 
2. Kevin works 10-12 hour days now 
3. Kristi has been helping Kevin with Real estate. 
4. Church is going well and we're growing. 
5. We're really busy.
6. Holy Cow we live in NYC!!!!

The longer version:

We know...we get it...it's been a long time since we blogged. Before moving to NYC I used to read Freddy and Susan Wyatt's Blog about life in NYC. I used to get so bummed because it took them awhile to blog. It was one of the few blogs I ever found about life here and well...it's been far to long. So, I'll make no promises about updating weekly but we'll try to keep you informed. You can always email and call us!! 

Life here has become so hectic here lately that I'm actually writing this blog on the Subway. The "R" train in case you are wondering (nobody cares which train). Actually...the majority was written on the train and was finished several days ago. I'm finishing the last part on my day off because Hurricane Sandy is almost here and I've got the time to finish this! 

The month of October has been a fun one for us. At the beginning of the month Kristi's friends from seminary came to visit. They went all over the city. I was glad Kristi had that time to connect with her friends. (They wore her out!!) A few days later, we welcomed Mark and Rachel Anderson here from Knoxville. We showed them around the city which we enjoyed. It's ALWAYS nice to see a familiar face! We also welcomed Cory & Sami Lethgo here. We had a great time with them here in the city!! Can't wait for them to come back.

The ministry here has been going well also. Kristi began leading the women through a doctrine study. These women are eating it up. They are so hungry to learn and grow. Kristi really is doing a great job with this and has put a ton of work into it. 
The men's group has kicked off as well. I wish I could say I've been right in there but truth is I've been working 10-12 hour days and have missed them so far. I'll get there. I miss connecting with the guys. I have been meeting with 2 men in our church. We have been going through Basic Christian Doctrine and they seem to enjoy it. They ask a lot of questions which has been good. One thing I've really noticed is you have to be really intentional to reach people in the North. Down south I took a lot of that for granted.   

God continues to bless us despite our short-comings. It truly is amazing to see all we have accomplished here in the short 7 months. He continues to provide for us. He does this through people like you giving and praying. Please continue to remember us in your prayers. 

We'll be coming home for Thanksgiving. We'll be at Belmont Heights Baptist Church Sunday morning after Thanksgiving in Knoxville. 

The two pictures above were taken from a photographer in our church. One was used in the On Mission Magazine that NAMB put out for their fall magazine.

This picture is looking down 3rd Avenue in Bay Ridge. It was raining this day and the tall bridge in the back is the Verrazano Bridge which connects Brooklyn to Staten Island.

 Back in the summer our church our church had the chance to have a joint service with the Gallery Church in Manhattan. Our church led the music portion of the service. It was a great time of worship.

Living in NYC we see things like this all the time...or at least I do. I was walking to work on 31st and Madison and one block from my work they were filming this show. In the distance they are filming for White Collar.

There he is...the Naked Cowboy. In case we get hard pressed for money...I know what I can do! This guy was prancing around Times Square playing the guitar and taking pictures with tons of people.

This picture was taken by Todd Halliburton of West Lonsdale Baptist Church in Knoxville. Todd was my youth pastor growing up and we were blessed to have him and Leeanne and the college group from WLBC.

This month we welcomed Trey and his wife Caitlin. Trey moved to NYC to attend the Southern Seminary Extension. Trey leads worship as well. This particular morning he led and i'm on the djembe

A nice little shot of the city from the Empire State Building.

I got off the subway this particular morning at 34th Street and saw GMA outside shooting. This is the weatherman Sam Champion up close. He had just finished zip lining.

This is Citi Field (Met's Stadium). NAMB hooked up church planters and their families to a Faith Night. We watched the Braves beat the Mets this night and afterwards enjoyed a concert by MercyMe. This was an awesome time of worship.

This picture was taken from the 69th Street pier in Bay Ridge. This picture was taken on September 11th. As the sun set at this location we attended the Sept 11th Memorial that our community hosted.

This picture was taken at a Q&A session our church hosted. We had 18+ people there.

Pray for the Cabes as we minister in NYC! 

God is moving in NYC!

A lot has been happening in NYC and its fitting for an update. God has been working and moving in our community and church. 

We have had several mission teams come in this summer and more to come. The biggest event we have had was City Uprising. We had 6 churches involved with about 60 volunteers. These teams worked in our local park to make the area nicer. New Yorkers do not have a lot of green space so they love their parks, however, this park is large and only has a few workers. During the day the teams worked in the park and at night we had a worship service. The pinnacle of this event was an outdoor picnic with free cotton candy, popcorn, snow cones, face painting, live music, and inflatables. We had at least 300 people attend this event. Praise the Lord!!! 

