Where Good Ideas Come From

Just think, the good idea could become great if you connect with the person with the missing piece of the puzzle.

Service Saturday \ Project Montgomery with Local Churches?

Two years ago, Michael Cortez (campus minister at Dalraida) and I got together for lunch to discuss the possibility of a joint service project together during the first couple of weeks of school at Faulkner University. The previous year we had hosted a "Campus Ministry Mixer" and had agreed that we needed to take our fellowship to a deeper level. The mixer was fun but seemed very self serving and wasted a lot of money. With the help of Andrew Itson, Dennis Itson, John Gordon, Laurel Walker and countless others we came up with the idea of "Project Montgomery". Nothing really earth shattering or clever. Just a service day that involved a few hundred students all around Montgomery. The first year was a huge success. We were able to serve great ministries such as: Common Ground, Compassion 21, Agape, Family Promise, Family Sunshine Center, Exodus, Montgomery Zoo, Adullam House, Montgomery Public Schools, Friendship Mission, Salvation Army, Successful Living, and Faith Rescue Mission.
From the very beginning I was praying about being able to some day do a "Project Montgomery" at Landmark (the church I work for). This week that prayer has been answered...and more. Friday night will mark the beginning of "Faith Works Weekend" at Landmark. We will begin with 24 Hours of Prayer for our church, community, and world. The next day will be our Service Saturday (AKA Service Saturday). We currently have over 130 people signed up to participate with a lot of excitement about doing this again soon. Our staff has even joined in the work. Yesterday half of our staff went to build the bracing for a cement walk way at Montgomery Children's Center. While the other half cleaned houses and visited sick members.
As if I'm not blown away enough already...today I had lunch with church leaders from Vaughn Park CofC, Grace Pointe, Landmark, Compassion 21, and Common Ground. The topic? You guessed it...A joint community service project. Awesome! Can you imagine (even if only for one day) 500-700 Christians being salt & light in our community together?! Praise God! Think of all the professional carpenters, teachers, coaches, contractors, electricians, plumbers, etc! What could God do through hundreds of people praying for our community and then joining together to serve! Below is an email that I just received from Sid Bloomer, the involvement minister at Vaughn Park.

Brothers,

It was great to fellowship with you all today. I learn so much from
gathering together and hearing from you all. There are great ideas and one
major blessing was the idea of creating a service day that would have
multiple options. I had the intent to do this with Compassion 21 next, but
it was so much better to create multiple options and work with both
Compassion 21 and the Common Ground at the same time. This Spring is not
far away, so Nathan Capps, and anyone else who would like to help us, will
begin working on a plan and options for service for our churches for a date
to be set later on this coming Spring (after Landmark has tested the waters
with their Service Day this weekend - praise God for Landmark blazing a path
before us all). Let me say, it is great working together!

Thank you, Bryan and Jason for taking time to share with us today. We are
blessed because of it. We want to be a help and a blessing to you all. Our
hope is that we can continue this partnership with you. Thank you for
helping us grow to be more like Christ and for helping us put our faith into
action. You and Compassion 21 both are lights to our churches - shining on
things that are at God's heart and getting us focused on big picture things
- Kingdom things.

Herman Wesley contacted me and informed that he had surgery recently and had
a setback. He was not able to be a church last Sunday. Please be praying
for him. Also, Mike McElroy would have liked to have been there but he had
a community ministers meeting and was not able to make. Both Herman and
Mike stated that they want to be a part.

May God find us doing what He has called us to do.
Sid Bloomer

Wow! Let's do it!

Up to this point I have co-ordinated 300 people serving throughout Montgomery. But never 500-700 (Professionals!) We will have to be creative on what we can do to make the best use out of all our resources. I'm looking for ideas! Got any?

Btw, Common Ground also informed us that they have 3 houses side by side that will need total renovation by this summer. The idea was tossed around for each church to "take one". Praise God! We'll be down there this Saturday to do some painting, renovation, and scouting for future works. Be praying! God is moving!

