Here is the information to sign-up online for the 2011 Illinois Marathon Hydration Station @ mile 19.1 and below are a few details on what will happen race day. Volunteers receive a t-shirt, a string bag and a chance to serve our community and visitors from all over the country.
It’s quick and easy, just click this link: Illinois Marathon Volunteer Sign-up, select “Grace Community Church” for the Group Name, and enter the password: findinggrace11
You will be asked to fill out a form, including shirt size, and that’s it! You will receive a confirmation e-mail after signing up. Everyone needs to sign up individually, this lets the marathon organizers know that our Hydration Station will be fully staffed and makes sure you get a t-shirt in the correct size : )
Some details…
The Illinois Marathon is Saturday April 30th, 2011. Grace Community Church volunteers set up and work the Hydration Station at mile 19.1. Our job is to hand out cups of Gatorade, bottled water and cheer and encourage the runners - as loud as we can! We are at the same site as last year, the northwest corner of the Kirby & Duncan intersection. The full marathon starts a half hour earlier than last year. We should see our first runner at 8:40-8:45 and the last one somewhere around 11:45. The crazy busy time will be about 9:15-10:45 and we should be cleaned up and done by 12:30. If your schedule is tight and you are able to help during the busy time (9:15-10:45), that would be great. We will need some people to come early to setup (scaffolding, sound system, tables, mix Gatorade, etc), so let me know if you can do this (~7:30am).
If you have any questions, let me know. That’s about it. Sign-up, it will be a blast!!
Yesterday, Grace Community Church began a 21 day fast. As a church, and as the individuals that make up the church, we want to seek God whole-heartedly to start off 2011. It has been so encouraging to see so many people in our church making that commitment to spend 21 days praying and fasting. There are some who are doing the Daniel Fast, others are fasting from Technology, and even others are fasting from the things in their life that divide their heart from God. Even those who are not participating in the fast are examining their lives and making changes to seek God. This is a HUGE deal!
God we ask that You would move in our lives, our church, our community in big and mighty ways. God we seek You first and ask that Your glory would shine all around us. Bless us with Your presence…
Join us at Grace Community to begin the year seeking God and His vision for 2011. Click the link for our 21 Day Fast Facebook event to join the conversation and follow us on our journey.
This has been a great Christmas season for me as we’ve been engaging in the Advent Conspiracy. It has been refreshing for me to regain focus on the magnitude of what it means for God to come to earth as a human so that we could be redeemed and have connection with him. That amazing love changes everything about how I love my family, my friends, and everyone around me. It changes how I give and how I receive. I pray that we would all be overwhelmed this Christmas as we see God’s love that came for us so long ago and continues to pour over us today. I pray that same love will flow out of us to the hurting around us and change everything.
Next Sunday marks the beginning of Advent. I am particularly excited about Advent this year because at Grace we will be observing advent through the lens of Advent Conspiracy.
Christmas is a time when we celebrate when Jesus came into the world. God sent Jesus to earth…and everything changed. At Grace we are partnering with Advent Conspiracy because we believe that Christmas can still change the world. Taking part in Advent Conspiracy is making choices to celebrate Christmas by spending less, giving more, worshipping fully and loving all.
Christmas is my favorite time of the year. I look forward to it (and am already enjoying Christmas music and those cheesy movies on the Hallmark channel) all year long. Despite my love for this season, the last several years it has become more and more about giving/receiving and less and less about celebrating God’s Son who was sent to this earth as a baby to give us hope and abundant life. My goal this year is to make small changes that will make a big impact. I want to live like Jesus and love like Jesus this holiday season. The key word that I am using is, “Intentional.” Gift giving will be intentional. Less about presents and more about presence. How can I give my time/talent/resources? How can God use me in the life of a neighbor/friend/co-worker? It has been an eye-opening experience to begin paying attention to the needs of those around me. Maybe the biggest gift in someone’s life is not that hat they will never wear, but a cup of coffee and conversation? I am sure that I will buy a couple of gifts for people this year, but when I do…I want to be intentional.
