Christmas Service 2008

Grace Connections is almost a whole year old! Through this first year, we have seen many new faces (some of whom have become new friends and ministry partners), spiritual growth and God's blessing on our brand new church. This Sunday we debuted our new worship center to a record crowd. Our first actual Christmas service as a church was a wonderful time to celebrate the birth, the life and the death of the God who was and still is with us! Check out the pictures from the event, and please pray with us that God would expand the influence of Grace Connections in the lives of many who need to hear the clear presentation about Jesus, the Christmas baby who came to bring us real life!

New Faces, New Spaces

Grace Connections will be celebrating our first Christmas service this upcoming Sunday, Dec. 21. As part of our worship time, we will be unveiling our brand new worship space as well as other additions to our building. All together, we will be tripling the amount of floor space available for ministry at our present location. Besides the worship area, we will be adding a new junior church room, a new office area, and we will be converting our present classrooms into a large nursery and a storage room/nursing mother's area.

We are hoping to share the good news of Christmas (Jesus!) with many guests this Sunday, so you are encouraged to invite your friends and family to celebrate with us. We will also be meeting this Thursday at 6 p.m. to distribute postcard invitations to our Christmas service in the new worship center!

Please pray with us that God would use Grace Connections to reach many people with the life-altering message of Jesus Christ!

First Communion!

Last Sunday, December 7, Grace Connections had our very first communion celebration as a church. I had the opporunity to present the biblical basis for communion during our worship time, and then we actually did all three parts of communion together after church. We had a wonderful time of fellowship and spiritual conversation, while the symbolic elements of communion allowed us to focus on Jesus and invite his presence into the deep parts of our lives. Check out the pictures we have posted here.

Some Encouraging Stats

Praise God for the exciting things that have been happening at Grace Connections over the past five weeks! In that time we have seen...

~ Four small groups started
~ 25 first time visitors on Sunday morning
~ 17 out of 20 first time visitors return for a second time, with the five new ones from last week all indicating they would be returning as well
~ our first salvation decision during a Sunday service
~ a new attendance high on a Sunday morning
~ nearly every family inviting unchurched or underchurched friends
~ almost 1,500 flyers handed out to people in our community advertising Fall Fest '08
~ the launch of our grocery ministry, in which needy families in our community receive a free bag of groceries

During the first grocery ministry last week, a family answered the door to find us there offering a free bag of groceries. The lady was blown away, saying her family had just started talking about how they could get food on the table that week, since they had no money for groceries. Talk about God showing up through us to meet that family's need! That's why we do what we do at Grace Connections. We meet a physical need so that hopefully God will touch their heart and we can introduce them to Jesus - the solution for their spiritual need!

Please keep praying ... we want to keep seeing positive movement that will glorify the Lord and see people brought into the Kingdom!

Fall Fest '08

Grace Connections was back in Centennial Park, showing our community the love of Jesus through an event designed for kids and families. We had pumpkin games, free food, a big bouncy house, face painting, balloon animals and more. Despite the cold temperatures during the afternoon, several families came out. Many of these families received one of the 1,500 flyers that we handed out during the week. Special thanks to Community GBC in West Milton from sending their youth group to help pass out the flyers.

Around 15-20 families came out for Fall Fest, and we were able to make good contacts with a couple of them. One family in particular mentioned that they would be interested in coming to church. They are new to our community, and we are excited to get them plugged in to what God is doing at Grace Connections!

As usual, we had great volunteer help. I am blown away by the servant's hearts of the people involved in helping to start Grace Connections. I am truly blessed to be the pastor for such a wonderful group of people!

Keep praying for the contacts made at the park. We're hopeful that this might be a springboard with many of them that will allow us to share Jesus with them!

An EPIC Adventure

At Grace Connections, we are launching into a new season as a church. We will be studying Scripture in a new light ... in terms of a story. We want to understand the story God is telling. And we want to discover our role in that great story.

To do that, we are having small groups and Sunday mornings focused on the theme 'EPIC.' The concept, borrowed from best-selling author John Eldredge, is that all our great stories borrow elements from the True Story, the gospel of Jesus Christ. So we are learning about God's great story of good and evil, loss and rescue, betrayal and the ability to overcome. And in so doing, we are trusting that we will get insight on the role God has created for each of us, individually, to play in His Story.

Pray with us as several families (around 10) from outside the church are being asked to and/or are actively considering joining small groups for this exciting journey.

Corn Fest 2008

Grace Connections pulled off our first major outreach last weekend at Centennial Park. After inviting over 1,000 people during the last week at the parade and by going door-to-door through some of the apartments in Englewood, we hosted 18 corn hole teams plus many families who stopped by for the free children's activities and the free food. Our best estimate is that just over 100 people not affiliated with Grace Connections attended some aspect of Corn Fest 2008.

Grace people did a great job volunteering. We had a crew of between 30-40 people helping run the corn hole event, doing face painting and balloon animals, preparing and serving food, leading children's games and activities, clowning and just walking around greeting and mingling with our guests.

The weather turned out beautifully, and we had just a wonderful time loving on our community in the name of Jesus. Now please pray for us as we follow up with many of these families who left their names/addresses ... we want to share not only the love of Jesus with them, but also the good news of how they can know Jesus themselves!