Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Helping a Neighbor

Paul, Tab, and Drew live next door to a woman named Kim.  She was in desperate need of having her porch roof repaired, and we decided to tackle the job.  We had some money set aside so we set the date (Labor Day) and went to work.  Ray and Randy did most of the roof work.  Others painted the large columns on her porch, mowed the lawn, or cleaned up a bit.  It took us a few hours, with a great break for lunch at the Ainsworth's, but we got it done.  Special thanks to Ray and his roofing prowess.  The next day Kim brought over muffins and a thank-you card.  This was our service project for September.  Cool!

NOOMA

We want to make sure that we stay relevant to the younger set so we chose to use Nooma for our studies.  Nooma is a product of Mars Hill, short DVD studies that touch on a variety of topics.  Some of them have a powerful emotional impact.  Our goal in teaching and in worship is to break some of the barriers we put in front of our worship, so we worship in the sanctuary but spread ourselves out.  We use video clips for worship music, then the Nooma DVD.  We follow that up with a short time of teaching and/or exchange.  Our biggest problem lies in the fact that Nooma only produces one DVD a month.  There is a desire in the group to add a second study on alternating Thursday's.

Saturday, September 9, 2006

Skate Ministry

As part of our transition from a youth group to a small group ministry we recognized the need to include opportunities to serve God.  With a few of the younger generation involved in skateboarding and inline skating, we wondered if we couldn't reach out to the "skate" generation.  Our first foray into this ministry was to go to the local park and serve a free dinner to the skaters and boarders.  One of the gang helped "drum up" business.  That evening we met at the park served dogs, chips, and pop, all free, to the skaters.  We were amazed at the turnout and they were amazed that we would just do this for free.  We brought along a digi camera and shot mpeg clips of them in the skate park, then played them back on a laptop.  We were able to make some neat connections, and got to know a lot of people who now hang out at our house regularly.  And we learned an important lesson; if you reach out to people, be prepared for them to be around a lot.  As a result of this night we ended up having a mini-skate park built in our backyard, and our home (and garage) opened to skaters, boarders, and bikers for the summer.

Wednesday, September 6, 2006

Beginings

It started with a desire to help young people dig deeper into God's Word and to grow in Christ.  Sometimes it was only 2 or 3 of us, sometimes more.  Then the Spirit moved us to invite another adult couple.  And some out-of-high-schoolers.  And some parents, and their kids.  Soon we realized we had something bigger than a Bible study, a group of caring individuals that crossed generational lines.  We had Genia!  Genia is the Greek word for generations.  We are a multi-generational group who desire to generate spiritual growth through worship, fellowship, and service.  This is our story.