Great office gift

I'll be honest, if you buy me this...
You. Are. My. Hero.



One click away from being a hero!

Responding to Jesus!

I was looking back over the past two months around here and it grabbed my attention that 24 people responded to Jesus to re-connect their life back to His.

AWESOME! I love it when people are drawn to God.

We strategically invite people to respond to God in our services.
I've had people come forward.
I've had people raise their hands.
I've hap people quietly pray at their seat.
I've had people gather in small groups to pray.
I've had people light a candle as a representation of miraculous faith.
I've had people write their names on a cross.

And at the end of every service we ask people to fill out a communication card to help us know what spiritual steps they are making in their life.

As I reviewed all those communication cards to get bigger picture of what has happened over several weeks, I counted up that 24 people re-connected back to God after hearing His word. That's an answer to prayer. That's God drawing people back to Him. That's God reviving lives. And that's exciting!

God continues to do great things around here. I'm blown away every time I hear about transformation. It's so exciting. It's so powerful.

May we expect more. May we see more lives revived. May we see new life breathed into more people every single opportunity we get!

Pray for us. We believe greater days are yet to come.

Following Jesus and leading a local church is such an adventure.

baby blankets + rummage sale = comments

Arrested and Twitpic'ed

You gotta check this out.
www.twitter.com/dentonpolice

every arrest...toll booth related to drugs, to assalt...all being twitpic'ed in Texas.
SAY CHEESE!

Town Hall of Hope

We started out hosting this in a few homes. Now we are hosting it in a few homes and our church facility because more people signed up than we expected.

I'm so excited people are willing to join a discussion on handling their finances in a more responsible way. We can take control of our own economic situations.

Do you want to join us Thursday night?
Give me a shout.

Calling all Tent-Makers!

I believe we are poised to make a huge impact in the Mattoon-Charleston area in central Ilinois.
And for our church to explode, we need radical tent-maker Christians.

Paul was a tentmaker. He literally made tents to support himself during part of his ministry.
A tentmaker, simply put, is a follower of Jesus Christ who is called by God to invest in ministry, and yet financially support himself and herself using marketable skills and services.

We are poised.

Now we need more workers.

I'm putting a call out to those ready to make a powerful difference in a community ready to experience Jesus in a whole new way.

Here's where we're at so far:
1. We are on the verge of reintroducing ourselves to the community via a new name: The Fields Church. We will lunch a new website, new marketing, and new branding/identity strategies.

2. We are getting ready to launch a Saturday night service in a local coffee shop to create a second location for our church. This will be great tool to reach out to those who would not come into a traditional church building.

3. We are looking for every means possible to radically serve people-- Homeless shelter, community food pantry, coach baseball teams, parent foster kids, volunteer in the schools, transform small third-world villages in Honduras...we will serve!

This is the perfect time to join our mission in sharing the powerful story of Jesus to a broken world longing for real answers and real supernatural experience.

Do you want to join us? Do you want to be part of our team?
We need artists, musicians, teachers, video editors, smiling faces, mentors, spiritual leaders, and inspiring stories of real people who allowed God to repair their lives.

Do you want to move to Mattoon/Charleston, Illinois area? Do you want to join a church poised to impact hundreds...no, thousands of lives?

We're throwing out the nets. We calling out to the radicals wanting to make a difference.

Calling all tentmakers... The Fields Church will be looking for people willing to do whatever it takes to reach the lost.

The harvest is ready...the workers are few.

Do you want to join us?

Give me a shout through twitter
or facebook

SERVE

I challenged our church that we will aggressively serve people.
It needs to be a dominant part of our church's DNA.

One of the new opportunities we are embarking on as a church is getting involved in our local homeless shelter. To be honest, this is more gutsy than one might think.

Some people don't want a homeless shelter in our community. Some say it brings more problems than it solves problems. Some say it enables people to just live off of a system. Some say "not in my backyard."

I say love 'em.

We will cook, serve, and join them in a home-cooked meal at least once a month for starters to create conversations, build relationships, and pray for their lives.

Today I read this:

Malachi 3:5 (The Message)
5"Yes, I'm on my way to visit you with Judgment. I'll present compelling evidence against sorcerers, adulterers, liars, those who exploit workers, those who take advantage of widows and orphans, those who are inhospitable to the homeless—anyone and everyone who doesn't honor me." A Message from God-of-the-Angel-Armies.

I know we are doing the right thing. And we can't stop there.

We will aggressively serve people.

Check out this multi-media presentation from our local paper on the homeless shelter.

nothing says easter like a ...

A duck with exploding guts...



What did you get in your Easter basket?

The most powerful story ever

All For You
Come and hear it on Sunday

Who We Are...

We are a church in the process of reintroducing ourselves to the community.

We must be known as a gathering of people who:
- are growing closer to God.
- makeup a fresh and relevant church for today's culture.
- help grow healthy families
- aggressively serve people.
- believe in identifying with our community and becoming an intricate part of the community.
- believe the harvest is ready, and the we are the workers ready to go and serve God in a variety of ways.
- believe only God can take a dead seed and bring about life. We want everyone to spiritually experience that in their lives.


The Fields Church is the new name that our leadership has endorsed.



The Fields Church:
It represents our Central Illinois location
It represents the spiritual harvest that needs to take place.
It represents opportunity to grow closer to God
It represents a place where families can grow in spiritually healthy ways.
It represents spiritual seeds that needs to be planted.
It represents fields of opportunity.
It represents fields of spiritual growth.
It represents new life.

Come May 10, we'll be able to say, "Welcome to The Fields!"

Listen to the whole message here.