Celebrating VBS in our morning service

This mornings church service was fun as we celebrated last week's VBS. We showed a power point with picture highlights of the week. Then Kyle Mielke came out as the NASA Commander with his cadets,
Kristi and Jocelyn, the kids sang two songs and Kyle had four of them recite a Bible verse they had memorized during the week.
I don't know how many were there but it has to have been about our highest attended service with numerous visitors from the
neighborhood who came out to see their children sing. Here are some shots from this morning and also a link to an online album if you'd like to download any pics. for yourself.

http://picasaweb.google.com/encounterchurchjerome/VBS2009?authkey=Gv1sRgCPX-iNr5mYebrgE#

VBS ends well

Well we have completed our first VBS. What a great adventure for our people and children. Throughout the week a number of children asked Jesus to be there Savior and on the last night week gave away a bunch of Bibles. So many that I need to order more for our Sunday morning services again!
On Sunday we will have the kids sing in the service and hopefully show a slide show of the week. We've invited parents from the neighborhood to attend so hopefully we'll see some there.
It's been a very busy few weeks for many in the Encounter Church body. I know I'm looking forward to relaxing a bit and spending some more time with the family.
In my next entry I'll try to have a link for you to get pics. from last weeks VBS.

Operation Barabas @ Encounter's VBS

I told you in my last entry that during the 4th of July parade we handed out Frisbees with VBS info. on them. What I didn't mention was that for two of the five nights we'd have 30 high schoolers joining us. They were with the ministry group, Operation Barnabas or OB, a six week ministry team for 10th-12th graders. They go all over the United States and do whatever churches need doing.
For us they went on prayer walks in Dublin neighborhoods (including my own), handed out over 5000 of our contact cards and put on an awesome presentation with clowns, puppets and teaching. I know you may be thinking - cornball - but really, it was good. They picked great upbeat and fun music. Even sang a song from HS Musical. Here's some pics. and a silly video of them singing with the kids.

Dublin's 4th of July Parade

Whoohoo!!! It's been a long but fun day. This morning we had about 55 Encounter Church friends walking, roller-blading, strollering and driving in our cities 4th of July parade. The 3000 Frisbees and 100 lbs. of candy were all gone about two hundred yards before we completed the parade route. It was fun to see many people on the roadside we knew from DYA sports, other churches or our neighborhoods. This evening we saw the Dublin fireworks with three other Encounter families. We were a noisy bunch with seventeen kiddos running around.

Tomorrow after the church service we begin the set-up for our VBS on site at Eli Pinney Elementary next week. You can register your children online at www.encounterchurchjerome.com. It should be a great week with people from our the local neighborhoods and all our own children attending. Many of our people are involved to make it a really fun experience.

Preparing for Dublin's 4th of July Parade

Last night a bunch of Encounter ladies taped no less than 3000 postcard invitations to the 3000 Frisbees we're handing out at the Dublin 4th of July Parade. We also have over one hundred pounds of candy and thousands of Encounter Church contact cards to handout. I'll be pulling a little trailer with my jeep, Jim Fish is hauling all the Frisbees and candy in the back of his pick-up truck and I've borrowed my dentist, Brad Fulton's, 1975 convertible Oldsmobile 88 Royale. It's got to be about the longest car ever made that's not a limo!

Look forward to pics. for the parade in my next entry:-)

Columbus area church planters picnic

Yesterday after our weekend campout, and a nap, we headed out to Blendon Woods metro park and met up with four other families involved in planting churches in the greater Columbus area. There was Andy & Trish Wirt of Clear View GBC planting in New Albany; Shawn & Tracey Kaeser of Darby GBC in Plain City, Larry & Sylvia Totzke with Eric & Julie of Capital City GBC and Ron & Chery Boehm of Vision Ohio. We ate, connected and played some corn hole. I meet with these guys once a month at the Caribou Coffee in Dublin.

Encounter's 1st Campout

Wow. What a great weekend for Encounter Church!

A good number of our families spent part or all of this weekend together at Camp Cotubic in Bellfountaine, OH just 45 minutes west of Dublin. Some tented and others were in the lodge rooms. The central firepit allowed for a super place to connect and eat our meals together. Friday night was kickball and S'mores, Saturday morning the ladies got a break from kid-duty whilst the men fished with the little ones. Saturday all afternoon had us enjoying the awesome beach activities and that night the men played hard at volleyball. Unfortunately for me I blew out my back three weekends ago and had to forgo my favorite sport. But on the brighter side I was able to reconnect with some old WOL Camp friends that lived near by. Saturday night we heard an awesome testimony from the Preininger family and then Sunday morning was super special in that we had a little church service and then a baptism of 10 people down at the beach. Checkout these pics. from the weekend:
http://picasaweb.google.com/encounterchurchjerome/EncounterCampout062809#

Vision Trust BBQ and Sunday Service

Yesterday and today there were great events for those of Encounter Church with Matt & Cheryl Storer of Vision Trust International. Saturday was the BBQ in Coffman Park promoting the ministry and a time for the Storer's to connect with new and long time supporters.

There were a number of our people there helping set-up and later tear down. We couldn't have done it without them. Thanks Adam, Michael, Chuck, Luke & Beth, Bill & Janetta, and Melissa:-)

The beef brisket was prepared and served by Art Yoho, a local chef who's been in the business of making great food since 1983. Matt Benefiel with GFS also was involved in donating much of the food for the event.

Then this morning at Encounter Church Matt was given the entire service and spoke to us about the great need to care for orphans around the world. He laid out many different statistics, but most importantly he took us to Scripture and showed us God's heart for those who cannot defend or speak up for themselves. I believe many people were touched by what they heard and some responded by sponsoring a child.

I'm sure I'll speak of it more in future posting, but we've decided to make Guatemala our main focus when partnering with Vision Trust. Lord willing, we may even go there in the summer of 2010.

Dessert Night

Tonight we had a meet and greet dessert night for one of Encounter's missionary families: Matt & Cheryl Storer.

It was held at the home of Rex & Laurie Elsass in the heart of Tartan Fields. About 15 of our people were there to hear the Storer's journey from corporate America to full time missionaries needing to raise support.

Here is a short description of Encounter's philosophy on missions: our leadership team decided months ago to have only two missionary families to support through prayer, finances and relationship. Each family is receiving 5% of our church's gross offerings. We are choosing to be different than many other churches in that we want to give much to a few rather than little to a lot. Until we reach our goal of providing the lions share of these two missionary families needed support, we won't officially give to another family. That's not to say that individuals in the church or small groups on their own couldn't give to another family. But for this next year the Storer and McCaman families are who we are supporting directly out of the church's budget.

Tomorrow there is a BBQ to promote VisionTrust to people in Coffman Park from 4-7pm. There will be fun stuff for the kids, live music and really good beef brisket!

Then Sunday Matt is preaching in Encounter's church service at 10:00am at Eli Pinney Elementary School in Tartan Fields, Dublin.

Purposeful time with men

I had the opportunity to be part of two different men's groups today. One was in the morning and was a Bible study that just recently started. The book of James in the Bible is guiding the discussion time. Then later in the day I had my final accountability meeting with our mother church's elder group. I've met monthly with those men since February 2008. It was a night to celebrate the great things God has done through His people at Encounter Church. I was able to play for the men our newest video that shows what a day in the life of Encounter Church looks like.

Watch the video and let me know your thoughts about it.