Thirsty???

Here's a note that we sent out to the CNX community about our upcoming Easter Clean Water Project.  If you are interested we'd love to have you partner with us.

Dear Friends,

Hope this finds you well in the middle of the week and looking forward to spring.  (It is coming soon, right?)

I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to fill you in on a special project our church community will be tackling over the next month and a half.  As you know, Connections Church has always had a desire to make a difference in the name of Jesus.  We trying to learn to love our neighbors- both locally and globally- as we love ourselves.  With that in mind, we've decided to partner with BLOOD WATER MISSION for their 40 Days of Water Challenge.

You can check out the links above for yourself, but here's the short version:  Over a 40 Day period (March 1- April 9), we're challenging ourselves to drink only water and keep track of what we would have spent on our usual beverages of choice.  At the end of 40 days, we'll pool the money we've saved by forgoing coffee, tea, soda, etc. and send it to Blood Water Mission to help provide clean water for people in Africa.

What will this do for them?

Every $1 we donate will provide clean drinking water for 1 African for an entire year.  (Yes, you read that right.)  Why is this important?

    * About 45% of Africans lack clean drinking water. That's approx. 311 million people.  The total current population of the US?  About 306 million. 

    * Every day in Africa, millions of parents are faced with this choice- Do I give my children tainted water and make them sick- or allow them to die of dehydration?

    * African women and children walk as many as 6 miles each day to fetch drinking water- which is often unsanitary. 

    * Sub-Saharan Africa has 10% of the world's population, but is home to 60% of the people on the planet living with HIV.

    * 15 million children are orphaned by HIV/AIDS each year.

    * Clean drinking water greatly improves the quality of life for everyone and extends the life expectancy for those living with HIV.

It's pretty easy to see why people who love Jesus would want to be involved with this kind of thing, huh?

What will this project do for us?

Or to put it another way, you might be thinking the same thing I did when I first heard about this: "I'm all for helping folks get clean water, but why should I forgo other beverages for 40 days to make it happen?  Can't I just drink what I want and still donate some cash?"  Yes- we absolutely can.  But I think we'll miss out on some real blessings and opportunities for God to stretch and change us.  Here are a few:

    * Self-Discipline.  Is that something you could use a bit more of?  I know I can.  Here's a chance for us to do some work in this area that has a direct impact on our spiritual lives. (Check out Luke 9:23-25.)

    * We are moving towards Easter.  For centuries, Christians have chosen to sacrifice things during this season (some call it Lent) to help them identify with their suffering Savior.  Maybe choosing to deny ourselves the daily pleasures of juice, coffee, soda, etc. will put us in a position to more fully appreciate Jesus' sacrifices for us and His victory over the grave.

    * Because He loves us, Jesus came to walk in our shoes.  He tells all who would follow Him to love each other, to weep with those who weep, and to carry each others' burdens.  By choosing to drink only water, we empathize in some small way with our neighbors in Africa who don't have the choices available to us.  Instead of just sending cash and continuing on with our day, we give ourselves opportunities to think of and pray for them.

Do we have to embrace a water-only beverage fast to be a part of this project?  Nope.  We can donate money and change others' lives regardless of what we choose to drink.  But if we want God to use the next 40 days to change US- we might want to give this a go.

OK, that's probably enough info for now.  We'll be talking more about the 40 Days of Water Challenge at this Sunday's (3/1) gathering.  Please join us if you are in town.

Until then, think and pray about being a part of this important project that will change lives- including ours.  And don't hesitate to holler if you've got questions.

Blessings,

Fred Turner

Lead Pastor

Connections Church

fred.turner@connectionschurch.ws

Our Advent Conspiracy: A Well for Liberia

Come be a part of this incredible Christmas gift! We're a part of the Advent Conspiracy, working with Living Water Carolinas to build a well in Liberia. Our team will go to Africa in February 2008, so we are working to get the money raised now. A small-capacity well costs about three thousand dollars to build. Our team also trains the people in the village to maintain and repair the pump system so that everything remains functional.

Checks can be made out to Connections Church, marked "For Liberia" and mailed to PO Box 4401, Cary, NC 27519-4401. Or get directions and join us here on Christmas Eve at 7 pm and bring your offering as we share in worship together.

