Connect them or lose them

Creating community and serving people are keys to reaching young adults.  This is according to new research released by LifeWay:


Churchgoers or not, the study results indicate young adults are longing for community and fellowship with peers, looking for ways to reach people in need and circling the church but not always finding a home in it. Seventy-three percent of church members and 47 percent of non-affiliated young adults indicated that community with other young adults is extremely important in their lives. …The study indicates that social action is a big entryway to the church for young adults. In fact, social action is cited as the major reason unchurched young adults would consider being part of a church.

Read:  LifeWay Research Examines The New View Of Young Adults 
Listen to the Podcast: The Leaving Generation 

Church of the Highlands Four Corners

Here are some pics of Church of the Highlands Four Corners. I enjoyed worshipping Jesus with them yesterday. Ricc Conner is lead planter.
Click image for more...

Highlands Four Corners

Humana 2.0

Coming to Orlando February 7-8 2007. Register before the New Year and save. More info: http://fight4humanity.com/

Your Greatest Work

My friend, Lindsay cofield, sent this to me...

YOUR GREATEST WORK…“In work, in ministry, or in any other endeavor, imagine everything you've ever accomplished up to this point. Visualize every obstacle, every failure, and every success as nothing more than preparation for what you will one day accomplish. In one moment, one day, one week, one month, or one year, you may accomplish more - and have greater impact - than all your previous years combined. And that one incredible season of fruitfulness would not have been possible, but had it not been for all the years of toil that prepared you for your greatest work. Particularly in service to the Kingdom of God, by His power and His indwelling Holy Spirit, always be aware that years you spend in seeming futility may one day yield a harvest of staggering proportions, not to mention eternal reward and commendation from the…KING.....” W.J.Ericson

2 Timothy 2:1-7 Accountability

1. What is your highest God-Calling in this chapter of your life?


2. What has helped you stay focused & God dependent this week?


3. What Bible person/circumstance best describes you this week: Joseph, Daniel, Job, Paul, other_____________
   ~pit, prison, exile, mountain top, promised land, desert, pilgrimage, other________
   
4. Who is your Timothy? Barnabas? Paul?...and how have you invested in them lately?


5. What is hindering, distracting, blessing, or multiplying your Kingdom work lately?


6. What are you building now for future fruitbearing?


7. What is your #1 prayer support need today?________________________

Church Planter’s Christmas Party

Here are some photos from our church planter's Christmas party on Dec. 4.

Message or Relationship

We are bombarded by messages each day: email, commercials, billboards, sales pitches. We know how to spot hype and mile a way. We get a sense that something is wrong when someone misuses our relationships to lure us into multi-level marketing scams. So, why do we try to start churches the same way? Relational church planting is about building authentic relationships with people because God loves them and we are trying.

Please listen to the following podcast and post your comments regarding "Message or Relationship"

Gabcast! The Church Planting Podcast #5 - Message or Relationship

20th Century churches focused on the message. Twenty-First Century humans are bombarded with messages everyday. We delete or ignore most of the messages that are sent to us, except for the relational ones.

For more on relational church planting, check out: http://everywherechurch.com/ and Hanging out on the EDGE

Mega or Micro?

So, are we advocating mega churches or micro churches?  Yes!

Alex McManus has an excellent post on his blog: Mega Church and Home Church Networks: Twin Trajectories and Why We Need Them Both.

So, What is a Simple Church?

November 1, 2006
10a.m. -3:00 p.m.
Apopka, FL
Free Event
Register Online

Quite simply, a simple church is one that focuses on loving God, loving people and making disciples of Jesus Christ. Simple does not necessarily mean small. Some simple churches are small and some are quite large. Simple does mean uncomplicated.

Sometimes we get so busy doing church that we fail to equip people to be the church in daily life. Simple churches evaluate all that they do in terms of loving God, loving people and making disciples. They stop doing or don’t do things that hinder them from fulfilling the mission of Jesus.

