Reachout

Replenish School Supply Drive 7.30.09

The Replenish website is up. Join us Thursday evening as we try and make our community a better place.

We may be in your neighborhood...

www.replenishkc.org

Replenish is Thursday Evening

I can't wait. I just love when we can come together as a church and serve. I am praying that 150 people from Restore will show up Thursday and ask the community to partner with us in getting school supplies to kids who need our help.

All of our small groups have been asked to mobilize. We've gotten the word out in the program. We're telling people on FB and Twitter. Every ministry is going to play a role. It's going to be great.

So join us will you. We're going to meet at the Metro North Mall Thursday night at 6:30PM. Email me at reachout@restorecc.org if you want more details. You can find all of the detail here.

Haiti Video--Praise Song

The team is starting to post video and pictures from Haiti. I will be posting as much of it here as possible. You can also go to the Restore Community Church Facebook Fan Page for more. Team Leader Charlene Garrison has also created a page called Reverberate @ Restore with more stuff.

VBS Praise and Worship Haiti 2009 from Restore Community Church on Vimeo.

Hait Team Returns Tomorrow!

I was texting my wife Nancy in Haiti this morning. She's part of our Restore team that has been doing some Reachout activities near the church and orphanage we built.

I didn't have much time but she did tell me that everything has been going great. I can't wait to hear about all of the cool things they did.

The team is scheduled to return to KC tomorrow night on Southwest. A group of us will be there to welcome them home. Email at Reachout@restorecc.org if you want more details.

What is the Role of Evangelism in Reachout?

I was talking with a Restore attender one day and she asked what role evangelism plays in Reachout? She wanted to know how and when we start talking to people about Jesus. Fair question, I guess, but one that I realized came at it all wrong. I gave her a version of my standard reply: Reachout is evangelism. If people don't see Jesus in us we're doing something wrong.

I contend that people are less and less responsive to hearing the gospel. They want to see it. We can debtate the theology of this one if you'd like, but I am just reporting to you what I see in the field. A true transformative relationship with Jesus begins in the context of community and not because someone simply knows more about the gospel.

So I don't see Reachout and evangelism as separate.  All Reachout really does is provide us the opportunity for relationships. If Reachout and 'evangelism' were separate for us, then all we would really have is an agenda on our hands and how authentic is that?

No, Reachout offers us the opportunity to build relationships with people and therfore offers us the possiblity of showing them Jesus and then we let God take it from there.

Replenish School Supply Drive, Thursday, July 30 @ 6:30PM

School is just around the corner and we want to do something to help some kids in our community start the year with all the supplies they need.

Join us as we gather as a church Thursday, July 30th, to ask people in our community to partner with us by donating school supplies to kids in both the Liberty and Park Hill school districts who need help. We will go door to door with lists of needed school supplies and bags and ask people to fill them. On Saturday, August 8th teams from Restore will go back to these same neighborhoods to gather the supplies.

75 people from Restore made it happen last year. This year we are praying for 150 people from Restore to join us.

We will begin in the Parking Lot of Metro North Mall Metro North Mall • 400 NW Barry Rd • Kansas City, MO 64155 at 6:30 PM and will finish around 8:30PM.

This is a great opportunity to serve with your family and friends and show the community that we care.

It's going to be a great way to serve our community, meet new people, and have fun doing it. If you've been waiting for a way to serve your community then here it is!

Please contact reachout@restorecc.org for more information.

The Difference Between Partnerships and Alliances

Partnerships are relationships between individuals or groups characterized by mutual cooperation and responsibility in order to achieve a specific goal.

An alliance is an agreement between two or more parties made in order to advance common goals.

So much of what we talk about in Reachout is around the idea of partnerships. But maybe I am wrong?

What about you? What are you doing in your context?

Wrapping up with the First Coaching Group

Restore was part of this.

So much of what we did our first year after launch came out of our ongoing dialogue with these churches.

Kudos to David Mills for his forward-thinking on these issues.

Haiti Reachout Team is in Cavaillon.

Seventeen people from Restore headed to Haiti yesterday--including my wife Nancy. They are part of the second team we've managed to send to Cavaillon, Haiti.

I am really excited about this trip because we are trying something new. Our team, led by Charlene Garrison, is going to conduct a community outreach program loosely based on VBS. The team plans to spend four days in hosting events and games for the 120 kids or so in our orphanage and invite kids from the local community as well. They've planned to serve 200 kids per day for 4 days!

I just love the fact that we are experimenting. After Restore raised the money for a church and two orphanages, it became clear that God was calling us to be intentional about relationships in Haiti just as we are here. I have no idea what this is going to look like given the obvious language barrier, but I am sure that it will be cool.

I plan on keeping you posted about the events around this trip. With limited communication I suspect that we will need to wait until the team gets back.

Do me favor and take a moment right now to pray for our team.  They are an awesome group of people!

Suds, Mops, and Rehab--July 2009 Servefest

Two of our teams fanned out across the Northland and one served in Liberty to help our community this morning. We do this every month and we call it Servefest.

The first team led by Janet McMahon headed to the Englewood Apartment Community Center to clean and prepare some rooms for an outreach event we are doing there in a couple of weeks. The event, called 'Character Club' is entirely organized and will be carried out by kids in our Student Community. I am so proud of them and I love how they are taking the idea of Reachout and making it their own.

A second team of approximately 15 people, led by Donna Bostick, headed to a local apartment complex to conduct a FREE Car Wash. The team has distributed fliers last week letting the residents know what we were coming. In two hours we washed 20 cars and had some really great conversations with some of the residents. We passed out Repay Cards and asked residents to pass the kindness along.

Finally, Nate Williams led a team in Liberty. This team helped rehab some apartments for one of our partners, Hillcrest Ministries.

All of this, and we had a blast doing it!