Outreach

X-Focused Ministry Updates

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:25:00 GMT

Dear Life Group Leaders and Needs List and Thank You Foundation Volunteers:

Dear Life Group Leaders, Needs List and Thank You Foundation Volunteers: As part of our X-Focused Initiatives, we have been partnering with the Thank You Foundation in seeking ways to support military families in our area. There are several needs and we are hoping that our Needs List Volunteers, Thank You Foundation Volunteers and Life Groups will help to fill those needs

We had originally hoped to provide a Thanksgiving dinner banquet on November 21st for the military families, but that has been cancelled. The Thank You Foundation and Family Readiness Leaders have indicated that they would prefer our help in preparing individual baskets of Thanksgiving dinners for several military families so that they would have the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving with their family and friends. We are looking for volunteers to provide 6 complete Thanksgiving dinner baskets for military families.

Another opportunity to help is on Saturday, December 5th. The Thank You Foundation has scheduled a Christmas party at Princeton High School from 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. and they are looking for 20-30 volunteers to help with set up at 9:00 a.m. and to work shifts of 1 ½ - 2 hours helping to serve and clean up until 4:00 p.m.

Also, on Sunday, December 13th, our church will be hosting a Holiday Party for the military families from about 2:00p.m. to 5:00p.m. (final times TBD). We will need help with set-up, food preparation, serving and clean up. We will need 20 to 30 volunteers at the event and additional volunteers to prepare food.

If you or your Life Group is interested in helping with these events, or if you would like more information, please visit our X-Focused Initiatives page on the church website. You will find the form on the website to sign up for all of these events under Ministries/Adults/X-Focused Ministries, or you can CLICK HERE to take you directly to the sign up form.

Lastly, Reach Out Lakota is in desperate need of food and non-food items. Please visit www.reachoutlakota.org/Desperate%20Need.html to see a list of items that are needed immediately. You do not need to respond to CPCC to volunteer to fill this need. Simply take your donations directly to Reach Out Lakota.

Thank you for showing Christ's love in such tangible ways!

In Him,

Keith Wilson
Outreach and Life Group Minister

Get Outside Yourself

Wed, 27 May 2009 22:33:00 GMT

“What is the biggest obstacle you have to ministry here in West Chester/Liberty Township?” I asked the elders in my interview for employment nearly 2 years ago. Their answer… materialism, self centeredness and lack of motivation to step out of our comfort zone and see the fullness of Christ’s gospel realized in everybody’s daily life. Don’t we all struggle with this? We tend to go about our day, worrying about ourselves, our families, what’s for dinner, how to excel at our job and then pull into our garage at night, shut the door and forget about the world around us. Thousands of people living a life without hope, without food, clothing, help, medicine or Jesus…in our own backyard. Well, the X-Focused ministry team has worked hard over the past 8 months to begin to identify needs of the hurting and struggling in our area and it is time to get to work. Really, let’s do it. Below are two sign-up links for you to participate in some outreach this summer…more opportunities will follow this summer and fall.

https://centerpointechristian.ccbchurch.com/app/w_form_response.php?form_id=39

https://centerpointechristian.ccbchurch.com/app/w_form_response.php?form_id=38

Recently, while reading a book called “The Hole in Our Gospel” by Richard Stearns, I realized something challenging that I hadn’t noticed before. If you were Jesus and you were about to embark on your ministry as the Messiah, son of God and were announcing this to your friends and family, what would you do to start your ministry off on the right foot? Well, I’ll tell you what Jesus did in Luke 4, speaking from a pulpit synagogue to a large crowd in his home town of Nazareth he read these words…”"The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.’ Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him, and he began by saying to them, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing."

Wow, what truly strikes me is that Jesus announces his ministry is to be down and dirty helping those who really need it and because of this everybody can know He is the Messiah, God’s plan laid out. This is how He begins his ministry and announces his arrival to his hometown friends and family. As the church, we are called to carry out this mission in today’s time. Today we are called to rise up and help the battered, afflicted and abandon…to show hope to those that need it the most.

Well, this summer and fall you find plenty of opportunities to do both. Check out the links above to get involved this month. More opportunities will follow in July, August, September and October.

First, we’ve worked with Butler County ESC to identify a trailer park in Lakota Local schools that houses hundreds of kids that are so low income that they will have little to eat all summer long since they’re not in school getting lunch. We are going to provide lunch for approximately 75 kids and potentially parents in this complex every Monday through Friday for two weeks June 22-26 and June 29th – July 3rd. If you are interested in signing up your Life Group, bible study group, ministry or just your family please click the link above for the summer lunch program.

Secondly, we are forming an Outreach and Inreach current needs list. This will be a sort of bulletin board where we will post needs of struggling individuals in our community or church body for our groups and individuals to help with. This list will include postings such as a family needing a baby bed, a car fixed, yard mowed for example. Anybody in the community who has a need will be able to contact the church to have a need posted and we will then email this need out to those on the mailing list. We’d like to ask that if you are a member of a Life Group or Bible study, please consider being the contact for your group, sign up below and consider helping when needed. This list will also serve as a platform for community benevolent ministries to post needs for food items, clothing or volunteer work needed.