Simple Church Planting is all about intentionally multiplying churches that focus on keeping the main thing the main thing. In some contexts, simple churches will launch large with a paid staff and a full slate of mission opportunities. In many others, they will start as single-celled organisms that multiply quickly. Regardless of size, the principles are the same.

You are invited to spend 5 hours on November 1st with some simple church planters and others who want to learn. Simple Church Planting is not an event, it is a collaboration of people on mission together to evangelize Central Florida and the world with the good news that God came near. If you are interested in joining us click here for more details.

Marketplace Networking/Training Opportunity

Westpoint Fellowship Church is hosting their 1st business leadership conference to connect with and serve the business leaders of the Central Florida region. On November 14th, participants will get to sit in on a live simulcast as though in a board room doing Q and A with Jack Welch, Marcus Buckingham, Stephen R. Covey, and Ken Blanchard. This is a one-of-a-kind event that will have thousands of participants all across the country and in 32 countries. Westpoint is the host for Central Florida.

If you would like to participate, you have 2 options:
· You can view it live @ St. Paul's Presbyterian across from West Oaks Mall from 11 to 5 on November 14th. The cost is $100 per head or $75 per head for a group of 10 or more. Admission includes the in-depth learning experience, networking discussions and opportunities with other business leaders, an application workbook, lunch, a free gift, and the change to win a door prize.
· You can pay to have the feed streamed into your own conference room and have a private day with your own team.
This is an awesome chance to network with other business leaders in the community, as well as be challenged by 4 premier and proven national business leaders. For all the details, go to www.higherlevel2006.com. All proceeds go toward WFC being the church in the marketplace.
To find out more about how WFC is being the church in the marketplace, surf through Restoration Concept's website and share the vision with your friends in the marketplace.

Collaborate with Google Docs

OK, this is really cool and revolutionary. Google has released their online word processor aka writley. The new release, known as Google Docs is integrated with Google's online spreadsheet. With docs and spreadsheets, you can invite others to collaborate with you on a project and keep the project private. Each user logs in with their own Google account. Revisions are tracked, so it is easy to revert to previous versions. You can also publish your work to a unique url so that it can be viewed by anyone online, but not changed. The really cool thing is that you can track all changes via rss feed.

Simple Church Planting

Simple Church Planting Conference
November 1, 2006 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Camp Joy Chapel

I am excited to announce the line-up for Simple Church Planting at Camp Joy on November 1st. Alex McManus will get us started at 10:00 with “Effective Evangelism." He will be followed by Neil Hughes with a session on “Reproducing Disciples.” During lunch, we will hear testimonies of some local guys who are planting simple churches in Central Florida. The afternoon session will kick off with none other than our own Jim Collins talking about “Multiplying Leaders.” We will wrap things up with Mark Weible and Mike Hoffmann encouraging “Organic Development.”

We will have a cash book table with copies of Beyond Church Planting by Bob Logan, Organic Church by Neil Cole, Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Revolution by George Barna. These resources will be available in limited supply at 75% off the retail price.

We have a limited number of spaces available for this free event. If you would like to know more or wish to register online, visit www.goba.org/cpn.

What is a Baptist Church?

Not all New Testament churches belong to a denomination. Denominations are organizations and they have the right to choose their membership. Denominations have specific requirements for membership. Here is the basic definition of a Southern Baptist Church form the 2000 SBC Baptist Faith and Message…

A New Testament church of the Lord Jesus Christ is an autonomous local congregation of baptized believers, associated by covenant in the faith and fellowship of the gospel; observing the two ordinances of Christ, governed by His laws, exercising the gifts, rights, and privileges invested in them by His Word, and seeking to extend the gospel to the ends of the earth. Each congregation operates under the Lordship of Christ through democratic processes. In such a congregation each member is responsible and accountable to Christ as Lord. Its scriptural officers are pastors and deacons. While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.

The New Testament speaks also of the church as the Body of Christ which includes all of the redeemed of all the ages, believers from every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation.