July 4th was another great day for our church. Our local senator puts on an outdoor picnic in the park with live entertainment and activities for kids. Cornerstone got in on the action, we handed out  around 250 fans with our logo because it was HOT. We also gave away Starbucks gift cards every 30 mins and had a face painting booth. It was another huge hit! We connected with many of our neighbors. 

The next night was incredible! We had an outdoor baptism at Coney Island. Jeremy and Joanna, a couple who has been attending our church for awhile now, came to Cornerstone because they saw a flyer in a store window. They were both believers, but neither had been baptized.  Both have been a tremendous help with the church and they are a really great family, we are glad they saw the flier!  The baptism was a powerful moment as we had a good turnout plus we turned some heads at Coney Island!

This past Sunday was another huge day in the life of our church.  We had our first ever membership Sunday!  There were 10 people who came forward and signed our church covenant. Cornerstone Church at Bay Ridge started with 7 people and currently runs 30+ people. 

Lastly,

Kristi and I are doing fantastic. God continues to use us despite our weaknesses. Our small group is doing well and continues to grow. Kristi has spent a great amount of time working with the mission teams that are here this summer. A huge prayer for us was answered when the Lord opened the door for me to land a job with the Bowery Mission. I'm working in the corporate headquarters as a donor service coordinator. 

Prayer:

God to continue to use us

God to use Cornerstone Church

God to continue to strengthen our marriage

A job for Kristi
Individuals/Churches to partner with our work

Life in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn

Kevin told me that I needed to write a blog since he has written all of them so far, so here goes… 

Kevin and I have been living in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn for a little over 3 months now & it has been an awesome experience!  The Lord has blessed us with a great apartment, new friends and an awesome church family!  We are very humbled that He would allow us this opportunity to serve Him in NYC.  There are times when I am walking down the street or riding on the subway that I think, I can't believe I am living in one of the greatest cities in the world in order to serve the God of the universe!  

Over the past few days I have walked around taking pictures of our new community, Bay Ridge.  I did this so our family and friends could see the area we live and the places we go.  We hope you enjoy looking at our pictures!  Please continue to pray for us as we continue to build relationships and share the Gospel!

Our Building

The Street We Live On

Our Grocery Store

Our Laundromat

Pizza/Chinese/Cupcakes...what more could you ask for on 3rd Ave?!?

The Hotel Our Church Meets In

Our Main Subway Entrance

Shore Road Park 

Verrazano Bridge from Shore Road Park 

Lower Manhattan from Bay Ridge 

Life is Good!

Wow, we are slacking on the blog! Life has been crazy here lately that we've simply not had that much time. The last few weeks of April I was in Real Estate Class. For two weeks, from 9-4 M-F, I was in class learning as much as I could about how to pass the state test. Once completing the test I've been working with a company that does mostly rentals. While I started off with much promise I'm sad to say that it wasn't that great of an experience. I felt like I was working seriously long hours and going pretty much everywhere and nothing to show from it. It was pretty frustrating and after a few weeks it was clear that this wasn't going to pay the bills. So, i've been searching for another position. It's been really discouraging on the job front. I'd say Kristi and I have sent out 200+ resumes with no response. 

Cornerstone Church is going well. We're plugged in and serving like crazy. Its been neat to see how God is growing and using our church. We just finished one of the greatest weeks in our church. It was cool how it happened. One small group went out together on a Thursday night for fellowship, a few guys got together and played pool on Friday, Saturday our church helped serve in our park and then went to eat pizza later that night, church on Sunday, then another group of guys got together again on Tuesday for pool. It's been exciting to see our group get together outside of a Sunday gathering. Pretty neat stuff there!!! We'll be having quite a few mission teams rolling through this summer. We're going to be slammed, but I think it's going to be great for the life of our church. We hosted Clear Creek Baptist Bible College from Kentucky this past Saturday. We put up flyers in businesses along 3rd & 5th Avenue. Because of that work we had 3 new faces today in worship! 

Also, Kristi and I passed a great milestone for our relationship. We celebrated our one year anniversary on May 21st! They say to survive in the city you have to get out of the city and that's exactly what we did. Since we now call the Northeast home we wanted to go somewhere outside of the city to the north. Some friends from church recommend Newport, RI.  Honestly, at first thought…I wasn't too happy about Newport or Rhode Island for that matter but I'm so thankful we went. What a great place! It was absolutely beautiful. Newport is home to tons of mansions. There was one street that literally had 12+ mansions within walking distance. We toured two of them. We went to the Breakers and Rosecliffs. Newport made me think of a smaller swanky Charleston, SC. Its a great place for a relaxing trip. I could see us visiting there again.

