2024 Impact Report: $118K Awarded in Grants

Because of your church’s partnership, a total of $118,771 was awarded in grants in 2024 by our district to Eastern PA Alliance churches and workers. We want to report on some of the impact:

Training Church Leaders

Fairlawn Community Church in Cogan Station hosted training for more intentional disciple making in their church. Elders, church staff, and small group leaders attended the training and started making shifts to be intentional in disciple making in their small groups.

“Through this grant, we have been able to engage more individuals in meaningful discussions and activities focused on discipleship,” Bill Bota writes. “Thank you for partnering with us!”

Around five churches hosted Front Yard Missions training with Jonathan Weibel in 2024. One of those trainings was hosted at City Alliance Church in Williamsport with Nithin Thompson and his elders and core leaders.

“It was a great way to get them excited and equipped to reach their neighbors,” Nithin said. “We are incorporating this into our summer outreach strategy.”

Local Outreach

Your partnership helped churches care for communities by providing food and clothing, providing education of Haitian immigrants, and providing housing for refugee families from Ukraine.

Pine Glen Alliance Church in Lewistown hosted their annual “Wild Game Feed” night for the first time since the pandemic. The event started several years ago by an individual that was saved later in life and wanted local friends and family to hear the gospel.

The invitation goes out to local hunters from diverse groups of Amish, Mennonites, Veterans, as well as a group of young men from an area's half-way house. They had 220 people come out to enjoy a pig roast and a “mystery meat of frog legs.” Ray Cavanaugh, who led the event, was encouraged to see how “this event made different people aware of the need to get the gospel out locally.”

Global Missions

Funding Missions - GC5K

Daybreak Church hosted their annual Great Commission 5K to help their church family engage more deeply with God’s heart of the world. The 2024 GC5K had the most participants to date and helped raised more than $12,000 for the Great Commission Fund.

Teams Sent from Lancaster Alliance Church

Lancaster Alliance Church sent out several short-term workers on their first experience with Alliance Missions to a creative access area. One woman from the church went to teach ESL for six weeks and a group of men from the church completed a construction project for a center that cares for underserved women.

“A couple of the men were very impacted and talk like they can't shake off what they saw,” Dan McClary said. “One is stepping out of his comfort zone more and more and into leadership areas in the church.”

“I’ve come back the richer,” one participant wrote. “God has met me in specific ways…with streams in the desert, he has met me. And I’m grateful for that.”

“One of the things that this trip really cemented in my mind is that people are the same no matter where in the world they are or what they believe,” another participant said. “God made us all to be people of connection and relationship.”

Teams Sent from State College Alliance Church

State College Alliance Church hosted their first international short-term trip since the pandemic. They visited the Envision site in Berlin, Germany to begin to build a partnership with international workers in that location. That partnership is continuing to grow and take shape and several team members are returning to Berlin as interns or interested in going in the future.

“Everyone who went was stretched,” Aden Wertz said. “Because of the culture and time that it takes to develop relationships, many team members had to work through the challenge of expectations that were not met. It taught many on the team to surrender their expectations to the Lord, and to see ministry in a broader, longer-term context.”

As a result of seeing the ministry in Berlin, they are also having conversations about how to engage creatives in their own community and how to posture themselves as learners towards those who are different or outside the church.

“Thank you so much for your support. When I told the team that the grant was approved, they were all very surprised. It demonstrated to the team that we are part of something bigger than just our local church family,” Aden writes.

Teams Sent from York Alliance Church

 York Alliance Church also hosted two trips. One trip was to a creative-access country where people are resistant to the gospel and to outsiders. “The trip gave our team a better understanding of how to care for our international workers,” Mike Carletti said. York Alliance and Daybreak partner together to support workers in this country.

York Alliance also led a retreat for international workers from the Thailand region. “Our IWs engage in difficult and lonely work, and that there is a real need for them to be poured into and refreshed,” Mike writes.

Investing in Young Leaders

Summer Internship

Valley Alliance Church in Wellsboro was able to hire a summer intern to lead their teen girls in weekly Bible studies and events. “This has helped to jumpstart a greater investment of our church in our teens,” Darryl Eyler said.

The intern was encouraged as girls grew in their knowledge of the Word, grew to understand that prayer “worked” and became more willing to pray out loud, and grew in their love for friends and people around them.

Cambodian NextGen Retreat

Our Cambodian Alliance family in Philadelphia hosted another NextGen retreat. The purpose of the retreat is to reach 2nd, 3rd, and even 4th generation Cambodians and their diverse friends with the truth of the gospel.

This year their focus expanded to reach Cambodian-connected families and children to become more multi-ethnic and multi-generational. They had 29 people attend for the first time and 13 attendees in a survey responded, “I did not understand what it really meant to be a Christian but now I do.”

Today the small groups are still in touch via group chats. “I didn’t come with family,” one attendee said, “but my small group is basically family. They are so loving and welcoming.”

The hope in 2025 is to launch a weekly Bible study, a one-day event in the summer, ongoing group chats, and monthly open gym and game nights.

“We continue to be extremely grateful to the Eastern District of the C&MA for the support of this grant. Having an extra level of support has lifted a huge burden from us.”

Alliance Licensed Ministry Experience

We celebrate that five units are serving in local churches to complete their Alliance Licensed Ministry Experience to serve as full-time international workers. Katy is one of those units serving at State College Alliance Church.

She helps to run Conversational English Classes. With her serving in this role, the church has twice as many international students each night as they had last year.

“She is naturally encouraging and sharing stories that keep the volunteers eyes on the vision and purpose of the ministry that is ‘above the line’ of details and minutiae,” Aden writes. “She keeps their eyes on the fact that we are doing this to share the gospel.”   

Just recently a new student shared that she has been trying to find people who would just talk with her, and Americans never seem to want to talk. She was overjoyed to find a group of people who were making space specifically for this: Americans talking with Internationals.  

“It’s a privilege to see what God might do through Katy and John and how we, as a church, can encourage and launch them into whatever He has next,” Aden writes. 

Thank you!

And finally, because of your partnership, we could support pastors and workers with educational scholarships and come around those who faced unexpected crises and hardships in 2024.

Thanks for partnering with us in the gospel.