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June 30 Coffee Church Highlights

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July 2, 2013
Inspiration, Ministry
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Baptism North CreekWHOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!  That’s how I felt about Sunday!  We had our Annual Baptisms and Brunch at the park where we celebrated with seven people who were being baptized.  There is just nothing better than stories of changed lives!

Congrats to Kari, Bradley, Daniel, Grace, Garrett, Britney, and Madyson on your commitment to follow Jesus!  We are so excited for you and can’t wait to watch all that God unfolds in your life.  Serving Jesus is the best adventure ever!  Not always easy, but always worth it.

I also love the atmosphere of the park and having all of our campuses together once a year.  It is great to hang out and meet new people!

Our upcoming series is one of my favorites!  It’s called Age of Kings and we do a round-robin of preachers all month.  We’ll be pulling out some of our staff to share with you about different Kings in the Bible.  They are truly some epic, life-altering stories about leaders throughout the Bible.  You will enjoy July at North Creek Church!

Did you know we grow during the summer months?  We have some of our highest number of visitors in our summer months.  It’s a great time to invite a friend!  You can also help us by coming 15 minutes earlier than you normally do and meeting some people.  That would be one of the best gifts you could give to your church!  It is our agenda to create a church culture that looks a lot like how Jesus welcomed people into His life.

Wcoffee church youthe are neck deep in conversations and interviews for our Battle Ground youth pastor.  Two things you can do to help this along:  Pray for the teenagers of Battle Ground and give money to birth this vision.  Youth ministries are expensive all the way around.  That being said, they are equally worth every penny in the changed lives that come from that ministry.

Speaking of teenagers, our youth just got back from camp (see mud-filled picture!) and had a truly incredible time.  God spoke to their hearts and lives all week.  Some learned to read their Bibles, some heard from God about their futures, and all built relationships that are important.  THANK YOU to all of you who gave to scholarships to help us get all of those teens there.  We will see the fruit of that for decades to come!

I hope you are inspired to give.  As I sit in our staff meetings, I am flooded with the reality that we have more vision than provision.  We are so excited to go after the future and the only thing that limits us is finances.  Isn’t that an earth shattering reality for the Kingdom of God?  More people would experience our ministries and the life-changing move of God if we gave as we are instructed to.  Let’s do it!

Be blessed this week!  God has great plans for your life.  Hold on to that!

 

June 23 Coffee Church Highlights

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June 25, 2013
Inspiration, Ministry
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What a great and busy weekend we had!  June is packed full of grad parties, birthday parties, and BBQ’s.  My girls were so tired from a weekend full of adventure that they begged me to go to bed on Sunday night.  That’s how I like it!

My oldest daughter turns 9 this week…oh.my.word.  I know that all parents say it, but it goes SO fast!  It is almost unbelievable how quickly you blink and years have flooded by.  I am so proud of the young lady that she is becoming!  Such a sweet, kind, and considerate person who looks out for the underdogs in life!

Sunday our staff took personalities profiles and learned a little about how we each tick.  I laughed myself silly to see how everybody rated and how they all fit together!  We have a VERY interesting mix of personalities, which is probably why we can have intense conversations followed by rolling laughter within minutes of each other.  Above all else, we let our strengths shine and try to cover each other’s weaknesses, which is the best part of being a healthy team!

Baptism Sunday is on June 30th!!!!  That’s just 5 days away, so if you are ready to be baptized, please register HERE.  Also, please take note that all of our regular services move to the park this weekend, so plan ahead.  Bring a dish to share, a chair to sit on, and swim gear for the kids!

The Kid’s Camp forms were due on Sunday, but a little birdy just told me that she has room for a couple more if you are still on the fence.  Email kim@coffeechurch.com if you still need to get your kid on the list.  Camp is an opportunity for life change…grab a hold of it!

Our youth are currently at camp, so please be praying for all 35 people that are at Silver Lake.  I happen to know that both the Boy’s Cabin and the Girl’s Cabin won clean cabin this morning.  I am sure there are plenty of parents of teens out there wondering how they can motivate their teenager to take that prize-winning habit home with them….

I highly recommend our youth ministry if you’ve got a teenager…except don’t go this week because there isn’t one due to camp.  On a similar note, we are on our way to having a youth ministry at Battle Ground.  We are neck deep in the interview/planning process.  We’re excited to see a thriving youth ministry in a community we love!  More info to come soon.

So many great things going on and more around the corner!  It’s fun to serve Jesus!  Hope you are blessed as well!

Back Against the Wall

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June 13, 2013
Inspiration, Ministry
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Over the last seven years on this amazing journey of starting a church, there has been some pretty hairy moments where we weren’t sure if we were going to make it.  These seasons all have felt the same…a messy mixture of hope, fear, panic, faith, despair, and fight.  It has been in those seasons where we have found ourselves feeling like our backs were against a wall.  Have you ever felt that way in your own life?

These crisis’ have come in many forms for our church – finances, facilities, strategy decisions, etc.  The circumstances vary, but the feeling is the same: we feel like we have been pushed to the point where we just can’t be pushed any further…we feel trapped by reality.  I am sure you have been there as well!  Options seem limited and the wall seems solid.