Advent Conspiracy is bigger than just saving money! Our lives have been forever changed by a baby in a manger. During this Holiday season, we should be living in a way that reflects that change.
What does God want to show us this Christmas? What if this Christmas our family traditions helped change the world?
The last two days as I’ve opened my browser a very intriguing thing has been happening. Yesterday a site that normally has lots of various information had a simple full page white background and the line “Tomorrow is just another day” faded in with simple black letters followed by another line fading in saying “you’ll never forget.” That was it. I was excited but I didn’t know why. Something was going to happen the next day that I would never forget and I should be excited about it! As I opened my browser this morning the same simple white background had a black and white photo of four very famous rockstars and the announcement in that same simple text “The Beatles. Now on iTunes.” BAM! (I added the bam) You were struck by the simple statement presented as a plain fact that your world has changed because you could now purchase music through iTunes made by this band.
I have nothing against the “Fab 4″ and enjoy a lot of their music but I don’t know if I could call myself a Beatlemaniac. However, I was side-tracked before I could navigate away from that page and the longer those four stood there staring at me, telling me how excited I should be, I got a little giddy, even texted a couple of friends about the announcement. How amazing is it that a simple message like this would change my behavior with such seemingly little effort. This lead me to wonder, how many messages do I change for every day and don’t even realize?
Proverbs 5:1-6 shows a warning of a parent to their child to “observe discretion” because “the lips of an adulteress drip honey and smoother than oil is her speech; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood”. Couldn’t the same be said about the world today? We have so many smooth and sweet messages that seem so right, but in the end don’t really fulfill us at all and in fact sometimes can lead us to very harmful decisions. So what do we do? Proverbs would say to seek wisdom, gain understanding, and guard our hearts. The great thing about messages is that when we listen to the right source, we find life. I love the picture in Isaiah 30:21 as the prophet tells the people, “Your ears will hear a word behind you saying, ‘this is the way, walk in it,’ whenever you turn to the right or to the left.”
I’m so blessed to have such a wonderful wife who encourages me and builds my faith. As we’ve been really seeking God’s wisdom and direction in our life I asked her to pray for me that I would not feel overwhelmed and that God would give us clarity and vision. She shared this verse with me and I want to share it with you as an encouragement to your faith that God has not left us without hope or guidance but has given us His spirit as a source of strength, faith, and direction.
2 And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.3 And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear - Isaiah 11:2-3
Whatever you are facing in life now, I pray that you would find encouragement, faith, wisdom, and boldness to live from the Spirit of the Lord.
All week I have been planning on how to implant the boys’ memory verse into their minds and hearts. I had great intentions. So last night I brought the subject up with my 8 yr old and the conversation went something like this: Me- “Do you remember any of your memory verse from church?” Him - “no” Me - “you know it starts with ‘Though one…” Him - nothing, as in radio silence, no utterance or obvious realization that I was still talking to him. Ok, that is not how I pictured this going, how am I going to get his attention? I had no idea, until this morning. I got up a bit earlier then everyone else and sat thinking and praying on the couch and God whispered to me “make good on your good intentions”. When my 8 yr old came out and sat down on the couch by my feet I asked him if he remembered the verse and again he said no. But this time in the quiet I was able to capture that moment and not only help him realize that he did indeed remember it and praise him for doing so, but I got to then go on and talk with him about how to apply the verse to his every day life. In the time we were talking my 6 yr old got up and when my older son and I couldn’t remember a part of the verse we asked my younger son if he remembered and then praise him for his help and great memory. All three of us discussed how we can apply the verse to our lives. What a blessed way to start the day!
Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12
Growing up in a rural town going to fairly traditional churches I spent a lot of time singing old hymns (I’ve never understood the silent “n”) and I remember one in particular that begins with the line, “I heard an old, old story, how a savior came from glory” and goes on to speak of our “Victory in Jesus” (also the name of the hymn). So is this a blog about the value of hymns? No, it’s about the amazing power that lives in stories. Stories were the primary form of education long before schools were invented as the entire history of civilizations were passed from one generation to another as children sat at the feet of the parents and grandparents hearing stories. It is the story that brings us all together to learn about and celebrate our collective history.
The great thing about stories is that we all have one too, and it’s alive, and it’s uniquely ours, and we have the opportunity to live a new chapter in it each day as we join God in the creation of the story of our lives. It’s so great too that our stories connect with the stories all around us and sometimes we even get to have stories WITH others. This makes me excited. Why? Because I know that this means that the greatest part of my story and I believe even of OUR story as Grace is yet to come. Don’t get me wrong, we have some outstanding stories from times past, but I believe that God has even more in store and is doing more even as I write this as we have folks creating stories in Haiti, doing church online, doing church at Watterson Court, doing life all around town (which some could argue is not much different than doing church), and who knows where all we will do church in the days to come! Yeah, we have some great stories.
So, in honor of our stories I would like to hear from you. What is one of your favorite stories about Grace Community and your life? And/or what are you most excited about as a future story line?
Grace Community Church is taking October 10th and having a day of service “Don’t Go to Church be The Church”. I have the privilege of contacting some of the folks who the church will be serving on October 10th. The purpose of this day is to “serve without agenda”, Grace Community believes that Jesus in and through the church (which is people) should make the community a better place. I just left one of the homes that needs some yard work and general cleanup. The lady I talked with, who might be the sweetest person ever, told me that when our leadership came to lunch at the senior center and volunteered to do “anything that need to be done” she went home in tears. Her husband is not in good health and things are starting to pile up. As I talked with her she said the most precious life-giving thing to me. We were talking about the different things the volunteers could get accomplished when she stopped me and spoke with passion and hope, “you know Jerris, when the church serves the community in this way I believe it makes Jesus smile”…..tears….. hugs. I can’t think of a better way to spend Sunday, October 10th then doing something that makes Jesus smile.
Have you ever wanted to have a worldwide impact? Sounds ambitious, grand, and exhausting to me at times. But I’m learning that with God all things are possible, and they’re not always difficult. Just last night a team of 6 of us from Grace Community and a former Gracer in North Carolina were able to minister to over 100 people from 46 different countries including:
American Samoa, Argentina, Asia/Pacific Region, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Finland, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Korea, Republic of, Malaysia, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Russian Federation, Senegal, Singapore, Slovakia, Sudan, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Yugoslavia, Zaire.
That’s pretty amazing and honestly a lot of fun. While I love the staggering numbers that we see come out of the ministry of Church Online what really gets me are the stories of individuals and families who are changed forever because of God’s intervention in their lives.
One of those moments happened for our team last night as a young man came into the chat stating that he wanted to become a follower of Christ. He had been trying to chat with Jerris in the Live Prayer but was having technical difficulties and finally said something in the main public chat. We were excited to talk to him about his relationship with Christ and he professed his faith in Christ with all of the chat participants there to celebrate. THAT WAS COOL, but it gets even better. His sister came into the chat later celebrating and saying that her brother was so excited calling all of his friends. Then she told us how she had been in a place in her faith weeks ago where she felt as though she had fallen away from God and that he would not take her back. She came to church online and was encouraged through a live prayer chat that she was still and would always be loved by God. That prayer time encouraged her to then minister to her two brothers, one of whom had become a Christ-follower shortly after that time and the one who gave his life to Jesus in the chat last night! You never know what impact a simple chat or spending time to speak words of life and encouragement to a person will have.
I pray that as you go, you will be filled with the love of God in such a way that you will be able to minister to everyone you come in contact with. I pray that God will show you the opportunities in front of you to have tremendous impact on the lives of people you may never know.