Matthew 16:15-19; 18:15-20; Acts 2:41-42,47; 5:11-14; 6:3-6; 13:1-3; 14:23,27; 15:1-30; 16:5; 20:28; Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 3:16; 5:4-5; 7:17; 9:13-14; 12; Ephesians 1:22-23; 2:19-22; 3:8-11,21; 5:22-32; Philippians 1:1; Colossians 1:18; 1 Timothy 2:9-14; 3:1-15; 4:14; Hebrews 11:39-40; 1 Peter 5:1-4; Revelation 2-3; 21:2-3.

Denominations have other requirements for membership such as financially supporting the organization and physical participation.

What is a church

A good friend of mine will tell you that I am asking the wrong question. My buddy would suggest that “Who is a church?” is a better way to phrase that question. I like it, but find it awkward. I wouldn’t ask “Who is a family” or “Who is a country.” It should go without saying that a church is people. We know that, but tend to act as if a church is an organization.

In its simplest form, a church is two or three people who follow Jesus. North Americans have a hard time getting this concept, because we often look at the Bible through western, modern lenses. I was always taught that the church of Jesus began on the day of Pentecost. You know… when there was a large crowd gathered, a sermon preached and a public invitation given to follow Christ.

I have grown to understand that church began when Jesus said “Come follow me…” and a couple of guys did. Jesus modeled church with his first crop of disciples. His emphasis was on growing and multiplying disciples and not gathering crowds. Now don’t get me wrong, crowds gathered but He didn’t gather them. I’ll blog more about this later, but I have an agenda….

I want plug our conference called Simple Church Planting. On November 1st, a small group of revolutionary church planters will gather to discuss church planting principles gleaned from the New Testament. We'll meet for 5 hours at Camp Joy in Apopka, FL. This is a free event including lunch. We will interact with practitioners who are old school church planters – way old school. We will talk about how to plant churches without money, public facilities, advertising and pyrotechnics. We will discuss the issues I’ve raised in this blog and we will build lasting relationships as gospel partners. You can come to this event if you Register Online before space runs out. BTW, I have confirmation that Alex McManus will get us started in the morning session with his thoughts on effective evangelism.

Quality vs. Quantity

How do you measure excellence in a local church? If you have a cool gig on Sunday, a flash-driven website, and mailers that proclaim that you are not as boring as other churches, does that mean that you are a quality church?

Ask yourself, “Why do we exist on planet earth?” If the answer is to make disciples of Jesus Christ, then your standard of evaluation should reflect that. One measure of discipleship is the use of spiritual gifts. NCD* research indicates that small churches tend to provide more opportunities for followers of Jesus to use their spiritual gifts on a regular basis than larger churches.

Does this mean that megachurches are bad? Not at all, it simply means that large churches have to work harder not to let people slip through the cracks. However, we need to take a strategic look at intentionally planting more small churches. Starting small, indigenous churches that are intentional about reproducing themselves is the missional strategy of the SBC International Mission Board and many other mission organizations. These organizations are reporting exponential gospel expansion in various hot spots around the world as the result of small church multiplication. Meanwhile, North America remains the only continent in the world where the gospel is not spreading.

Over the past 40 years, our focus has been on church growth. Success was determined by size. Our bigger is better thinking has left many small churches with an inferiority complex. I’ve even met some folks who would declare small churches illegitimate- the solution being to shut them all down and combine them with larger churches.

Granted, many small churches are struggling just to survive and most have not reproduced themselves. But, let’s not overlook the value of helping these churches to develop a missional paradigm and encouraging them to reproduce themselves into even smaller segments. And let’s not forget to encourage large churches to value their smaller siblings and to consider starting a few themselves.

I am interested in your thoughts…


*The Institute for Natural Church Development spent the past ten years researching church health and growth in 70 countries and 40,000 churches.

More or Bigger Churches?

Watch Video

According to new information released by Natural Church Development, small churches grow faster than large churches. Over the past five years, churches with an average attendance of less than 100 added an average of 32 people each (38%) while churches over 1,000 added an average of 112 people each (4%).