I find the next step is also familiar…my head drops, sometimes for moments, sometimes for weeks, the prayers float through my mind, and then suddenly my eyes open as my head raises.  The still, small voice of God ALWAYS says the same thing when we feel trapped… “If your back is against the wall, move the wall.”  It’s said as a mandate with a firmness that can only be from Heaven itself.  There’s no wavering, there’s no shaking in the voice.  “Move the wall.”

What “walls” are in your life?  If you are like the rest of us, you probably consider that wall a boundary that you cannot get past.  It is your limitation and it’s not going anywhere….or is it?  Maybe you find yourself fighting what is in front of you, rather than turning around and taking the sledge hammer to the fortress behind you.  We often find that when our back is against those walls, God really never intended for us to fight what was pushing us to the wall; He wanted to get us to tear down the wall.

Here’s the reality:  That wall may look solid and it may not be easy to chip away at it, but that should not stop you from taking it on with a vengeance.  Whatever is on the other side of the wall is worth getting to.

The best thing I can do is to stop running from what’s pushing me and start swinging at what is stopping me.  Move the wall.

 

June 9 Coffee Church Highlights

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June 11, 2013
Inspiration, Ministry
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It was graduate Sunday!  What a great group of 13 grads we have this year!  This is the graduating class that includes the very first sixth graders in our church.  I am so proud of each one of them and their confidence in their relationship with Jesus.

Get your kids in church.  As parents, it’s our job to lead our kids and establish a framework for being a part of the body of Christ.  Thank you to Vanessa and Kim who pour their lives into growing our kids.

I am loving the sermons in the Protect and Serve series.  Bottom line: our lives are to be an example of Jesus – both in leading and serving.  It is a monumental challenge for all of us, but exactly what we should be striving for.  Do you want to be well known or worth knowing?

The other part of this series that I think is profound is to be aware and careful WHO you follow.  People put spiritual and emotional trust in others who are not healthy.  We are responsible to find people to follow who are following Christ.

Do you need to be baptized?  If you have decided to follow Christ and haven’t done that yet, it’s time.  The Bible doesn’t reserve baptism for people who are perfect, but rather it is one of the INITIAL symbols of change.  Messy people need to get baptized, so don’t wait until you have it all together.  (P.S.  You’ll never have it all together…)  Sign up HERE for our next baptism on June 30.

How’s your Bible reading going?  Here’s my challenge for you:  Read a chapter a day for the next month.  You can find some great reading plans at www.youversion.com if you don’t know where to start reading.  And don’t worry about it if you don’t understand what you are reading.  You might not at first, but if you keep reading, it will get clearer and clearer.  That is the beauty of the Bible…God reveals Himself to you at the time and rate that He needs to grow your life.  Give Him the opportunity to do just that.

Jesus changes lives.  Invite someone to church so they can learn about Him and have their lives changed as well.

Congrats to the Ericson Family on the birth of Aubree!  We love all of the new life at North Creek!  We also got to have baby Emilia in church for the first time this weekend as well.  So beautiful!

I love God’s Church.  It’s not timid.  It’s not lazy.  It’s not irrelevant.  It’s a force to be reckoned with and it changes the landscape of both our country and the world.  Be weary of allowing yourself to believe anything but that.  God’s Word says His Church cannot be stopped.  Period.

On that note…YOU can’t be stopped either if you are in line with God’s plan.  Be obedient.  Be humble.  Be unstoppable.

 

 

 

 

June 2 Coffee Church Highlights

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June 4, 2013
Inspiration, Ministry
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We kicked off a new sermon series on authority called Protect and Serve!  It was awesome and gave people A LOT to think about.  You can catch it online at www.coffeechurch.com.  I can’t wait to hear more!

We have CUTE kids at the Coffee Church!  Make sure you say hi to a few of them every Sunday.  They are the most valuable resource we have in our midst!

Missionaries Mike and Kari Ness came to visit the Battle Ground campus on Sunday and even stopped in to tell missionary stories to our kid’s classes.  They attended that campus prior to leaving for the mission field, so it was great to have them “home” again to see us!

I lost the diamond out of my wedding ring on Sunday…bummer.  I’m praying it happens to turn up somewhere, but unfortunately I have no idea when or where it came out.  I think there’s a few parables about valuable lost things…

We are beginning to interview potential youth pastors for Battle Ground.  How exciting!  If you know of a youth pastor looking for a job, have them email their resume to mark@coffeechurch.com.

Thank you for your faithful giving to North Creek!  We know that your money is important and we are grateful and humbled when you choose to invest your giving into our church.  We get the privilege of knowing every story of changed lives and how valuable your giving really is.  Thank you for your faithfulness!

Next Sunday we will be honoring our high school graduates at Hazel Dell and then on the 16th we’ll honor our grads at Battle Ground.  It’s one of my favorite mornings as we celebrate our teenagers!

We are also in full swing for getting our youth and kid’s to summer camp.  If you need a registration form, you can email office@coffeechurch.com.  If you don’t have kids going to summer camp, but want to be a part, you can give to camp scholarships.  We have a genius strategy where we have our scholarship kids actually work for the church so that they understand that our spiritual growth takes effort and attention.  It’s a win-win and it’s awesome!

Father’s Day is coming in two weeks!  Yay for Dads!  We love the men of North Creek and are appreciative of their leadership in our church.

On that note, enjoy this amazing sunshine!  I LOVE SUMMER!  Bring it on!