Thank God for this DRC Brother

Thank God for Brian Criscuolo!!!

One of the exciting joys in pastoral ministry at Del Rey Church is seeing God raise up men to be leaders in our congregation. In this blogpost, I wanted to take a moment to give thanks to God for raising-up a specific brother among us, who has begun the journey of leadership with great strides and achievement. With that said, I’m also writing this to give thanks to our dear brother and his family for all of their hard work in pursuing God’s call.

Who is this brother? It is none other than our beloved Brian Criscuolo. If you have been around Del Rey Church in the last few years you have seen this brother go from the pew to the pulpit (well, we have chairs, not pews, but you get the phrase, right!?).  He preached his first sermon in November of 2016 and most recently in June of this year (2017). In case you missed his debut sermons, check them out here http://www.delreychurch.com/sermons#speaker_user_35  

In our church, we don’t take preaching lightly. In fact, we take it very seriously, so we don’t just let anyone in the pulpit. We use preachers we’ve either raised-up in-house or men we know personally (and still, we give them this handout with preaching guidelines). If you look at those guidelines and you’ve listened to Brian preach, you will note that he is doing a wonderful job. In addition to filling in on Sundays, Brian has also preached to our DRC guys in our 6am Men’s Group. It’s really exciting to see him grow and to be personally challenged in the word of God by a brother faithfully handling the sacred text.

In addition to teaching and preaching, Brian has also been participating in our Del Rey Church Short-Term Missions efforts with Atlas Hardy. This year, Brian is actually taking the helm and leading the 2017 India Mission DRC Team. I cannot wait to hear the report of how God used our team to serve the global church and equip the saints for mission abroad.

Isn’t it encouraging to see how God moves and raises us up to serve Him? And isn’t it such an edifying thing to be in fellowship with brothers like Brian who show us the work of the Spirit in the church? And just think, Brian is doing most of this as a volunteer. He receives a very small stipend as an intern at church and works a full time job in real estate financing, not to mention he’s a fulltime seminary student (which is really cool, seeing him sacrifice time and money to be equipped to serve us), an active Community Group Leader, certified foster parent in LA county (they have a precious foster baby!), and father of four little ones, who are all homeschooling (and YES can I get AMEN and shout-out to Leah Criscuolo, who without her the above wouldn’t be possible—she’s a super mom!!!!). PRAISE GOD for Criscuolo family!  

DRC family, we are blessed. Let’s keep our brother Brian and sister Leah in prayer and let’s seek the Lord of the harvest to raise up more servants for His mission.  

“Therefore, pray to the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest." –Matthew 9:38

In Christ,

Pastor Matt Jones

 

 

 

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