Keeping the Back Door Open

by Lisa Creech Bledsoe

The more I place myself on common ground with people outside the church, the more our language inside the church strikes me as strange, or even scary. I was at a state conference of pastors and leaders and heard an entire presentation centered around churches working to "close the back door." When did the language of “closing the back door” show up in the church, and why? How did the notion of drawing people into our communities, and then locking all the exits, become standard operating procedure?

Does the church have something that we think might be stolen or vandalized? Is the effort to close the church’s back door driven by a desire to make sure the institution has enough captive workers to keep profit high, loss at a minimum, or to stay in operation?

On the church’s best day I think the phrase arises out of a desire to keep people from restlessly moving from one faith community to another, consuming the best of the buffet and never really experiencing spiritual growth or exercising their faith. But the simple fact is that the mission of the local church is not to perpetuate the institution, but to make disciples of Jesus (Matthew 28:19-20), even if those disciples never become attending, contributing members of that local church. When did we Jesus-followers decide that we would only take on God’s mission if there were a direct numerical benefit to the institution or the local congregation?

Recover the Mission
The way to retake this ground starts with a very simple idea: rather than continuing solely as a “come to us” institution, the church of Jesus Christ must also become a “go to them” people.
The reality is, people don't stay in one place as much as they used to. The back door to most churches is open whether we want it to be or not. So what does it look like to be a local church with an intentionally open back door? There are several keys to creating this kind of environment in our churches.

From NIMBY to Networks
Churches with a NIMBY, or “Not In My Back Yard” attitude, feel threatened that another church near them might “steal” members which they should be getting, or undercut program attendance by offering something better.

But one of the marvelous things about an open back door is that not only do we not feel threatened by other congregations doing Christ’s work around us, we don’t have to feel pressured into having something for everyone. Instead, we are freed to see other communities of faith as a tremendous resource, meaning we can have someone for everyone, even if that someone belongs to a different congregation.

All of the leaders in our congregation take off at least one Sunday every month. Once a month I worship or lead in another community of faith. Not only do I find this deeply refreshing, but it also means we are well-networked with other churches in our area. If you look out our back door, you will see a number of well-traveled paths between these churches, and we are all stronger because of it.

From Committees to Communities
Our church is also notable for the fact that we don’t have committees. What we have are communities – small relational networks or groups where the people are friends with each other, sometimes because of age and stage (new parents), a shared affinity (music), or even because they work for the same corporation. These communities are not only doing the work of leading the church in various areas, they also grow the church. The lead pastor or teacher is not the one responsible for “bringing in new families” or “doing the follow-up on visitors,” or even providing pastoral care for the entire congregation. Instead, a community will often make the connection with a visitor, naturally doing follow-up and giving care according to their ability.

Communities have permission to be on mission, and rarely need to “run anything by the pastor.” If an individual is struggling and sends out a cry for help, our first two questions are: With whom is this person connected? What does their community need to support him or her?

And because of our open back door, we might help someone who seems consistently at loose ends in our midst to comfortably follow the many tendrils we have connected with other communities of faith in order to find the experiences and relationships which will help them grow toward Christ.

From members to missionaries
Not incidentally, we also don’t have members. But we do have people on mission. When there are multiple entry and exit points to a community of faith, the people in the church have no trouble getting out on the field with Jesus. The whole body has a flowing, breathing feel.

In one new church plant I hired a worship leader who was also an incredible baseball coach with a gift for sharing Christ with the young boys on his teams. The teams he coached sometimes played on Sundays, and rather than condemning such a league (Have you done that before? I admit I have), or refusing to allow the worship leader to lead (Have you made 100% worship attendance mandatory for church leaders before? I admit I have), we made it our practice to “send out” our worship leader on a regular basis as a missionary to the ball field. The result was win-win: our worship team grew (it had to!), and the boys heard about Jesus.

Granted, this way of living with each other is necessarily messy and largely uncontrolled, and it certainly takes work and struggle. Our church looks more like a herd of cats than a well-oiled machine. But because we try to keep so many doors and windows open, we end up with lots of growing edges!

Christ called us to gather, and we do need some definition and boundaries. Not all structure is bad. But a structure that seeks to constrict and control by closing and locking all exits may be courting disaster. Instead, throw open a window or two. Hang around a church's open back door; you may be surprised at the Friend you meet there.