Each weekend, over 400 people connect online on the Faith Promise Church Internet Campus to watch the service and participate in the online chat room and one-on-one prayer.

The Internet Campus may not have chairs to set, floors to vacuum, or coffee to make, but it still needs volunteers to help keep the digital campus running smoothly.

Enter Cody Stafford and his wife, Kasia, who live in Belgium and serve weekly on the Internet Campus from there.

Stafford, a 25-year-old Knoxville native, is a Senior Airman in the United States Air Force. He met his wife, Kasia, in Banbury, England, when he was stationed at RAF Croughton in Northamptonshire. Kasia, a Krakow, Poland, native was working as a landscape architect. The two married in 2014.

While Cody has been overseas since 2010, he first attended Faith Promise as a teen with a childhood friend. While searching for a church in Europe, Cody and Kasia decided to check out the Internet Campus.

“We were looking for church where we could become closer to Jesus and learn about Him – learn God’s Word,” Kasia wrote via email. “Cody proposed we check Faith Promise on line. And that is what we did. Ever since then, FP has become our place to worship,”

There was no question about whether or not to become involved, according to Cody.

“We watched one sermon and knew that was it,” Cody wrote.  “In the Small Things Big Changes series, Pastor Chris Stephens said that so many members don’t serve. That hit home for me. I have always been encouraged to serve, but I wasn’t in any fashion. So I filled out the communication card on the iCampus, and that’s were I met (Internet Campus Pastor) Kyle Gilbert. And now here we are!”

The two log on for online weekend services where they greet other cyber worshipers via the interactive chat tool and welcome them to the digital campus. They feel that they are the ones receiving the blessing.

“We think that serving is doing more for us than what we give to the church and God,” they wrote. “We are part of a community that have the same belief that God send his Son to save us – that here on earth it is just the journey that ends in heaven with Jesus.”

Cody and Kasia both came to know Christ at a young age.

“There are people watching the service that are a thousand-plus miles away with no other church like it for them to watch or be a part of. Churches like FP don’t exist in Europe,” Cody wrote.

They say they appreciate Pastor Chris’s teaching style.

“We really like the preaching of Pastor Chris Stephens, even though we’ve never gotten the chance to meet him. He is in your face, extremely informative to God’s word, and funny. It doesn’t matter if people want to hear it, he still says what we need to hear and in a loving way,” Cody wrote. “I wish that more preachers were like that. The Word is more understandable and clear – getting right into your heart.”

Now stationed at NATO Programming Centre in Belgium, the two enjoy travel and recently returned from a week-long skiing and snowboarding trip to the French Alps. Cody is studying criminal justice at the American Military University. Kasia commutes between Belgium and England to continue working in landscape architecture.

They celebrated their first wedding anniversary on March 15 and are working towards becoming Core members at Faith Promise.

 

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This week, Faith Promise is celebrating six years of broadcasting online through the Internet Campus. You can watch online five times each weekend: Saturdays at 6 pm, Sundays at 9 am, 10:20 am, 11:45 am, and 9 pm To find out more, or learn how you could serve, email Kyle Gilbert, Internet Campus & Communications Pastor, by going here.