Greetings from Utah, one of the most unique states in the USA!
As I begin this letter to you, our friends, our partners, and our supporters, I find myself thinking immediately of Philippians 1:3, “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you!” Words always seem to fail me when I try to express my sincere appreciation for your many prayers and financial gifts that make the ministry of Standing Together here in Utah even possible. As we face the beginning of the traditional holiday season with Thanksgiving and Christmas looming, I just want to say, “Thank you for believing in us and our mission of unity and transformation in Utah for the last almost 19 years.”
Let me begin by sharing with you two exciting updates from our ministry. First of all, last July 6th, I finally completed The Bridge Book manuscript after 23 months of writing. With over 187,000 words at conclusion, I knew a massive editing process would have to follow. God in his goodness to us, opened the door for us to work with Stan Guthrie, a literary agent and well known Christian author an editor. Stan has been working on the manuscript sense mid August, and his goal is to cut the book in half, to less than 90,000 words. As Stan says, this is a “gargantuan” job to do! He has been very encouraging in his assessment of the book, as it relates to its content and the amazing God story that has been going on since the mid 1990s. It has been extremely encouraging to work with Stan and I thank God for his important contribution to the quality of the book. As soon as Stan is finished with his editing, we will begin the work of finding the best possible publisher for The Bridge Book. So please be in prayer for the editing process and finding a publisher for the book.
Next, I wanted to let you know about our new weekly video blog and monthly podcast. My monthly podcast, “Building Bridges with Greg Johnson," is designed to encourage people from different perspectives, particularly religious differences, to learn how to dialogue with one another in both a convicted and civil way. Our weekly video blog will support the monthly podcast with a short principle or example of convicted civility from my efforts to dialogue with LDS leaders, scholars, and students. You can find our weekly video blog and our monthly podcast on our Standing Together YouTube Page. Just open up YouTube in your browser, and put in the search bar, “Standing Together Gregory Johnson," and you will find our YouTube page listed in the results. If you do this and like what you see as a supporter of this ministry, it would be huge if you would like our videos, share our videos on Facebook and other social media you have, and most importantly subscribe to our YouTube page. Our big goal is to Secure 100 YouTube subscribers by the end of the year! Will you help us accomplish this goal? The initial feedback we are receiving from our weekly video blog and our first podcast, which is a interview with our guest Nick Vujicic, has been very encouraging. Our podcast is available on our YouTube page, iTunes, and Spotify, and will be posted on the first Friday of each new month at 10 AM. Again, please share our page with your friends and encourage them to listen in. As we build our audience online, through our weekly video blog and our monthly podcast, we hope to undergird and promote The Bridge Book when it is finally published and into the future. We are so excited about this new endeavor and I would ask for your prayers that it will succeed as the Lord would have a do so.
Last August 9th, we hosted our 15th annual Worship event, again this year held at the Utah State Capitol. Seeing nearly 1,000 people worshipping the name of Jesus on the front lawn of our State Capitol during the end of summer, with the sun setting over our Oquirrh Mountains, brought tears of joy to my eyes. When the Church, the body of Christ, stands together in united worship it is a most beautiful thing! This ministry exists to call believers in Utah to stand together as one people in Christ to share the good news of Jesus Christ with everyone we can. Our message is clear, “The Whole Church bringing the Whole Gospel to the Whole Community.”
With the editing cost of my book, the development of our new weekly video blog and monthly podcast, and the hiring of a new administrative assistant, we have taken on some new and additional financial costs. It would be a great blessing to us to have you partner with us in these new initiatives by sending a special one time gift or to begin partnering with us on a monthly basis with the gift of $25, $50, or possibly even $100. Monthly gifts are particularly helpful to us as they allow us to predict our monthly income and plan our financial abilities more accurately.
I began this letter by thanking you all and I will conclude this letter by thanking you all once again! Your love, prayers, and support are tremendously encouraging to us. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for believing in and with us for great things to happen here in Utah!
Greg and Jill
Our prayer for all of you is that you would all have a wonderful Thanksgiving with your family and friends and that the upcoming Christmas season would be a time of blessed remembrance of the greatest gift God ever gave, the gift of his blessed son Jesus Christ!