Tuesday Prayer Night

Tuesday night four of us arrived at 7 pm to hand out flyers for our upcoming food drive. Bonnie and I went behind the church and down Winans and Tim and Ron headed out down 64th and to the Martinie Apartments. It was cold but we were blessed. Bonnie and I met women with children who were so greatful for what we were doing and one women was almost in tears. Bonnie kissed a little baby who reached out to her and prayed over another infant in the womb of a couple whose baby is due on May 13th. The people who came to the door were so gracious and some even said they might come and help. Judy joined us when she arrived for prayer and saw us walking down the streets. After that joyous time walking and talking and sharing with our neighbors we went back to church and prayed together and Pam joined us. What a blessing to be able to take time to pray and serve the Lord even though some us were tired from the day. I am reminded that Jesus never used being tired for an excuse to minister to the people. Serving God is a sacrifice but with it comes so many blessings!!!

Blessings
Caroline

Check out also John 7:38 "Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."

Marc DeRuiter

Be Sure to Put It to Prayer

Hi allJust want to ask that when you vote on a vision or a name that you don't vote because you really like it but put it to prayer and vote how the Holy Spirit directs you. It isn't about what we want but what God wants.BlessingsCaroline

Living Streams Community

Hi All,
As you know, I really like the "vision" that flows from Ezekiel 47:1-2. It has given me an idea for a name.Living Streams CommunityI intentionally left off the word church as it has the same meaning as the word community. Each of us is a "living stream" flowing from the throne and together we form the mighty river that brings hope, health, healing and forgiveness. I would also cahnge the word water in the proposed vision statement to stream so that it would read "In Christ, we are each a living stream flowing into our community..."I also think that it would be fairly simple to create a logo around this idea.Let me know what you guys think.Pastor RonP.S. I tried to put this on the blog but couldn't for some reason. Can someone give me pointers on how to do that again please? Thanks.

mission/vision assignment

I noticed when Pam came to prayer almost three weeks ago she had on a old Friendship sweatshirt with Micah 6:8.

I like this verse because it encompasses all that we talked about on the list and the three areas we have been talking about in the externally focused church. I am suggesting this for our mission and for our vision Isaiah 58:9-10.

Mission: to act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.. (Micah 6:8)

I also like Isaiah 58:9-10: "If you do away with the yoke of oppression with the pointing finger and malicious talk and if you spend your time in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness and your night will become like the noonday."

I believe the Isaiah passage is quite similar to the Micah passage but different words.

So perhaps the Isaiah passage could be our Vision and the Micah our Mission:

Vision: Isaiah 58:9-10

As a body of believers in Christ our love for the Lord runs so deep that we desire to love others unconditionally as he loves us. In service to our community we feel called to reach out by being generous to the hungry and giving ourselves to those in need. We do this giving God all the glory who has reached out his hands to us and called us out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Blessings

mission-vision assignment

Help by Laurie Beth Jones "The Path" Creating your mission statement for work and for life

A mission statement is centered around the process, or what we do in order to acheive the end result - which is the vision.

By looking into our list of descriptive words we have chosen, I came up with a couple ideas for a mission statement: (I liked Mark's ideas for church names and sparked these thoughts below)

Our church name could be: Living Water Community Church (or something like that)

Our Mission: "To be living water in our community as Christ's love flows through us obediently offering hope, comfort, forgiveness and love. "

Proverbs 16:3
Commit your work (your mission) to the Lord and your plans (your vision) will be established

Ezekiel 47: 1-2 really rang true to me as a great example for a vision statement for our church.

He brought me back to the entrance of the Temple, where a stream came out from under the Temple threshold and flowed eastward…The man went to the east holding his measuring line and measured off a thousand cubits; he then made me wade across the stream; the water reached my ankles. ….the water reached my knees….the water reached my waist…it was now a river impossible to cross. …he took me further…there were many trees on each bank of the river. ..and flowing into the sea it makes its waters wholesome…wherever the river flows, all living creatures teeming in it will live. Fish will be very plentiful, for wherever the water goes it brings health, and life teems wherever the river flows. There will be fishermen on its banks. Fishing nets will be spread from En-gedi to En-eglaim. The fish will be as varied and as plentiful as the fish of the Great Sea….Along the river, on either bank will grow every kind of fruit tree with leaves that never wither and fruit that never fails; they will bear new fruit every month, because the water comes from the sanctuary. And their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.

Below is an idea on how we could apply this to our vision statement

"In Christ, we are living water flowing into our community bringing health, healing and life until we become like a mighty river. Wherever we go Christ flows through us giving life to others – we give freely in Christ our love, our services, ourselves. We line the streets providing food for the hungry and comfort for the sick. Our fruits never fail and our leaves never wither. "

Blessings

Howdy folks, Marc here, I finally figured out how to post to the blog!

Can't wait until the next time I get to join you for morning church, it's always a blessing for me! I love the attitude of worship here, and the Spirit of community. Even though I have not been able to come out and help with the Gleaner's project yet, I love the fact that you're feeding people, that's what Jesus would do!