It’s time to get outside of ourselves a bit. Keep an eye out, we are going to be partnering more with some area complexes that need help and the County to work with the foster system as well as the underprivileged in our community and schools. We will also be hosting the Help Build Hope Project in September and a Run/Walk for FAME, a medical mission we support helping meet the needs of children worldwide that die everyday of treatable and preventable diseases. Watch for more details.

If you have an interest in helping with the X-Focused team in any way at all, please contact Keith Wilson at keithw@centerpointechristian.org

In Him,

Keith

Keith Wilson
Outreach & Life Group Minister
Center Pointe Christian Church
5962 Hamilton Mason Road
Liberty Township, OH 45011
513.779.8800 ext. 12
www.centerpointechristian.org

How to become an externally focused church

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:35:00 GMT

So we know that we need to become more externally focused as a church, but how? From an organizational standpoint, there are three things we need to do: assess the needs of our community, find out our strengths and abilities to help, and from those two evaluate what we will do. Some ways that we can assess the needs of our community include doing a survey and speaking with representatives of different services within the community, such as schools, hospitals, social services and law enforcement. It is also important to figure out what our strengths are as a church; we need to have some idea of what individuals within our congregation are willing to commit to, and what gifts and talents they have. Once we have established these two things we’ll be able to match up our church with some important projects within the community.

What would the church be remembered for?

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 02:34:00 GMT

Today’s meeting opened up with the question “What would the church be remembered for if it ceased to exist today?” Unfortunately many churches today are known only to the outside world for the buildings they inhabit. But I don’t think this is what Jesus intended; He and each of the apostles were actively involved in the communities around them, talking to, loving and serving others. Why then has service to others become an afterthought to so many churches? One reason could be that people don’t think of the poor and lost in their communities as in need when there are so many government welfare programs available. However, this is a dangerous thought since government agencies at best can only meet physical needs, leaving the spirit as lost as ever. While the people serving their communities have the best of intentions, only Christians supplying water to the thirsty can provide a glimpse of the “living water” Christ spoke of, even without preaching a single word. The Bible says we are to have a servant’s heart, and it is in that way our church can be remembered as the body of Christ working on earth and not just another building in the neighborhood.

“A good ‘ole fashioned ear twisting.”

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:31:00 GMT

A few months ago my father was sharing with me a few stories about his life growing up. My grandfather and grandmother on my dad’s side of the family passed away years before I was born so I was recently inquiring about his home growing up. He was recollecting to me how Grandpa would work hard all day on the farm and with local farmers as a Veterinarian but would come home every day to sit at the table for dinner at 5:30p.m. There, awaiting him would be a table full of food and kids (6 to be exact) where they gathered every night for dinner as a family. As they would begin eating my grandfather would turn to grandma and say, “Well, Mother, how were the children today?” And then the report would begin.

Dad said you always knew if your name was going to come up and you were always terrified when it was. If you were included in the “bad report” you would go stand next to grandpa at the table where he would sit calmly in his chair, grab your ear, start to twist until your feet came of the ground and then give you a “stern” lecture about what you had done while holding you, feet dangling on your tiptoes for support, until he finished his lecture. My father reports that it was an effective means of punishment. He also likes to joke that his brother Bruce had more ear twistings than anybody else in family history.

Recently I’ve felt that God may be “twisting my ear” a bit about the church’s role in the community. I’ve begin to wonder several things about Center Pointe Christian Church. Reading through the New Testament we see various examples of what God’s will was for the church. Jesus said…”I have come to seek and save that which was lost” and “Whatever you have done to the least of these my brothers you have done to me” and “Go, make disciples of all nations.” The NT is also riddled with examples of the church helping the homeless, downtrodden, disabled, struggling and depressed. The early church developed such an identity within their communities that it “found favor with all the people and added to its number daily those who were being saved.”

Knowing these things I have begun to ask myself…

Is Center Pointe Christian Church a vital part of our community?
What are we doing daily to meet the needs of our community?
    And, most importantly…
If our church ceased to exist today would our community notice?

As a result of God’s ear twisting so to speak, we have formed an Outreach Leadership Team that has already begun to meet. This team is made up of 7 CPCC partners who are meeting every other week with me to research, brainstorm, pray and strategize what CPCC can do in the coming years to make this community a better place to live. We’ve begun reading a book called “The Externally Focused Church” which is already changing our paradigm of church and thoughts on local outreach.

One of us will be blogging every other week as we meet to discuss our thoughts and ideas generated from this book. I’d like to ask two things of you over the next 3 months;

1.    Please visit this blog every other week to stay in touch with what we are thinking and dreaming about. You will find here until the beginning of February a note every 2 weeks about our direction and strategy for outreach as we continue to research.

2.    Pray for our team and church leadership as we begin to chart the course for CPCC and the SHARE piece of our wheel

This week I’d simply ask you to pray specifically for our own open hearts and minds to God’s will and not our own. Thank you and we’ll see you again back here next week!

What would the church be remembered for if it ceased to exist?

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:30:00 GMT

What would the church be remembered for if it ceased to exist?

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:30:00 GMT

What would the church be remembered for if it ceased to exist?

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 02:30:00 GMT