The smallest churches averaged 51 people in worship attendance while mega churches averaged 2,856 people. So, if 56 new churches were started with 51 people each… 1,792 new people could potentially be reached within five years. One megachurch of 2,586 people would tend to reach 112 new people. NCD author Christian Schwarz claims, “Thus we can conclude that the evangelistic effectiveness of minchurches is statistically 1,600 percent greater than that of megachurches!” (Christian A. Schwarz, Natural Church Development: A Guide to Eight Essential Qualities of Healthy Churches, Revised. Carol Stream, Ill.: ChurchSmart Resources, 2006 p. 50).

What about quality? Can small churches provide a "quality experience" for their members? Perhaps a better question is... Are small churches effective at making and multiplying disciples? What do you think?

Church Planting Intern

This summer, we had the privilege to get to know Laurie Hughes.  She is a freshman college student who served as an intern with Rising Sun Baptist Church.  The Florida Baptist Convention provided Laurie’s stipend and Greater Orlando Baptist Association provided housing and local travel expenses.  Read in Laurie’s own words what God did through her life in the summer of 2006….  

“God uses those who are ready and eager to serve Him. I have learned this in many ways this summer. Coming to Orlando with an open mind, empty schedule and flexibility has allowed me to see God’s hand in the work all over Orlando. Each person that saw the love of Jesus Christ and His glorious plan for their life through my service has made this summer more than worthwhile.
I was given the opportunity to partner with Rising Sun Baptist Church and minister to the children in the Pine Hills community. This ministry began through outreach to the community at a Block Party. This one event energized the church body as well as the neighborhood. Over 150 attended the event, and 45 made decisions for Christ. With this amazing beginning and overwhelming response, I was assured that God had great plans for this summer. Discipleship of the community became my goal and my mission for the summer.
One way that God used me to mentor and disciple the children was through a weekly Kids Club at an apartment community. This time began strong and has run consistently over 40 in attendance. The children come regularly, always hungry and consistently learning and growing. As I have been able to build relationships with these wonderful kids, the doors have been opened to minister to the families as well. Not only has the community benefited, but whole families are coming to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ!
Several events have also taken place this summer of which I have been a part. These have strengthened the relationships and ties between the community and Rising Sun Baptist Church. A concert in early June, a weeklong sports camp, a pool party in late July as well as an evening Bible Study series strengthened the foundations of the relationships formed. This partnership leaves a lasting impression and has opened many doors and witnessing opportunities. For example, an employee of the apartment community was compelled to ask us to visit a family in need of encouragement as well as groceries. During this divine appointment, God spoke through us; both the man and his wife became Christians that very afternoon. They share freely how God has set them free from their burdens, and provides for their needs. This one story is just a testament of how great a God we serve, and how he uses every moment to show His glory.
This obvious movement of the Holy Spirit has been a lesson for my own life. It has been so easy to follow His leadership by offering up my time and summer to working in Orlando. God has taught me to love genuinely, giving of myself to the ministry. Those who are lost and hurting do not need a lot of fancy words or designed programs. The gospel, my privilege to share, is simple and true. I have shared the Good News, coupled with love and concern, to whoever will listen. God has not only blessed my life through this ministry, but has also become real to so many others. I have great joy knowing that I have been used by Christ to plant the seed of His love in many hearts.
This ministry is now grown and developed, holding an abundance of hungry seekers of the truth of the gospel. My work in Orlando is completed, however, there is still much harvesting left to be done. Many have come to know Christ, but they need mentorship. Opportunities for the church to step up and raise these babes in Christ abound. My prayer for the Orlando area is that many will rise up and continue this ministry. I am in constant prayer and have complete confidence that God will utilize those with passion for the lost, completing the work that He has begun.”

Cowboy Church

NBC Nightly News ran a story about cowboy churches last night. You can watch the video on MSNBC and post comments on the Daily Nightly Blog.

Gene Blankenship, a cowboy church planter in Central Florida, gave me the heads up on this.

Outward and Upward Leadership Teams

You know you are supposed to have a leadership team; you have one, now what?