If I can submit my $.02 worth on a name for the church, I was thinking something along the lines of "Bread of Life" or "Living Water", although I really like some of the other names that have been suggested too. Scriptural names of Jesus would be good to review, I think i.e., "Lamb of God Community", "Light of the World", etc...

Chris Klein

Chris needs some summer help. I thought it might be neat to take the youth kids over to help me with him. He is looking for help the following days and times

Saturday dinner or Sunday lunch
Tuesday night Putting him to bed
Dinner Wednesday or Thursday

As you know, Chris is amazing and he would be a great inspiration for the kids! Let's try to figure out a way to help him! (It the long run, it's going to help us!)
Sal

Youth

We are meeting again on May 4th! Last time we met 6 lovely young ladies showed up and we enjoyed conversation at the BK Lounge (That's Burgar King in case you wondered). We talked about starting now fundraising for Colorado next summer. Any ideas or help in this would be greatly appreciated! I would love to take a group up north this summer if at all possible. More of a fun and bonding type trip. Because of my job I can get a pretty great deal on lodging and am thinking of Shanty Creek or Crystal Mountain. Perhaps a long weekend stay. If any adults would like to go with, that would be awesome! Sal

Vision Statement

Here is the list we came up with to think and pray on about a vision statement. Remember to use also the example in the Chapter 8 of the Externally Focused Church. We need a vision that is compelling to visitors and volunteers. We need to communicate our vision in such a way that we and others will embrace it. Here are the characteristics we came up with to help write a vision.

teaching
outreach
known in our community
praying
faithful to God's vision
forgiving
friendly
known for our love for God
comforting
relational
obedient
responsible/committed
develop leaders
hope peddlers
grace givers
accepting of all
humble
servants/serving
visionary
bible based
Spirit led
purposeful church

If you come up with a vision statement, bring it with you to church on Sunday. Next week read Chapter 9. (Caroline)

The Duke Martinie Community Garden

We are putting in a community garden next to the church- in front of Duke and Helen's and are cosidering naming this garden after Duke. Fitting for the man who has done so much for Friendship Chapel.

Serving The Community

Saturday was awesome! We served 91 total families! At first it was kinda crazy as we tried a different system. Thinking it would be important to spend private time with each family coming in...we had them register in one room with Kathy and Jacqualine and then they brought in their card to Bonnie and me and I was blessed with being able to talk with each family individually. We got a little (well, maybe a LOT) backed up so Bonnie stayed by the door and let people in as one family left. That was a HUGE help! I would say that most were extremely patient and gracious and very thankful for us being there. There were perhaps a couple were upset with us because we changed things and they were not ashamed to say so!

I needed to check myself and I feel very blessed that Bonnie was in the room with me Something about that woman. :0) Sometimes it's hard to forget a couple negatives mixed in with a ton of positives! Funny how that is. :0)

Towards the end I was overwhelmed and began to cry. I don't really know why; except that a woman had just shared with me that it's so hard. She wasn't going to share anything 'til I asked how she was doing. I could see her bottom lip begin to quiver and I told her it was OK - that she could tell us (Bonnie was there too) and then she started to cry and said she is working and only making $7.50 an hour. We gave her a hug and Bonnie told her Jesus loved her and that we would pray for her and be there for her. I realized how my life is so much easier than it is for some. Yet, I sometimes still feel sorry for myself.

We had some chatter going back and forth on emails with Pastor Ron, Vicki, Caroline, Tim and I and decided that we needed to meet. If anyone else is interested in meeting about that, let us know! I would post those emails but I deleted them because I was running out of email memory. :-/

If there are other stories to share with those of you who were out in the food giving area, post away!~ :0)

Blessings to you all! Sal

email to church family

Hi everyone,
Seeing all these prayers makes me sad and and happy all at the same time. Why does it make me sad? Because I am missing the Tuesday night prayer time. This is something that I really feel is important for our church in order that we grow (spiritually) and are sure to walk in the direction God has in mind for us. I'm happy because we ARE a church that prays. I admit that sometimes I am impatient while during church the list grows and grows but I realize this is the enemy telling me this. And I read this list of prayers and am thankful I belong to a family of believers where I am comfortable - where everyone is comfortable with sharing their needs. Who cares how long the list grows? I feel certain that God is smiling down upon our little church family and he is blessed.

Pastor Ron, I will share this with you for everyone to hear because we all need lifting up now and then. I was having a conversation with one of my sons and he said to me. (And I have it all mixed up the WAY he said it, but the jist of it was): I really think Pastor Ron is awesome. I mean, look at everything he has done for our family. He is so down to earth and well, just a regular person but yet you can just tell he loves the Lord. I believe he is right for our church. I have so much respect for him. These are the words from an 18 year old. :0) (I hope it's OK to put this here for all to see, but it's important that people know-I think)

I'll be gone again on Tuesday night. Pray for me (and Dean) for we are both working out of town and both wish to be there. I thought about asking to change the time but then it would conflict with someone else's schedule. And we won't have to be working like this forever. Anyhow, I just wanted to share that with you all.