A shot of lower Manhattan from Brooklyn.

Shore Road Park

Newport, RI...Anniversary Trip

Newport, RI

Flatiron Building-NYC

Newport, RI

Explicit Gospel

Kristi and I had an opportunity to attend the Explicit Gospel Tour with some of our Cornerstone Church family. This is a book tour with Matt Chandler and Shane and Shane leading worship. Matt Chandler is the pastor of Village Church in Dallas Texas. Matt just released the book Explicit Gospel and is traveling to various cities on the East Coast this week. The first stop was in NYC last night at Apostle’s Church. I highly recommend going and checking out this event. If you are a Christian this event is for you. If you are trying to introduce somebody to the Gospel and/or the church this event is for you. If you are exploring this thing called Christianity this is for you.

We have the book and I’m really looking forward to digging into it. From what I could understand, this book is about the Gospel and breaking it down to the simplest form or showing you how best to articulate the Gospel to someone else. His text was from Colossians 1. The overall theme is that God rescued us. Bottom line, we, in and of ourselves, are born into a sin state, are separated from God and we cannot make things right with God on our own. It was because of the work of Christ that we can be reconciled to God. The biggest theme in the Bible that is often overlooked is Grace. The problem is that many of us hear the Gospel but yet what we “hear” is a list of do’s and don’t and what ultimately happens is one of two things: 1. We make a “decision” for Christ because we ultimately don’t want to go to hell. 2. We reject the list of do’s and don’t and live for ourselves. We are in need of God to rescue us from the dominion of darkness. In reality, we’re ALL in NEED of God to rescue us. We are messed up people in need of Grace. Jesus’ work on the Cross was the ultimate act of Grace. This idea in Colossians chapter one is that God has rescued you and I from darkness and placed us into light in which we have redemption. We were fallen, sinful, separated from God, but He intervened and now we have hope. That’s it.

We were told that ministry in the Northeast would be difficult. And…we’re seeing that it is. We were told that this place is hard to share the Gospel. Truth is, ministry anywhere is difficult. Paul…on the road to Damascus wasn’t a seeker. Let’s not mistake laziness for Going and Sharing. God calls and God equips. We have been rescued…let’s live that and let’s share that story. After all, that’s why we’re here. Why are you here?

Busy Season

It’s been a busy few weeks for us in Brooklyn. We had a great Easter Service with several visitors. We were able to see some friends from Mud Creek Baptist Church in Hendersonville, NC. Mark brought a group of high school students up for their spring break to serve in the city. Kristi and I were able to lead the group on an ethnic prayer walking tour of Brooklyn. We had a blast leading them and we think they enjoyed seeing such diversity in Brooklyn.

Kevin has been busy the last two weeks attending real estate class. He passed his class test and is awaiting the results from his state test. We feel the Lord opened a door for him to do this and we’re trusting this is a part of God’s plan. Kevin led worship for the second time this past Sunday and it was well received.

Please pray for both of us that God would continue to open a door for employment. Kristi has been meeting regularly with Lesley for accountability and friendship. Soon, Kristi will be taking a more active role in the women’s ministry within Cornerstone Church.

Prayer Needs:

Jobs

Church Partners

Cornerstone Church

People of Bay Ridge

Biblical Recorder of NYC

We just wanted to say thank you to the Biblical Recorder in NC for putting this article out about us moving to NYC.

http://www.brnow.org/News/March-2012/Couple-leaves-comforts-of-South-for-city-that-neve

Couple leaves comforts of South for city that never sleeps

March 26 2012 by Shawn Hendricks, BR Managing Editor

Kevin and Kristi Cabe love the view from Sunset Park in Brooklyn, N.Y. The park overlooks a backdrop of tall buildings and skyscrapers in Jersey City, Manhattan and Staten Island. Further in the distance one can see Queens and the Bronx.

“It’s really an amazing place to stand and see it all,” writes Kevin on his blog that documents the couple’s recent move to the city.

It’s a much different view for the Southerners. Both have North Carolina ties and were living in Knoxville, Tenn., a few weeks ago before uprooting to the Big Apple. The couple packed up their possessions, sold their car, quit their jobs and moved from a “comfortable life” in Tennessee to Brooklyn.