Is your vision team too “pie in the sky” to get anything done? Is your pastoral advisory team too “chicken” to try anything new? Is your sounding board made up of a bunch of “yes men?” It doesn’t matter what you call them; if your team members are not leading in personal and corporate growth, they are a crisis management team. You may know that already, but how do you lead your team to shift its focus away from today’s pressing needs to working toward vision fulfillment?

Adam Johnstone has developed a practical tool for Natural Church Development that is designed to help church leadership teams to personally and corporately grow outward and upward. This non-linear approach to principle-based strategic implementation is what Johnstone calls The Three Color Spiral. Although it is designed for churches that are going through the NCD process, the principles can be found useful by any ministry team. A free PDF version of The Three Color Spiral is available from NCD Australia. Permission is granted to reproduce for local use.

Creating community among apartment residents

Rebecca McLean knows the importance of creating community face to face. She encourages apartment management companies to develop a community bond by getting to know their residents and encouraging them to interact with each other. Management companies are encouraged to provide recreational areas and community facilities to help bring people together. Apartments that enjoy a true sense of community often have more stable tenancies and lower crime problems than comparable communities that are not organized. Rebecca is Assistant Vice President of the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Apartment Association.
From Key Magazine,
Apartment Association of Greater Orlando
, May, 2006.

If you live in an apartment or condo community, you could become the catalyst for bringing people together by volunteering to organize parties and other fun events. Check with your property manager or association president for ideas on how you can help create community where you live. How could you use social networking technology to foster community building?

Podcasting 101

Listening to Podcasts
Podcasting is the process of syndicating audio and video content over the internet. The content can be accessed via a website, an aggregator like itunes or ipodder, or a portable media device.  

To find podcasts on the internet, one could simply conduct a web search with the word “podcast” included (try “church planting podcast” on Google) or browse any number of podcast directories such as christianpodcastdirectory.com or christianpodder.com.  Most podcasts allow users to listen or view at least a sample of the content using a web browser.

Apple ipod users know that the easiest way to find and subscribe to podcasts is through the itunes software.  Itunes is used to synchronize ipod devices with content that is stored on a computer hard drive, thus allowing podcasts to be heard and viewed anywhere.

The new Internet Explorer7  browser has an rss subscription feature built in.  Podcasters use rss 2.0 to syndicate their content across the internet. IE7 allows the user to subscribe to podcasts directly from the rss feed source.  An rss feed has a url address like a webpage (see http://feeds.feedburner.com/churchplantingpodcast for an example), but most current internet browsers are not configured to read the rss code.

Recording Audio Podcasts
Audacity is free multi-track digital recording software that is very popular with podcasters.  The software with the optional Lame plug-in converts digital audio to the mp3 format necessary for podcasting.  

Recording a Video Podcast
A simple video tutorial on creating video podcasts is available at freevlog.org.

Uploading Podcasts
A podcast is comprised of two files which are hosted on the internet.  The mp3 audio file or mpeg video file needs a home on the web.  Some web hosts will allow a limited amount of storage and bandwidth suitable for storing a few podcast episodes.  However, additional website resources may be needed and can be expensive.  A number of websites (such as christianpoddcer.com and Ourmedia.org) provide free media storage and distribution.

Rss files take up very little space and can be hosted on most websites.  Feeds can be created and uploaded with software such as Feedforall.  However, the easiest way to create rss feeds is to use free blogging software such as blogger and the smartcast feature of feedburner.com.  A complete tutorial on how to turn a blog into a podcast is available at podcastingnews.com.

Podcasting by phone
Podcasts can easily be recorded from any telephone by using audioblogger.  Audioblogger works in conjunction with blogger to provide a simple solution to podcasting.   Audioblogger automatically turns telephone calls into mp3 files and makes them accessible on blogs hosted by blogger.  Except for the cost of the phone call, audioblogger is a free service.

Clermont Fellowship Church

Here is an update from Tom Casolaro, lead planter for Clermont Fellowship Church. Tom and his team are doing a great job of connecting with people in Clermont and partnering with other church planters...


Imagine a football field, hotdogs cooking on a grill, more than 700 Easter eggs stuffed with goodies, and a truckload of kids! Got the picture?! What a wonderful evening of worship as families joined us for Easter on the Citrus Tower lawn! We could not have asked for better weather, fun, games and time with the entire family.