Service Saturday @ Landmark on Nov 6

You can sign up here
If you have questions please don't hesitate to contact me. Let's be Salt & Light together!

Ethan getting ready for Alabama Football

Disturb us Lord!

Disturb us, Lord, when we are too well pleased with ourselves,
When our dreams have come true
Because we dreamed too little,
When we arrived safely,
Because we sailed too close to the shore.

Disturb us, Lord, when
With the abundance of things we possess
We have lost our thirst
For the waters of life!!

Having fallen in love with life,
We have ceased to dream of eternity
And in our efforts to build a new earth,
We have allowed our vision
Of the new Heaven to dim.

Disturb us, Lord, to dare more boldly,
To venture on wilder seas
Where storm will show Your mastery;
Where losing sight of land,
We shall find the stars.

We ask You to push back
The horizons of our hopes;
And to push us in the future
In strength, courage, hope, and love.
This we ask in the name of our
Captain, who is Jesus Christ

Sir Francis Drake (1577)

Rick Warren on a life of purpose | Video on TED.com

Gianna Jessen: Abortion Survivor

Gianna Jessen from LMF CAM on Vimeo.

Love Your Neighbor As Yourself? What would you do?

This is from the TV Show "What Would You Do?" on ABC. It's a social experiment on whether or not people would warn a woman if they witnessed someone slip something into her drink. This is a must watch.


Thoughts?

3D Ministries - Life Shapes

So I'm checking out 3D Ministries and their teaching on "Life Shapes." Good stuff. Really good stuff. I've read about 100 pages of the "semi-circle" book so far. Couldn't have been more appropriate for where I am right now in my life. Wow. Thanks God for letting me know you care. I highly recommend checking this out.
Thanks Tim & Jason for pointing me in the right direction.

Missonal Menu Brainstorm

I'm also working on some ideas on how to help our campus ministry and church become more missional. I've found some great books, videos, websites, etc. But would like some practical ideas on ways to implement it into our group. Here are some ideas that I've stolen so far. Do you guys have other suggestions or ideas? Thanks!

Missional Menu of Ideas
Prayer Walking in Neighborhoods & 3rd Places in Montgomery
· Prayer walking is praying on-sight with in-sight. When you walk through a neighborhood, community, or campus you begin to get a feel of who lives there, what their needs are, where God is already moving, and develop are heart for the people.

· 3rd Place – is a sociology term to describe where people hang out. 1st place is their home. 2nd place is work. 3rd place where people spend there time outside of home and work. It’s where people interact and casually build relationships. Examples of 3rd places are: Starbuks, Books-A-Million, Barnes And Noble, bars, clubs, gyms, etc.

· See www.pray4chicago.com or www.pray4montgomery.com


Project Montgomery – Church wide community service day. Examples of service would be Adulam House, Compassion 21, Common Ground, Friendship Kitchen, Salvation Army, Agape, Hospice, Montgomery Public Schools, Extreme Home Makeovers, Habitat for Humanity, Special Olympics, Family Sunshine Center, etc. The Montgomery Campus Ministries did a similar activity last fall using 300 students in ministry all over town.
Timeline for Project Montgomery
· Promo started 2 weeks out

· Signup the week of (which required a food donation to sign up – some service opportunities were numbers sensitive, in other words there were limits on how many people could attend)

· Coffee House the night before to benefit \ highlight Agape

· Saturday Service Projects

Saturday Evening Devo \ Cookout \ Recap \ Slide Show \ Prayer

Iff we were to decide to do something like this it would be good to for the elders to support this by allowing a separate offering, or some form of giving go toward this project.You can see more www.projectmontgomery.com

Auction – Ask members and business to donate goods \ services to be auctioned off. Throw this out to the church and let them be the ones to come up with things to be auctioned off. Allow online bidding.
Examples: 2 nights at a condo in Gulf Shores, free haircut, babysitting, house cleaning, date night kit, photography, etc.
Life Group Contribution – track giving for two life groups over a three-month period. At the end of each month return 50% of groups contribution with the stipulation that it be used for Kingdom work. I know of a church that did this. Their contribution actually went up. When individuals are able to see where the money is going they are more likely to give. They chose 50% because we are to “love our neighbors as our self…so we should spend as much money on our community as we do ourselves.”

