Vision Meetings {1 of 3}

{Post One of Three}

We conducted two vision meetings at Calvary over the past week.  Considering the time of year and how hectic everyone’s schedules are – we had good participation, with about 125 people attending one of the meetings.  This is good, but that means there’s a lot of people who weren’t able to attend.  Each meeting lasted an hour, and went pretty well.  I can’t begin to do it justice in this post, but I’ve had several people ask me to relay to them what they missed, so here’s my best attempt.

I broke the meeting down into several sections:

• “What’s Good?”
• “What’s Challening Us?”
• “The Big Announcement!”
• “Christmas Offering”

“What’s Good?“

A lot!  There’s way more GOOD going on in our faith family than bad these days.  We are blessed, and God is working among us.

We have witnessed a record number of baptisms this year!

• Baptisms: Baptisms are a significant indicator of spiritual impact.  Each Baptism represents an individual who has publicly proclaimed Christ as Lord and submitted their life and will to His care and control.  The last 3 years have been some of our best in terms of number of Baptisms, and this year is already a record year, and we’re not done yet!
• Youth Ministry:  Our Youth Ministry is exploding under the leadership of our Youth Pastor, Steve Crosby.  Steve is a mature and Godly man who truly loves the kids.  Everyone knows that we have huge numbers of kids coming on Wednesdays for small groups and on Sunday nights for relationships & Worship (7pm).  What everyone doesn’t see is the incredible amounts of time that Steve spends with the kids — loving, investing, discipling kids in large groups, and sharing his life with them one on one.  His house is almost always full of kids, and he even spends time “skyping” with a few of the students who are away at college to maintain those accountability relationships.
• Clear Fork Campus:  We launched our Clear Fork Campus in Breathitt County just a litte over 1 year ago.  In that time the small congregation has grown from 1 person to almost 50 gathering together every Sunday.  The atmosphere is warm and loving, and we have celebrated 6 Baptisms in our first year!  Ron & Pam Leedy are serving as our Campus Pastors there, and they are doing a tremendous job.  We couldn’t be happier with how the first year has gone.  Statistics tell us that only 13% of Breathitt County attends church on any given weekend, and the 2010 Census Data revealed Breathitt County as the third poorest county in the country by Median Income.  It is a fertile and important ministry field for us!
• Kingdom Generosity:  The people of Calvary are proving themselves to be TRULY generous followers of Christ.  This year, approximately 23% of our General budget was spent on Ministries & Causes that reach far beyond the walls of Calvary Christian Church.  This is good – but it doesn’t even begin to tell the whole story.  Consider this:
1. We’ve set aside almost $45,000 in additional funds out of our “GO!” Capital Fund to give away to local & foreign causes.
2. The people of Calvary sponsored an additional 70 – 80 Compassion International kids this year, taking our total well up over 200 children.  At $38 per month, that means that you are giving approximately $8000 per month — it could add up to another $100,000 per year in Kingdom Generosity.  Compassion will give me an end of the year report soon, and I can’t wait to report the real numbers to you.
3. Many have begun supporting Ashley Wingate in Haiti, and a number of others have personal ministries that they have begun investing in all over the world.  I recently heard of one Calvary family who wanted to help finish a dormitory at a mission in Africa, but they didn’t have the cash available.  They took out a Home Equity loan to see it completed.  WOW!  Crazy?  Maybe.  But crazy for Jesus!  What’s crazier:  a home equity line to give children in Africa a place to live or a home equity loan to update my “more than adequate, but not quite nice enough for me” kitchen cabinets???!!!
4. Once again this year, you have provided over 600 gifts for Children & Families at Operation Happiness and at our Clear Fork Campus.  WAY TO GO!
5. We are attempting to raise AT LEAST $50,000 right now for our Christmas Offering.  Last Years offering was approximately $35,000.
• Leadership Development:  We have some great leaders emerging at Calvary.  Rachell Colebank has been able to raise up a number of key volunteers in Children’s Ministry; Cathy Smith has some outsanding servants emerging in our volunteer office/administration roles; Steve has great small group leaders, “the best he has ever had” according to him; Warren Colebank recently told me that his worship teams are overflowing with good hearted & talented people in a way that he has never seen before; Dickie Everman has a well established plan for raising up new leaders in Celebrate Recovery; and I am super excited about the quality of the 9 candidates that we are currently vetting for Deacons.  The Elders are currently reviewing these candidates, but they have already been examined and approved by the Pastors and Nominating Ministry Team.  These men are passionate, engaged, and committed.  I can’t wait for you to meet them and learn who they are.  It’s going to be a GREAT season of ministry with these men coming forward and joining those Deacons already living as “Servant Leaders” in our congregation.

