9.2.15 Rock Update (Kick-off Special)

Hope everyone is well and excited for the opportunity today to much of Jesus and the glory of God.  Each day we head out to our work, school, gym, (fill in the blank) we have the opportunity to be on mission.  To use each day being spent for God's glory and the gospel of Jesus Christ is the mission at hand.  All else comes in a distant second to this one mission and purpose.

This sounds odd right?  It's a bit hard to say our marriage, children or family is a distant second to anything but it's truth, or should be truth.  The best thing you could ever do for your spouse, child, family, job, school, team, (fill in the blank) is to love God with all your heart and follow Him with your life.  If this happens everything else will benefit.  Truth will prevail and God has say your every need will be supplied.  This is a daily struggle, to live a life like this.  It's for this reason we exist as a ministry.  Rather than waiting until kids become teenagers and teenagers become adults we need to be communicating this simple truth.  I pray we all seek this life and seek to live for the glory of God.

Last Night

Hoping your student didn't go to school today with a red, yellow, blue or green mouth in light of the snow cone overload last night.  We wanted to give them a treat as we kicked off the new year and from the sights and sounds of the night, it went over pretty good.

But more important than the snow cone, thought that's hard to believe, were the direction and vision we discussed during the night.  My love for fall has been well documented.  I love new beginnings and September always brings new beginnings to our ministry.  It's an opportunity to refine, sharpen and continue things as seek to lead students to know and follow Christ.  So last night we spent time looking at 3 different things:

1. Who we are, why we're here and how we accomplish these things as a ministry.  To learn more about this you can view our home page which is as informative as it comes.  The end result is we seek to help students know and follow Christ.  Everything we do has this as it's end.  If this is done God's glory will be known.
2. Life Groups - we are changing the way life groups will be accomplished this year.  Life groups are essentially care groups or small groups. This is our way to simplify our ministry and care for students.  We have around 140 students who have attended the Rock at some point.  With such a great number there is such a great need to ensure each student is loved, cared for, encouraged, and strengthened. Our hope is to have an adult paired with 3-5 students throughout the year and hopefully throughout their time here at The Rock.  This is also our gatekeeping system or "No Child Left Behind" strategy.  We're hoping this provides another form of contact and encouragement for our students.
3. Abide 2015/16 - This year is going to be very exciting and very packed.  Next week we'll actually begin teaching through this theme and we'll start with a good description of what it means to abide.  In short to abide is to remain, stay close to, be connected, or to dwell.  To follow Christ we must abide in Christ.  To abide in Christ involves two big things; Word and walk.  To abide we must get in the Word and in turn the Word gets in us.  When this happens life change occurs.  So our goal this year is to better understand the Bible as a whole.  We desire to get in the Word, know it, love it, and then live it (walk).   We've set our sights on a pretty lofty goal.  Our goal is to start in Genesis and end in Revelation.  We want to talk through the story of the Bible to see how it's connected.  As we do this we follow one important theme; covenant.  We want students to see that the Bible is one book given to us by one amazing God who loves and cares for us.  We'll spend the year talking through the high points and we'll use our devotions to fill in some gaps along the way.  8 main sections in 9 months.  A huge task but a great opportunity.  We will have more information regarding our theme down the road but hopefully this will help you understand a bit about where we're going.

There is more to say but I'm short on time.  Praying we'll see each of you this Sunday!

P.S - football is here!  I showed this video last night which seems to sum up how I'm feeling as we stand on the brink of football season. I'm sure there's a video summing up how Suzanne, my wife, feels too but we'll save that for another time.  Enjoy!