There are so many things to praisedate but I want to share the meaning of belonging …
We have seen the doors continue to open to share the gospel. We have been reaching out and ministering to families from all walks of life. One such family brought five adults and two kids to our celebration tonight. They are very open and want to learn, grow and be involved. They are searching for meaning and earnestly desire to “belong.” They are drawn to the life and excitement the life we share in Christ. One of the fathers is giving KidStuf tickets to 85 of his daycare kids this week because “I really want them to come, get it and experience it for themselves.”

I had the opportunity to share the good news with a young couple who are truly seeking to belong to a community of faith. They have many questions but were very open to discuss their journey. They know they are not satisfied simply with having jobs and going home at the end of the day. “We want to belong to a community where we can all grow and raise our family.”

Lastly, we witnessed a family on the distant edge of our community come a bit closer tonight. We experienced tremendous joy in hearing them laugh, asking questions, engaging in conversation and expressing their interest to “be a part of what you’re doing here” … it is both thrilling and humbling. We know their “skepticism” is changing to sensitivity … openness to hear the good news! They made a huge sacrifice to come back from their vacation just to come tonight.

We are speaking to so many people in this area that are yearning to belong … belong to the Fellowship … Fellowship with God and fellowship with the family of God. We spoke with a Boys Scout troop leader we met in “passing” today. He is excited to hear about KidStuf coming this coming weekend. “I am always looking for a place where our kids can learn solid values,” he says.

Will you join with us in praying for so many people that will be helping us this week? Will you join us in praying for so many people that do not know Jesus? Will you pray their lives will be changed for all eternity? Will you invest your time and talents with us? We need others to partner with us to make reaching Clermont and beyond a true reality with the life-giving power of the gospel.

Please pray for the Vine. They are a new church plant with limited resources. They are committed to partnering with us in Clermont to further the Kingdom of God and spread the transformational truth of the gospel. They are an example of sacrifice and love as they minister to us and along with us. Their pastor, Billy Rollins, baptized two new believers in their Easter worship service this morning. Billy is a loving and incredibly Kingdom-minded brother in Christ. Please pray for him.

Thank you for your continued support and prayers. We are in the process of updating our e-mail lists and website. If you would like to be on our e-mail, e-news list or future podcasts, please contact us at info@clermontfc.com. Please forward this e-mail to any of your friends or family who might be interested in hearing and reading our updates too.

For your continued reading pleasure and for those of you who are looking for something to shout about … I have included A MONTH IN REVIEW …
Although I can be prone to ramble … I will give you a quick glimpse of our previous month and a quick forecast of upcoming plans …

• Nearly one month ago (3/19) we had our last preview celebration gathering. It was well attended but provided a much needed “picture” and preparation for our birth Sunday. We called it “sonogram of the future” playing off our birth date celebration. Our community could get an idea of the sound and sight of the “baby” to come …

• Two weeks later we gave birth to a wonderful child … after labor pains for nearly nine months (ready or not) we celebrated our birth! For those of you who know me very well … I am not a big numbers guys … but let me say that the theme after our evening together was “and the chairs keep on coming!” We continue to set out chairs and use all we had available after the initial amount of 75 in the room. We were packed in the “delivery room” and well attended by many in the community. We had the blessing of some friends from Birmingham assisting with the birth. We were also honored to have Don Miller, DOM (Director of Missions), attend with his wife Yvonne and our good friends and pastors Michael Hopewell (New Waters Church) and Lewis Ecker (Assoc. Pastor, First Baptist Clermont). We shared the message of “GOT LIFE” translated “GOD LIFE!” Great time of celebration!

• We have been steady planning for our partnership and show with the Vine for KidStuf. We are ecstatic about the possibility that doing KidStuf will provide for us in building relationship in our community. We have a desire to reach out to families in our area … KidStuf is one way we will be able to connect, build relationships and trust and share God’s message with the whole family in a new and exciting way. We are establishing our website for KidstufClermont. We are sending many invitations this week with the help of many and special thanks to dear friends, like Carolyn Walsh (new entrepreneur with husband Sean) and Mark from the Vine.

