Reports

Hey All:

I have visited a few local churches in the area that are plants in later years of plant-life. Both churches are a little south of where we are locating in Greenbrier, however there was much to learn at each. I have at least one or two more I would like to visit in the immediate Greenbrier area to check out what's up in the vicinity.

I have taken notes on both churches and I will share at Core Group meeting anything relevant.

Today is Memorial Day, so take time to pray for loved ones who have served or are serving in the armed forces. If you see a military man, say thank you!

God bless!

Meeting Minute Recap 5/16

Here is a brief review of our meeting on Friday Night.

Meeting Review
A) I reviewed the goings on of a meeting I had with a local pastor about possible sponsership for our church plant.

B) We discussed church names again, and didn't whittle any out, we actually added a few:

Foundations Community Church (Craig)
Truth Community Church (Dana)
Foundational Truth Community Church (Rachel)

C) We had a great discussion on the Core Values we believe our church will want to be.
a) Community Oriented:
We want to be in the community, making an impact for Christ and bringing people to Jesus.
b) Discipleship Oriented:
We want to build the body for ministry. Taking people from spiritual birth, to physical death.
c) Family Oriented:
We believe that the family is under heavy attack in the world today, and we will strive to build strong familes for Christ. We believe that "so goes the family, so goes the church; so goes the church, so goes the nation."

We discussed each of these in great detail and each of those present felt extremely passionate about these areas. I will be incorporating these into our proposal document and trying to expand out what we mean when we say them.

These values will ultimately drive the purpose statement for the church.

God bless!

Pray for this family and church!

Got an email a few days ago from our former church in Lynchburg, that a Pastor from a church that they had connections with had been missing in a plane crash. The pastor and his 13 year old boy did not survive the crash in Ashville, NC.

Please pray for the church, the Mom and her five surviving children, and for God's comfort.

here is a link to the webpage story: http://bellshoals.com/pages/page.asp?page_id=35862

Blessings,

Jim

Back from vacation, finally!

Hey all:

Rachel and I are finally home from our vacation and my graduation from Liberty Baptist Seminary (www.lbts.edu). Rachel and I are hopeful that means everything is getting ready to kick into full gear with our church plant.

The next meeting of the core group is going to be Friday night. We will miss the Englers, but I will post an agenda and meeting minutes on here after the meeting.

One of the key points I think we need to spend some time on is clarifying a name for this church plant. Once we have a name it will focus us more on what we are going to be about. Rachel and I both feel that the name for our church should reflect our core values and who we are going to be. Pray about the three names I posted a few weeks ago, and any others that may strike your fancy.

I also want each of us to plan on spending some time on determining the core values for this church; these will ultimately derive into a vision & mission statement that all our ministries will flow through. This very much along the PDC model, and as we talked about before, that is what we seemed to like best. :)

God bless you all today, and pray for us.....we put a fourth offer on a house and this one we like a lot!