They now live in a one-room apartment in Bay Ridge, a community of 70,000 people packed within two square miles. As Mission Service Corps missionaries with the North American Mission Board (NAMB) the couple is working alongside Cornerstone Church in Bay Ridge – the only Baptist church in their neighborhood – to help lead locals to Christ. The church, which launched Sept. 11, 2011, is part of NAMB’s Send North America effort to start new churches in cities across the country.

The Baptist State Convention of North Carolina also is involved in several of these Send North America partnerships that include New York, Toronto and Boston.

“It was simply about being obedient [to God],” said Kevin, who spent most of his life growing up in Canton, N.C.

“We had great jobs. We were comfortable. We were secure.”

Kevin has served on staff in the past at Biltmore Baptist Church in Arden and also helped start Pinnacle Church in Canton. He attended Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest. Kristi also attended there and graduated. But the couple didn’t meet until after Kevin moved to Knoxville in 2008. There, he served as student minister at Belmont Heights Baptist Church. The Cabes married in May of 2011.

Kevin and Kristi Cabe, as Mission Service Corps missionaries with the North American Mission Board, is helping with Cornerstone Church. They are coordinating volunteer teams and hitting the pavement to tell others about Jesus and the church.

Kevin first felt called to New York City about two years ago. While on a six-hour layover in Newark, N.J., as he and a mission team returned from an overseas trip to Poland, the team set out to explore the city that never sleeps.

“It was just the enormity … the high rises, knowing that there are millions of people here,” said Kevin, noting there are more than 170 languages represented in the city.

“And knowing that in the South we have churches on every corner. But up north that is not the case.”

Though Kevin concedes there are some “church buildings” in Bay Ridge, there are few congregations that identify themselves as “evangelical” or those who put their sole trust in Jesus Christ for salvation.

“Our goal [is] to help a church as well as lead people to Christ,” he said.

The move has required some adjustment.

Without a vehicle, the Cabes must walk or take the subway to get where they need to go in the city. The people “talk fast” and the cost of living is much higher. As Mission Service Corps missionaries the Cabes are endorsed by NAMB, but they are responsible for raising their own support.

“We were fortunate to raise enough support that will keep us here for several months,” Kevin said.

“But we are going to need jobs … which is good because it will allow us to meet more people.”

Right now the couple has applications out and are actively looking for employment.

The Cabes are working with Nathan Tubbs, a bi-vocational pastor of Cornerstone Church and a 7th-grade science teacher. The church meets in a hotel with about 25 people who attend each week.

As an associate pastor, Kevin leads worship, works with youth and leads a small group. Kristi’s main role with the church involves leading a women’s ministry.

Both have helped Tubbs coordinate volunteer teams and lead groups to hand out flyers and information about Cornerstone. Some of the flyers can be found hanging in stores and in other places around the neighborhood.

“We were afraid that people in the local businesses would be like ‘we don’t want this,’ but they were really friendly and really receptive,” Kristi said.

“Being from the South you always hear that people from up north are rude, and I haven’t experienced that since I’ve been here.”

While riding a subway, Tubbs shared on his cell phone how the Cabes are an answer to four years of prayer.

“Having another couple come in and help out, [Cornerstone’s] ministry has been tripled,” Tubbs said.
“We’re meeting people who have never been in a church before, and no one in their family has been in a church before.”

Tubbs described the work in Brooklyn as being similar to ministry among an “unreached people group” overseas.

According to one study, 83 percent of New York City residents affiliate with some form of organized religion, but only 3 percent claim to trust Christ alone for salvation. “We’re about 97 percent lost,” Tubbs said. “We’re right on the verge of what the International Mission Board would call a people group that’s two percent lost … unreached.”

Overall, the work is going to take time and persistence. “The relationships here are incredibly slow,” Tubbs said. “It takes days, months, years to have the opportunity to share with someone.”

“That’s why a couple like Kevin and Kristi Cabe are so important to our ministry because they come and they stay … and are going to see the long-term benefits of doing that.”

For more information on how your church can become involved in similar partnerships through the Baptist State Convention of North Carolina contact Michael Sowers, senior consultant with Great Commission Partnerships at (800) 395-5102, ext. 5654, or msowers@ncbaptist.org. You also can follow the Cabes on their blog atkevinandkristicabe.blogspot.com or contact them at (828) 273-1536.

3/26/2012 3:31:12 PM by Shawn Hendricks, BR Managing Editor | with 0 comments
Filed under: BSC, church, missions, NAMB, NC, NY, planting