Potatoes

Potatoes are like youth ministry (ministry in general too), you never know what you've got until after they've grown.

We grow potatoes every year, usually we chop up some sorry white potatoes from the bottom of the potato urn, those, greenish, soft, eyed, and sprouted mess that comes from leaving the potatoes in the dark too long. Chop them into sections, and throw them just under the soil in the garden. Wait until fall, and dig them up. The potatoes will be all around the potato patch.
You never know how many potatoes you'll have until you dig them up. This year we had six plants, from potato sections. They died off, fairly early in the summer, and I figured they wouldn't do much, but to my surprise, I was an hour digging them out. I found that piece of pottery in the upper left corner of the basket. My yard grows pottery fairly well.

Surprise, Surprise.

Even when it doesn't seem like you are making a difference in ministry. Hang in there, the potatoes aren't ready to be dug up.

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.

Myra Missionary!

Who is this mysterious missions minded person? I'll tell, because now we know. Elaine has finally put together the eccentric red hat and signature black gloves to be Myra Missionary.

After 13 years of using an anonymous picture from the internet (think very bad pixel count) we have a new photo.

We just had our church's missions conference and it was great. The missionaries loved having "Myra Missionary" come and introduce them. The adults loved it to.

Down below I posted the original Myra photo. Check it out on the updated Myra Missionary website.




We are thinking of a video aspect to the curriculum. We don't have a lot of experience with video, but it could be the next big step.

Our missions director has been very supportive of the whole project and is very interested in getting it out to the whole church.

Agreeing to Disagree

How often do we agree to disagree and get to the real work at hand?

Something that has been on my mind, is our lack of unity in the American Church. Non-church people don't care if we are pre-millenial or post-millenial, Armenian or Calvin, denominational or non-denominational, they want to know do we imitate Christ in real life or not. That's the bottom line for many.

Let's put aside the rhetoric and get busy doing the kingdom work.

What is the kingdom work?

To share Jesus with the world and bring them into the kingdom. To do this I have a great list of contacts, almost everyone who gets our newsletter might be on the list. I know people who work in a great variety of jobs, with various knowledge bases, and they know people. I have a friend who put together a great outreach with the Kawaski motorcross guys, because that's where he works. Another person I knows, fixes computers just by speaking in Chinese to them (I'm kidding!). There are much smaller churches out there, with pastors who don't have a full rolodex or maybe deep pockets. What are they to do?

I think a database of people and what they have to further the kingdom work would be a great help. It could be something simple:
Joe can fix any car, 555-5555
Sue can type flawlessly at 150 wpm, 555-4444
Tom is a retired electrician, 555-3333.
One assumption that we should make is that requesting person cover expenses if applicable, unless a professional service is rendered under contract (it gets messy fast).

Actually this needs to start with a web designer, because I don't know the best way to build this list. I could do it in Excell or a chart on a web page, but there are better methods. I'm not a programmer. Somebody interested in helping? Somebody looking for a resource?

A New School Year, A New Beginning

To me, the fall is the time to start new things. The ministry calendar follows the school calendar. Implementing changes is a progressive thing, a good thing most of the time and when the kids start a new school year, a great time to change things in ministry to kids (teens & children).

As we head into the fall, we are looking forward to Joshua Revolution's Niagara 2007. A multi-ethnic, -cultural, -denominational, -national conference where teens meet the God. My wife and I took 7 teens in 2005 to the conference and they came back changed. God grew those seven into more and they have been reaching the neighborhood around the church. This year, I'm hoping to take even more teens and some other chaperones as well.

The big thing on the radar screen is Joshua Revolution. Their theme is Exodus: "Let my people go!" God is in the business of setting us free: free from the world, from bondage, from sin.

Its time for a new beginning. Even our church is going through a new beginning: a new senior pastor. Where we go as a church has still to be seen, but we have taken the first steps as God directs.