There are over 40,000 people in the Noble County area, alone, who are unchurched. Some, I’m sure, hate the idea of church. Some are just indifferent, not having had a compelling reason to check it out. And some, as I have been, and my children, are hurt by man’s religion, legalism and hypocrisy. First Love Outreach Center Church is a Soul Center desiring to be a safe, nonjudgemental place for those with past hurts, or habits of a hangup on one kind or another. We are all broken people who need God and need one another. I may be reached personally at 260-336-4106 or via an email inquiry.
Summary of Soul Center First Love Outreach Fellowship
First Love Outreach Fellowship is a registed Soul Center with Christian Leaders Insitute and Christian Leaders Alliance in Spring Lake, Michigan. I currently lead a Monday Bible Study in Kendallville and the Public Library at 6pm each week, and beginning Saturday January 11th, 2025, we will be meeting for a weekly fellowship at 800 E. Main St. in Albion, Indiana. My brother and teammate in Christ, Pastor Sam Maddox, has graciously and generously allowed us a space to have weekly fellowship of live worship and book by book, verse by verse teaching of God’s Word.
First Love Outreach Fellowship is a place to reach souls for Christ, to know the love of God and the body of Christ, and to seek God for the gift or gifts of the Spirit that He has given to each soul. First Love is a Soul Center that exists to train and equip believers with knowledge and skills, but primarily to rely on the Spirit who is God for the gift and the growth of the gift, in faith in the iron-clad promises He has made. In the process will be the supernatural unity of the Spirit who is God and the building up of the body of Christ in love and reproducible multiplication of the Kingdom of God.
Description
This gathering is not intended to grow into some impersonal large church gathering or souls who are not in relationship with each other. It is especially not for those who aren’t interested in being in a loving family relationship with the men and women tasked and gifted by God to mentor them into a submitted and committed relationship with the Spirit who is God. Soul Center is for the soul who desires to know God, through Jesus Christ, and be changed to live the everlasting life God gives, and be used to lead others to the same relationship.
Diversity in the Body of Christ
We are individual people who come from, often very distinct ethnic or cultural backgrounds. We have been raised differently in different homes. We have all experienced our own highs and lows that, each of them, have left a mark on our lives. We come in various colors and shades of colors. We come as we are to Jesus Christ, who sees our diversity as the beautiful mosaic of His creation. He wants to work in our diversity to grow us in unity of the Spirit to function in diversity, yielded to His workmanship in us to create his colorful, diverse masterpiece. He will conform us into the image of His own Son.
We are individual, but not independent!
We need one another as the foot needs the hand that needs the mouth, that needs the mind – the mind of Christ Jesus. He will transform us in the vibrant color that He desires, if we will let Him do it. First Love desires to give way to the work of the Spirit to accomplish what He desires, to do the will of God the Father. May we each be used to encourage and support, and to continually direct a reliant relationship with the Spirit who loves us beyond our wildest imagination!
What it Means to be Unified in The Spirit
Doing the work described in 1st Corinthians Chapter Three, and 1st Corinthians 5:17-21 along with Ephesians 4:11-16, First Love exists to be used as co-workers with Christ in His field and building His House, the Kingdom of God – The Church – with the goal to bring in, mentor and train, and to send out to reproduce and multiply, and we have been commanded. Utilizing the resources of Christian Leaders Institute, and the many pastor elders in the community, First Love desires to be used as a facilitator of the unity of the Spirit who is God, to build His body up into the full stature of Christ to be His vessel representative and Ambassador on earth, in our community of influence.
God has raised up within His body those with these gifts for the very specific purpose of building up ourselves corporately. Christ in us, working in us, and through us, that we may become stronger and have more godly impact on each other and those who may be looking for authenticity and not “churchianity” as usual. We each have experiences and abilities to accomplish the gifted roles given in Ephesians Chapter Four, for this purpose. Be it in preaching/teaching, mentoring, pastoring, planting, watering, using music, the arts, administration, hospitality, restoration and recovery, God wants to use who we are, where we are, with the individuality of our gifting and experience, while having a reborn identity as a child of God in Christ Jesus. This is the vision of First Love Outreach.
First Love Soul Center desires to use the gifts of those whom God is bringing in to do our part. If you are in our area of Northeast Indiana, you may be one of them.
Guiding Verses
“And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?
For when one says, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos,” are you not carnal?
Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each one? I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So then neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the increase.
Now he who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God’s fellow workers; you are God’s field, you are God’s building.
According to the grace of God which was given to me, as a wise master builder I have laid the foundation, and another builds on it. But let each one take heed how he builds on it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is. If anyone’s work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone defiles the temple of God, God will destroy him. For the temple of God is holy, which temple you are.
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “HE CATCHES THE WISE IN THEIR OWN CRAFTINESS” and again, “THE LORD KNOWS THE THOUGHTS OF THE WISE, THAT THEY ARE FUTILE.”
Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come—all are yours. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” -1st Corinthians Chapter Three
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.
Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were pleading through us: we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”- 2nd Corinthians 5:17-21
“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.” – Ephesians 4:11-16
Contact
If you are interested in knowing more, please call or text 260-336-4106 or send email and a time can be arranged for a meeting over coffee of lunch. May God bless you immensely.
In Jesus,
Banner Kidd, Pastor and Ordained Minister
First Love Outreach Fellowship