Rain couldn't stop our Big Church Party on Sunday, December 4. We just moved the festivities indoors and celebrated the holiday season in closer quarters. Below are highlights from the evening, which included the "Wrapping All the Way" children's musical.

This fall CCC launched Empowered to Foster, a ministry designed to support foster care families and raise up new ones at CCC and in our local community. The idea is to help families navigate the challenges of foster care by providing meals, assisting with transportation, performing household chores and much more.

About the same time we began to call for volunteers, Christal and Mark Gavin began attending CCC and heard about Empowered to Foster. Here we'll let Christal pick up the story, as shared in an email to Misty Faircloth, who is helping head up the new initiative.

Just wanted to touch base with you and tell you thanks for the work you're doing with the foster ministry. 
 
My husband and I talked about fostering children, even while we were dating. And over the years (we've been married 15 years) we've continued to talk about it. 
 
He's active duty military and we moved here, with our three kids, over the summer. We had a feeling that God had something specific planned for us here. But we didn't know what. 
 
I felt strongly that I wasn't to go back to work and that I was to limit my volunteer ministries. We also have a spare room that we felt we were supposed to leave empty for the time being. 
 
After hearing you speak about the foster crisis in Muscogee County a few weeks back, we decided to pray more seriously about whether God wanted us to pursue becoming foster parents. 
 
I shared all the info from [the initial October Empowered to Foster] meeting with my husband, and it just confirmed what we had both been feeling: Absolute peace with beginning  the process of becoming foster parents. 
 
We're excited about how seamlessly God seems to be guiding our steps. We appreciate you being open to his call to raise up awareness and begin this ministry.
 
We look forward to seeing his hand continue to move. 

Christal is blogging about her and Mark's journey through the foster experience. Follow her at ourfosterstoryblog.wordpress.com/blog. If you would like to get involved with Empowered to Foster at CCC, email Misty Faircloth at pmfair@yahoo.com.

Brandon Branigan is Outreach Coach for CCC's ARISE Young Adults ministry. He led a mission team to Detroit in July and shares some of the group's experiences here.

“When you keep saying somebody ought to do something creative here, helping the people, and no one else steps up to the challenge, you find out quickly that God is calling you to do it.”

These were the words of Mark Cryderman, lead pastor of The Harbor, a church that has dug its roots in Detroit without a building. After years of pastoring traditional churches in the Detroit/Taylor County Area, Pastor Mark and his wife, Marry, felt called to do something different.

An old school building that belonged to the Detroit Free Methodist Conference was not being used at the time. The idea developed to use it for Sunday brunch services – a gathering that would include breakfast with less-fortunate people in the area, arts and recreation for children, short messages for the kids and adults, and a discussion around the dining table.

A couple of years into this outreach, Mark and Marry noticed that Sundays were not the most popular day in the area for spending time in fellowship and worship. This was when they first felt the call to bring church into the local communities during the week and do church without a building. They realized the people did not need to come to them; they needed to go to the people.

After months of prayer and preparation, a series of weekday dinner services was launched this summer. Our team of 11 from CCC got to participate and lead in these services during the week of July 24-29. When we arrived in Detroit, we shared our plan for arts and recreation with Mark and Marry, and we were delighted to see their joy and their trust in us to lead that effort.

We served in a community center for children/students, a church and a community park. The first day of ministry was long, but filled with joy. We provided games for the children, such as transferring water from one bucket to another with a sponge and “walking the plank.” Our theme for the week was pirates, and one of our members, Tyler Pierce, did an amazing job acting this out.

We could tell that many of the kids had never experienced this type of love before, and often they would latch on to us, which brought great joy. I was blessed to connect with two boys and speak life into them, which I could tell was very important to them. Near the end of the day we shared a meal with the parents and were instructed to lead the discussion at the dinner tables, as well as pray over each parent.

Another team member, Josh Heath, connected with a man so strongly that they exchanged contact information and vowed to keep in touch. There was a moment in which I looked up to see each team member praying over multiple people in the room – what an amazing sight! 

Our last day of ministry was the most blessed for many of us. The plan was to spend an entire day in Detroit sightseeing and having fun, but the Lord had another plan. Mark and Marry had connected with a barber in Detroit weeks ago, a man who had built a community park across from his shop as a way to bring positive influence to the area. It just so happened that on that Wednesday morning, they ran into the barber again and they all agreed to do dinner church that day.

We got to witness the first day of a dinner church plant in Detroit! Upon arrival in the park, Josh fired up the grill, Camille prepped the food service station, Florence found a lady to minister to, and all of us spread out to meet the people and spend time in fellowship. Once again, connections were made and long conversations held. We all walked away that night fully convinced that Detroit is not a lost cause, as the media often portrays it, and that God has a huge heart for this city.