Ashley & Jennifer had opportunity to hug each other in a Chicago airport. Jennifer was on her way to Kenya for three years. Ashley was returning home for a short break from Haiti.

• Ministry Engagement:  We’ve seen members of our faith family begin their own ministries this year.  Ashley Wingate became a missionary in Haiti for 2 years.  Jennifer Watson went to Kenya for three.  The Aldridge & Gasdorf families began an adoption ministry called “Choosing to Love.”  The Hacker family started the “Clean Start Ministry.”  The Woosley family launched a ministry for Seniors called “SOS.”
• Celebrate Recovery:  Dickie Everman is dong a great job with this ministry.  CR meets on Tuesday nights with 70-100 people gathering every week.  They also have “Step Studies” that meet almost every day of the week, and they have started two “Step Studies” in the Clark County Detention Center this year – one for men and one for women.
• Community Involvment:  We made a decision this past year that when faced with an option between doing something of “our own” on our Redwing Campus, or doing something “with the community” – we will choose “With the community.”  This has resulted in a number of interesting opportunities & situations.  To be clear, we don’t think that all of these events are HUGE or that anyone claims Jesus as their Savior simply because we hand out candy on Main Street for Halloween.  BUT, we do believe that it makes an important statement for us to “show up” in the community whenever we can.  Our resolve is that we will have “long obedience in the same direction.”  We will keep showing up – we hope gaining a little more trust and standing in our community each time that we do.  Here’s a few things that happened this year:
1. Halloween Mania:  We’ve gone downtown to participate in the community Halloween event for the past two years.  This year, we saw a significant turn in this event.  We handed out candy from our office location, and from the location of our future coffee house & teen center.  Our teens, close to 70 of them, prepared and performed a flash mob dance to the classic – “Thriller” several times throughout the night.  We also made candy available to a few businesses that needed a little help and didn’t have enough to hand out.  This ended up being a tremendously positive family event this year.
2. Christmas Parade:  Our worship team was invited to play an hour of Christmas music on the courthouse steps prior to the parade.  Calvary Christian School also had a float in the parade.
   

   The view of the crowd from the Courthouse steps right before the Christmas Parade. Our Worshp team played Christmas music for an hour.

3. Kidz Club:  This summer we launched a ministry to children who live in the Memorial Park Housing Complex.  This ministry has continued to the present.  About 15 children participate on a weekly basis.
4. High School:  Steve Crosby, our Youth Pastor, takes a team of volunteers into the High School one day a week to eat lunch with the kids, interact, and build relationships.
5. Shearer Elementary:  has invited us to get involved there and serve the school, children, and faculty in a variety of ways.
6. Property:  Our property on Boonesboro Road has been used by both Clark County Community Services & The Homeless Coalition for 5K races this year.
7. You – the people of Calvary are everywhere, serving on the boards of several of the nonprofits in town (Community Services, Homeless Coalition, New Beginnings), and volunteering in all of them!
• Calvary Christian School:  Our school is thriving under the leadership of our Principal, Ned Hess.  We now have about 325 students from 2 year olds thru the 7th Grade.  We have an outstanding group of teachers and staff, and the students are thriving.  Each year becomes a challenge to see how we can accomodate the growth of the school, and this year is no exception.
• Attendance: The number of people present in worship in all services at all campuses is another strong indicator as to the health and momentum of a congregation.  We have a record attendance at Calvary this year – just barely averaging less than 1000 for the year.

We are experiencing record worship attendance this year!

“Vision Meetings” To Be Continued…Next Post:  “What’s Challenging Us?”