Community Garden(s) – most of the time these are located in neighborhoods but there are also churches growing gardens. For example, one church sits on 22 acres and grows over 20,000 lbs of produce for the poor in their community. Compassion 21(inner city ministry) currently purchases $2800 worth of fresh vegetables each month for the poor in Montgomery. Our church currently sits on 18 acres. Ten of which are vacant pastureland.

Montgomery Area Adoption Needs – Contact DHR & Agape to find out how many children are currently in need of a family. Present this need to the church body as a challenge to alleviate the need for Montgomery County. I have heard of a couple of churches who have done this and completely alleviated the adoption need in their community. One church body took nearly 100 children into their homes.

Incarnational Living – There are several churches who’ve helped members move into impoverished neighborhoods to live as “salt” & “light.” Many join in with local after school care programs, tutoring, or coaching. We are currently looking into this in Chisholm but have hit a roadblock. We will need to train members how to do this. Some useful resources are some books by Hugh Halter & Matt Smay called “The Tangible Kingdom”, “The Tangible Kingdom Primer”, and a book called “AND: they Gathered AND Scattered.” Also, "The Brown House" ministry is Tuscaloosa is a great resource!
But we must keep in mind Chisholm is only one place to do this. We need to be creative on how to communicate the gospel in every community: rich or poor. What does Incarnational Living look like in an affluent neighborhood? What does it look like on campus? Thoughts???? Ideas????

This list of ideas has been copiled by some 20 people who have been added to a Google Wave Tim Catchim started. The purpose of the wave is to brainstorm on creative ideas to build relationships in your neighborhood. I am listing them here for your enjoyment. There have been a lot of really cool contributions to this list by some very thoughtful folks.

Host a National Night Out
Facilitate a neighborhood yard sale
Pass out 9 volt batteries for people to replace in their smoke detector
Host a back yard theater and show a movie
Prayer Walk your neighborhood at least twice a month
Drop off a nice bottle of wine to your neighbor with a note "Love to get to know you guys sometime. Call and well enjoy this bottle together." (ripped from Hugh Halter in Tangible Kingdom)
Pass out fliers offering free gardening or landscaping help
Organize a play station/X Box/Wii tournament for the kids in the neighborhood. (If someone has the Beatles Rock Band kit you can even get the adults to play on that!)
Assemble "doggie bags" with items that homeless people need like food and hygiene products and pass out to those in your community as the need arises or you encounter them.
Shoot a video of your neighbors responding to the questions "What things do you like about this neighborhood?" and "What things would you like to change in the neighborhood?"
During the Christmas season, facilitate a Christmas carolling event, inviting your neighbors to participate with hot chocolate and cider at the end.
Host a front yard/backyard concert with a bring your own meat for the grill.
Bake some chocolate chip cookies and take them next door....still warm and chewy.
Take your office to the nearest coffee shop you can find.
Form a Neighborhood Watch group and volunteer to be the block captain.
Ask your neighbors if they would like you to stop by once a month to pick up items they may want to give to the local food shelf. Used shoes can also be collected and sent to this organization that has many local drop-off sites nationally:http://www.soles4souls.org/
Create a "spiritual map" "spiritual map" of your city - and invite other missions-minded people in a process of 1- Discover, 2- Inspiration and 3- Incarnation.
Host a party on your front yard during Halloween and serve "Hallo-weeners" (hot dogs) to all who stop by.
Host a ground hog day party on your front yard. Fix different kinds of soup for folks to try out.
Invite Neighbors to play flag football or other recreational sport in neighborhood
If you would like to contribute to the list of ideas, leave a comment and I will add it to the final list. I plan to get the word out about this list after the summer is over. Hopefully it will be helpful to some folks who are wanting to engage their local neighborhood in a meaningful way.