Community Impact Week with Ron Hutchcraft

Community Impact Week with Ron Hutchcraft

This is was gets me excited. Events that are making an impact in the local community. It's communicating Jesus in a simple, true to life way where people can discover they are lost without feeling set up:

• It's a cup of coffee at your local coffee shop with an unsaved friend.
• It's a friend to friend chat about life.
• It's a class that invites people to explore.
  

Rehoboth Congregational Church

Rehoboth Congregational Church

Rehoboth Youth Are "Homeless" on Redway Plain

Cardboard boxes, burning fires and weary people will be dotting Redway Plain in the heart of Rehoboth during the weekend of November 9-11^th. If you’re thinking, "That’s a sign of homeless people," you’re right. That’s exactly the picture the organizers of Rehoboth’s first Homelessness Awareness Weekend want to paint.

This curious sight will be part of "There’s No Place Like A Home", a project organized by the members of the Rehoboth Youth Group, which is sponsored by the Rehoboth Congregational Church. The intent of the three-day event is to increase community awareness about the on-going crisis of homelessness in America and to raise money to assist local aid programs such as the Rehoboth Food Pantry, Crossroads in Providence, Our Daily Bread in Taunton, and other food pantries and soup kitchens in our area.

Inspiration for the project came from a week-long mission trip to Washington, DC undertaken by twenty members of the Rehoboth Youth Group. During the trip, the teens worked hand-in-hand with members of the homeless community in shelters, soup kitchens and community outreach programs throughout the city. They learned unforgettable lessons about the true causes and effects of the plight of homelessness. After the experiences and education of the trip, the teens returned home eager to find ways to do more to help others in their own community.

This is a great short terms missions project that any church can do. The impact on the youth can be life changing and the impact that it has on the homeless can change generations of families.

Recently I've begun to see with spiritual eyes what God can do with one, that changes the generations following. How one person has shifted the course of history for their family...

....Perhaps they refused God's call to service and that has reached down through their family to their children and the grandchildren. The grandchildren have scattered and their lives are indiscernible from the world. Another family has been effectively neutralized in the spiritual battle.

....Perhaps they responded to the call of God and abandoned everything to serve. Their legacy lives on in their children and the people they ministered to. Missionary parents raise missionary children and missionary children raise missionary grand kids.

I once heard it said that Dr. James Dobson was the blacksheep of the family. He was the only son who was not a pastor. There are millions who look to Dr. Dobson as a pastor for their family.

What's your legacy?

Are you intentionally shepherding your heritage, or is it all about you?

Thanksgiving is not just for Thursday

Thanksgiving is upon us! We should take time this week to stop and reflect on what we are all thankful for. In fact we should stop every week and reflect on what to be thankful for. Perhaps we should stop daily and reflect upon what we thankful for.

I'll admit, I don't stop to be thankful enough. There is much to be thankful for this year.

One of our family's favorites is George C Scott's "A Christmas Carol." He finishes the movie off with the quote, "Scrooge was better than his word, for he had learned to keep Christmas in his heart all year long."

If Scrooge can change, so can we. May we keep the spirit of thanksgiving in our hearts all year long.