• We have had many meetings with local leaders: politicians, business owners, educators/administrators and community leaders. Many of our meetings have proven to be invaluable as we take steps forward to building a faith community where “you” belong as well as participate and partner with the greater community where we belong … One example of our relationship was praying at our Chamber breakfast this month with over 300 community leaders present for the meeting.

• We have worshipped with several new faith communities (local places of worship) to us in this general area. We have continued to pursue a relationship with several missional networks, local associations and local churches. Jason Dukes continues to be very supportive of us on this journey along with Renaut van der Riet. We are very hopeful in our relationship with Chan Kilgore too.

• Dianne and I took a brief trip for a wedding which I was a part of in Birmingham. Dianne worshipped at Brook Hills and I attended a new church plant of a prayer partner and dear friend and later that evening had a phenomenal time of worship and fellowship as well at Tapestry of Hope. Dianne spent a couple of days with her family while I attended meetings, enjoyed time with “old” friends and made some new friends.

• We will gather for celebration every two weeks with a KidStuf, coupled with adult celebration and kid’s Bible study, on the alternate weeks. We will be making a shift to utilize Sunday morning for training, discipleship and additional outreach in the next few months. EXCITING!

• We will be having several new community groups start this week! Please pray as we build relationships with our neighbors and those in the community. We truly want to serve them.

• We are updating our website with the help of some friends (like Eric Fuller) and the steady dedication of JV! Please be patient with us as we develop a design that is more consistent with who we are as a faith community. You can always send general questions or information to info@clermontfc.com.

• Our financial needs continue to remain a matter of prayer and tender reality as we continue on our journey. Again, we are grateful for your support. Please continue to pray for us.

• We will be promoting our summer “mission” trips in June and July. This will be a great opportunity to taste and see that the Lord is good … an opportunity to experience Clermont up-close and personal … an opportunity to serve and use your gifts, talents and passion for the Kingdom! June 9-17 will be a huge harvest as we plan, prepare and put into practice the love of God through vacation Bible school for kids, sports camps, random acts of kindness, minor construction and home repair, and a community celebration. We have cookouts, block parties, breakfast and luncheons planned for community leaders and other extraordinary opportunities to get involved and make a difference!

Likewise, we will be promoting some other ways you can get plugged into this mission field from where you reside. We need help with graphic design, promotional events, support raising, web design, and so much more!

Again, please feel free to send any questions, ideas or comments to us. We welcome your input, feedback and involvement.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about a wonderful event that we helped “sponsor” … we helped a local business with a frozen custard eating contest at a local event (29,000 people come to our lakefront for this special occasion) … it was a blast … we got nothing other than the pure joy of helping others promote their business to a place of success and seeing the faces of kids smothered in ice cream! Priceless!!

God bless you and have a Christ-centered day and week …

Tom

Tom Casolaro
Clermont Fellowship Church
Suite 107-303
13900 County Road 455
Clermont, FL 34711
352-638-1488 (cell)
www.clermontfc.com

Is it time for a vision check up?

When is the last time you had your vision checked?  Did you try to do it yourself?  Wouldn’t it be better if you asked an objective person (preferably someone with experience) to help you?

Community leaders need to have their vision check periodically.  It only takes 30 days for vision drift to occur in leaders and much less time for followers.  It may be time for you to evaluate where you are in light of what you originally set out to do.

Get someone to help you ask the hard questions like:  What is our dream? What have you sold out to?   What are you afraid of? What are you ashamed of?  How are you changing the world?

Not only is it important to check your vision, you must use it or loose it.  Constantly communicate your vision to others so that they can communicate it as well as you.  Paint mental pictures to help the non-visonizing people you are walking with.  Begin with the end in mind and illustrate for them how your community is going to transform lives, communities and the world.  

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B I G G E R
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S  W  H  E  N  I  
A M  L O  O  K  I  
N   G    U    P

Check out the Church Planting Podcast