Start Spreading the News....

Well, today was our big outreach to the community. We did not have as big a turnout that I had hoped, but I keep telling myself that He is in control of it all. Those of us that were there were treated to the most beautiful morning and early afternoon that we have seen in several days. It was bright and warm. We had a fun time walking our neighborhood and meeting the people.

Our plan was to do a lightbulb evangelism. Basically, we handed out lightbulbs (along with flyers for VBS, FQ and C@T). This gave us an opportunity to practice what we had learned in Columbus at D2S. Most of the people were nice, a lot were not home and my partner and I graduated from P.U. pretty early on. We still kept going and I turned out to be a great day of fellowship and enjoying the day He gave us.

We had prepared around 200 packets to deliver. I was humbling to see how little of an area 200 homes are in. The four teams involved barely covered two mainstreets in our neighborhood. I was telling my wife that in direct marketing a 2% return on a mass mailing is great. I think it would be great if we just affected 4 people this morning.

I am still amazed at the path that God has not only me on, but the youth group as well. I continue to pray that we will be obedient to what He wants for us and that the harvest will be plentiful. I look forward to getting to know the youth from the neighborhood and I hope that we will be able to be the example of Jesus to them.

A prayer answered....

So one of the directions that God has been leading us is in reaching out to the community. By community I am speaking of the general area around our church. We are doing things with Southern Elementary and I really need to get busy and get involved with Tates Creek High and Middle schools. That being said, we began praying about how to reach those youth around us. As most of you know we felt God leading us to start a "Fifth Quarter". A place where kids can come after home football games and play games, eat food and hang out in a safe environment. We decided to start with Tates Creek High home games, so there would only be five or six this fall. It was a starting point and if all goes well, perhaps next year we could have it open every friday during football games (then of course it would be nice to have a place for the kids every friday nite but that may not happen right away). So that was our plan. It was obvious that God was behind it all the way and was allowing things to fall into place, and for that I praise Him. So I am not surprised that that wasn't all he had in store for us.

About a month ago, I recieved a call from one of the other youth leaders saying she was in contact with the youth pastors from another church. They had originally called to see about perhaps combining with us during VBS. After several phone calls, it seems like that was not going to be a possibility. However, after talking with her and telling her about our youth group, she told her that her and her husband (the other youth pastors) were moving their chruch to another city. They were concerned about their youth group (made up almost entirely of youth from the neighborhood) and what would happen to them after they moved the church. We have spoken to them several times about where we are and offered to absorb those kids into our group if they wanted. Last week we had our first meeting with both groups of kids. It was very informal (a game day/cookout) but it was a chance to see how both groups would react to each other. They were fine.

So here we were, waiting until the fall to reach out to neighborhood kids and God drops a group of them in our laps. He is amazing how He works. He knows when you are ready even before you know that you are. I just can not thank Him enough for how He has taken control of this situation. I look forward to seeing what God will teach us by giving us the opportunity to minister to (and be ministered by) these youth from our neighborhood.