Featured Ministries

Learn more about our SIGNATURE MINISTRIES

CityRise holds 19 ESL classes every week. 12 are held in person and 7 are held via Zoom. We have over 30 volunteers teaching or assisting. Our goal is to:

1) generously show the gospel of Jesus Christ by teaching the very best English classes we can

2) take advantage of all opportunities to give the gospel of Jesus Christ whenever we can as the Holy Spirit provides open doors.

For both in person and Zoom classes, we strive to connect students with Bible study and worship in their native language and in their neighborhood.

In just three months last year, we had 564 students attend an ESL class.

In these months, our students were from: Angola, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Brazil, China, Columbia, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Russia, Ukraine, Venezuela, Zambia

Featured Ministry ENGLISH AS SECOND LANGUAGE CLASSES

Featured Ministry Casa El Buen Samaritano

Casa El Buen Samaritano’s mission is to share the love of Jesus Christ while providing whole-person — body, soul, spirit — healthcare to the low-income, the uninsured and uninsurable population in our community.

Some of Christ’s last words on earth were, “Go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). Because sharing the Gospel with our patients is at the core of the clinic’s ministry – each year we are blessed with more patients seeking whole-person healing. Without the security of monthly donations, serving families and individuals who want to grow in their faith is not possible. Casa can only achieve its mission through committed volunteers, staff, partners like us, and individual donors.

The partnership with Casa has been so sweet. We love to see people get involved with that, and it’s amazing to see how God blesses the people at CityRise when they serve there.

In February, 253 people attended Dinner and Deploy, our annual evening focusing on international missions. We bring in all our international partners for our people to hear firsthand about the ministries we are in partnership with and our scheduled mission trips for the year. To date this year, we have deployed 17 to Ecuador (March).

Our Students in Ecuador

For the past 10 years, our high school seniors have been traveling to Riobamba, Ecuador to live generously during their final spring break of high school. I had the privilege of going on this trip with my son Cooper, who was one of eight seniors who committed to go on this trip. Unique to this trip is the opportunity for parents to join their student and serve together. The heart of the trip, led by Jerry Edrington, is to cement our students in the gospel, being able to share their faith and to know why they believe what they believe. Jerry also has our students share their testimonies and it is a special time each night as a few students step forward to share their faith journey. It’s profound to see our kids—my kid—wash feet, share the good news, and lower themselves to live the generous life! Thank you for giving so that we can develop our students and lead more than 700 Ecuadorian children and their parents to Jesus!

INTERNATIONAL MISSIONS

Tricia’s Story

I met my husband here in Houston about 14 years ago playing touch rugby. We were both super competitive, and we ended up getting married. We have three children now. They are 11, nine, and seven years old.

Over the last few weeks we’ve been involved in Fight for It. Pastor Robby reached out to us asking whether we’d be interested in leading a small group, and my initial reaction was a “no”, as I thought looking after the kids and working would be too much to handle at the same time.

Eventually, though, I realized there was probably a reason I was being asked to do this, so I let Pastor Robby know I was interested.

Even though you may be in a difficult season, it always helps to serve.

Through that, I’ve been able to connect with two other mothers, and it’s been such a wonderful way for us to get closer and to learn about serving. Sometimes it feels like I’m pouring from an empty cup, like I have nothing to give, but connecting with the other moms in the group has helped me realize that serving doesn’t necessarily mean being out there in the community serving insane hours of your time volunteering; it actually starts in your own home. Gratefulness, that you have the opportunity to serve your spouse and your family, is a blessing, and it’s helped me shift my mindset from “how will I get through the day” to “this is such a blessing that I’ve been given, that I get to serve my family.”

Since October we’ve met a lot of Afghan refugees through Houston Welcomes Refugees. My husband is always eager to serve, so together we’ve had the opportunity to help and meet a lot of these families who I now call friends and family.

It can be a struggle for me to find the energy to serve, but I’ve learned how much it’s helped me mentally, and it always gives me a fresh perspective on what’s worth fighting for and what to be grateful for.

What I would encourage you to think about as you too have these opportunities to serve is that, while you might feel overwhelmed, just start small. Look at the people around you, your roommate, your neighbor, your partner, your family. There’s always a need out there that may not be apparent, so start off small.

I would also encourage you to think about how even if you are yourself exhausted, or even though you may not have the capacity to help out strangers, it is always tremendously beneficial when you courageously stretch yourself and put yourself out there to help other people.

Even though you may be in a difficult season, it always helps to serve.

 

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