Another memorable aspect of the trip was that we got to see something unique in the city every day. Pastor Mark wanted us to walk away saying Detroit is a great city, and he did a great job arranging these excursions, which included a trip to Mexican Town, a visit to the Detroit Museum, a great deep dish pizza place, and a walk along the river where we could see Canada!

The team ended the week with a trip to Cedar Point, Ohio, a theme park with some of the best rides in the U.S.
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Our team is so thankful for their heart and the fruit we got to witness this summer. Clearly God is up to something huge in Detroit, and it is a great place to experience.

​Anja Staten is Executive Assistant to the Senior Leadership Team at Christ Community Church, and a member of the planning team for Converge 2:14. Here she shares her heart – and our collective heart at CCC – for the conference.
 
Our dream for Converge 2:14 is to gather the people of God from their scattered places in our region and converge in one place with the purpose of exploring the promises of Ephesians 2:14 – unified peace in Christ Jesus.
 
Some of us are still wrestling with why we need diversity. We are reaching the lost and seeing people commit their lives to Jesus, but the faces around our dinner tables and in our churches look like our own. Aiming for diversity can feel awkward, out of our comfort zone, and artificial. There can be underlying feelings of racial guilt or even frustration that this still seems to be an issue.
 
For this group, we will have a conversation centered around what we believe the Bible teaches about diversity – that it is good, even vital, for the health of any church. We will talk about the consequences of “separate but equal,” and lay a Biblical foundation for this as a social justice issue. It is our hope that those wrestling with this would leave with a desire and hunger to converge.
 
Some of us are already convinced that we need diversity. We desire it, but we are having a hard time living out this value. Our Facebook friends and dinner guests tend to look like us.
 
For this group, we will have a conversation about what has worked in various community contexts. There will be personal stories of hardship and triumph. There will be practical breakout sessions detailing current ministries. It’s our hope to draw as much diversity as we can to this conference, and hope that people not currently engaging in life together can continue to converge.
 
Some of us are already living a diverse life. Our Facebook friends and dinner tables reflect diversity. We know the challenges and advantages of opening our lives to people who don’t look like us. In this process, hurts and challenges can cause us to retreat to our comfort zones. New challenges arise we have never encountered.
 
For this group, we will have a conversation about how to maintain this openness and expand it into more areas of our lives. We will provide opportunities to continue to converge.
 
There is intrinsic value in these conversations. There is even more value in moving from these conversations to concrete actions. Our desire is to converge around the richness of the unified, diverse and abundant life that Jesus Christ died to purchase for us, and before a watching world, to be living epistles reflecting the beauty, power and peace of lives and communities that, empowered by the Prince of Peace, are Separate No More.
 
Our dream is to see this conversation result in opportunities to continue to converge:

• city-wide service projects
• neighborhood tours
• collaborative worship projects
• shared resources
• prayer groups and vigils
• workshops

 
We need your voice in this conversation.
 
Come to Converge 2:14!

A building is not a church. But a church can meet in a building. It can also leave that building, as the CCC family did on the weekend of March 15-16.  Weeks prior to our Church Has Left the Building outreach, Mason Stewart, CCC’s Director of Young Adults, penned a beautiful meditation on what Christ has done for us, and what we are called to do in response. 

"The apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people. And all the believers used to meet together in Solomon's Colonnade. No one else dared join them, even though they were highly regarded by the people. Nevertheless, more and more men and women believed in the Lord and were added to their number. As a result, people brought the sick into the streets and laid them on beds and mats so that as least Peter's shadow might fall on some of them as he passed by. Crowds gathered also from the towns around Jerusalem,bringing their sick and those tormented by evil spirits, and all of them were healed" (Acts 5:12-16).

It was a new age. The Son of God had come, ripped open the curtain and exposed the Holy of Holies to fisherman, tax collectors, and prostitutes. And so the Church left the building.

The Spirit of God, no longer bound, came roaring out of His cave, like a bear in mid-spring, searching for a new dwelling. He found it in men and women. And so the Church left the building.

When the Spirit of God left that ancient temple – left it weatherworn and crumbling in some places – ritual, empty ritual, came in and took His place. And so the Church left the building.

The vanity of man, flaunted itself from a safe distance through the protection of those four walls. But the people stopped paying attention. They had seen something that was truly captivating. It was true power. It was true love. The Creator met the created out on that front porch. And so the Church had left the building.

The prideful were on the inside; the humble and hungry were on the outside. The need-met served themselves, while the needy served each other. The people. The broken. The sick.

And the oppressed were on the outside. And so the Spirit and His Church left the building. The Son of God left heaven. He's come to you. He's healed you. He drew you near to Himself and He whispered in your ear, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

He gave all that He had in Him – every last drop of blood – for the harassed and helpless, for His sheep who had no shepherd.

He asks you, "Do you love me? Feed my lambs."

He asks you, "Do you love me? Take care of my sheep."

He asks, "Do you love me? Will you, too, leave that building?