We love you and will be praying for you Tim. :0) (Tim will be leading the service this Sunday)You will do awesome! (as usual) :0)

Blessings! And blessings for this beautiful day of sunshine! Dean and I are going riding on the bike today-our first cruise of the summer!

Sal

Gleaners convo

Hi All, The letters for the next distribution will be dropped off at the Post Office this afternoon. There are 87 of them going out including 6 families from our church. Along with the fliers that Caroline is handing out, we should expect a large turnout. I changed the registration time to 12:45 so hopefully people won't have to wait as long. Sally, if you are doing registration this time make sure not to start before then. If we do, people will show up earlier and earlier. Can Dean pick up the carts again? That would be a big help. Also, make sure to let people know on Sunday that it is coming up. Thank you all for everything you do to help out. I really appreciate it. Shalom, Pastor Ron

Hello Everyone, Dean is going to have to work next Saturday again. Dang. We might be able to get the carts though with Jake's truck. I will check with him. If he is home, that should work. Note taken on the registration. Will plan to no start that early. I did run an ad in the Advance and the registration time in the ad says 1:00. That should be OK though. I am attaching a copy of the ad for you to double check. Will see you on Sunday. Well, except for you Hassell's. :0) You have a safe trip and we will be thinking of you and praying for you and for the kids. My heart goes out to you! Blessings, Sal

Hi All (Sorry this got longer than I meant it to be, shouldn't have made that coffee after work. Yes we will mention this Sunday. Every time I get nervous about having enough help - this time I am worried 'about Duke'. Just something to trust about? Oh, I hate learning all of these lessons ... like the one that I have to learn and live this Sunday! :) Last time Hannah and Jimmy got the carts. As nice as it is to have them there still seems to be reluctance getting them from Family Fare. Maybe we need to look other places or learn to do without.Nice ad Sal. Caroline, you should get this for your next flier. Not a big problem but I don't think it mentions our name. But then we don't really have one yet!! :) [Because so many seem to like Victory Chapel I guess that might be it. I'm not real hot on it but not real strong either way. I have been playing with one idea and that is to have a name (any name) in lower case followed by upper case RC. So in this case I would say victoryRC or victory RC. I wanted it to be a little shorter, a little more modern, and the RC stands for Restoration Church. Enough of that tangent]Did you see the front page of the Press today? The top story says Food Banks running out of food. And it mentions again that 1 in 8 in Michigan (from a story several days ago) is on food stamps. It also mentions a person who uses the food bank, and her food stamps are $10/month. Not much. So yes, we will be close if not over this month already. We also need to do some brainstorming maybe sometime before the next one? My dad has been busy collecting donations to use for a debt-retirement auction at 1st church. I'm trying to talk him into considering donating 10% of those proceeds to us. Maybe put together a consistent message and appeal to a variety of places. We'll probably need a letterhead. Whew, that's enough Tim. See ya PS Sal, I might not be able to pull it off but instead of or along with Chapter 7 discussion I have a Tony Compolo message I want to use. Ever since you reminded me of him in your note about Alaina, I've gone to his web site and have listened to about half of those messages again. Thanks

Well, I passed out a flyer today and yesterday and it went to the Community Education, Love store, Dollar General and Goodwill and I kept the registration time the same as we did because no one told me you were changing the time. I said it was at noon and distribution was a t1 pm. We'll have a few early ones and we will still have early ones because some may be going off the old flyer. If I put one around the neighborhood I will change the times. It seems we have too many of us doing this so we need to get together on the times. I'm going out of town next week so I was running around today so I wanted to get the flyers out to the stores. Sorry but I did say NOON this time. If there is an advertisement to go out we need it in our hands earlier. I will talk to Dan at Family Fare on Friday April 11th about picking up the carts at noon so we have them to use to bring the food in. We'll see maybe we can use Troy's truck to get the carts or four people can be dropped off and walk the carts back to the church. We can get the teens to do this. Caroline

You're right Caroline. I know we had talked about the amount of waiting people had to do but we never did set a specific time. My suggestion is that we go with 12:45 from now on. It was onlly when I started to print out the letters that the time change occurred to me. Sorry about the mix-up. Ron

My fault for not getting the ad to you sooner. I had it all OK'd early and everything-just didn't think about it 'til yesterday. :-( Probably will not be able to take Jake's truck. I didn't realize it wasn't insured. Sorry about that. It would be fun for the teens to walk them back. Hopefully it will be a nice day! I feel so out of the loop and can't wait to get back in the church swing of things! Tim, you will do great on Sunday. Let us know if you need anything! Have a safe trip Ron and Vicki! We miss you Vicki! :0) Sal

Pictures

I have a chip with pictures from our last food drive and I can't figure out how to get them on this site. I don't have the program installed on my lap top. I need to take the chip somewhere and get the pictures on a cd. I'll try to get that done soon. It would be fun to have those posted for all to see! Stay tuned....if anyone has photos they would like posted, let me know! :0) I'd like to keep a photo journal of all we are doing as we serve our community. Sal