Hey RiverChurch family
Can you believe it’s almost time for us to celebrate our first Easter together?
We hope you’ll invite all your friends to come celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ with us on Sunday, April 4th at 10am.
More information to follow about the weekend’s events
Hey RiverChurch folks – Daylight Savings Time starts THIS weekend!! So make sure that you set your clocks FORWARD one hour. If you don’t you’ll show up an hour after we’ve already started, and you don’t want to miss the last week of “The Loser”
We’ll see you there @ 10
One of my “bucket list” items in life is to set sail on a sail boat one day. I know that doesn’t seem like an ambitious dream to some people especially if you’ve had the privilege of sailing before. But for me its truly a dream.
I don’t know much about sailing. I know the conditions certainly have to be perfect, and I know that there is a great deal of preparation in making sure the sails are set just right before launching out to sea. I think I would enjoy the preparation part, but the part I would enjoy most, which is what I presume most “sailors” would say is their favorite part is when the wind hits those sails and the boat truly launches. I imagine there is no more breathtaking feeling to stand below massive cloth panels with wind and to glide across the water.
Another item on my “bucket list” was to plant a church. A life giving church that was committed to truly being the church that Jesus created during his time on earth. After nearly six months of preparation, last week we finally raised the sails, and launched RiverChurch officially out into the city of Chattanooga.
Now if you’re a church planter reading this, when I say the word “launch” you will certainly have a prescribed set of images that may run through your head. At least images of what you’ve heard a church plant launch should be like:
An energetic worship service, with lights, smoke machines, a rockin band of 20 somethings in Aerropostle shirts and pointy shoes, nifty giveaways for the guests, all preceded by a huge community wide marketing blitz letting people that your church, a different church from the other 50,000 in your city, is coming and its “gonna be cooler than all the others.”
Well the launch of RiverChurch was probably nothing close to that. We did the community blitz a week before, just letting people know we were new to the neighborhood and would love to get to know them. We left them a couple pieces of candy, with the expressed wish that we could find a way to make their lives a little sweeter, (cheesy? Maybe. Effective? Likely.)
I can tell you more about the specific details of our launch, but let it suffice for me to say that the launch of RiverChurch was certainly not textbook. In fact, one friend told me sometime ago that I was going about this whole churchplanting thing in a very unconventional way. That bothered me at first, but I’m cool with it now.
No, our launch Sunday was primarily attended by the 25-30 people that had comprised our launch team and then about twice as many guests and people who were meeting us for the very first time.
Launch Sunday for RiverChurch was more about launching our individual lives into our own worlds, fulfilling the Great Commission. It was kind of like untying the ropes of multiple sailboats, and launching them out into the spiritual waters of our city, rather than one large mother ship. That day we focused on the fact that we’ve been called to make disciples and in fulfilling that Commission we will find our purpose.
For those who were new to our gatherings, which had been in existence for several months before, we invited them to become a follower of Christ, if they weren’t one, and challenged them to set sail as well, living a life as a disciple who makes disciples.
It was an exciting day. It was a cold day. Two days prior snow and ice fell on our community, forcing nearly every other church in the city to cancel services or meet at an alternative time. But for us launch Sunday was as much about a community of faith recommitting to be launched back out in a cold world that needs our light, as it was about opening our doors, and flipping on the neon lights that would say, “Yes, We’re Open”
Unless you follow us on Facebook, or twitter, our launch may have come and gone, and you may have never felt a tremor effect from it. But that’s okay. Last Sunday was launch Sunday for RiverChurch, Last Sunday a fleet of disciples were launched into their community for the purpose of making disciples, guided by the principles of loving God & loving others. And as unconventional as it was, I believe Chattanooga will never be the same again.
As 2009 comes to an end we’re looking back over the last half of the year and reflecting on some great memories. Our official launch is just around the corner, but we’ve been building momentum since the middle of the year. We joined with other churches in the community in filling and distributing backpacks. We partnered with a local elementary school that needed some fixing up on the outside and gave away hundreds of library books to other elementary schools in the area.
Our first official community impact event, City On A Hill, was a hit.
Thanksgiving brought us the opportunity to provide several families with full thanksgiving meals, complete with frozen turkeys, dressing, vegetables and even dessert.
A couple of weeks later we invited some families to join us for a special Birthday Celebration for Jesus, and sent Christmas gifts home with them for their kids to open on Christmas morning.
If 2010 looks anything like the last half of 2009, then its going to be a great year for RiverChurch. Check out some of our memories here:
Tomorrow is a big day for the folks of RiverChurch.
At 8:30 we’ll be working at Hillcrest Elementary School for our second Help Hillcrest Day. Last time we did some sprucing up on the outside of the building, and we’ll continue where we left off this Saturday with painting some of the railing along the sidewalks as well as clearing out trash and overgrown bushes that have confiscated some valuable parking area. We’ve even got a few projects on the inside as well. We’re really excited about supporting this school within our community, and they seem excited to have us around to support them as well.
Then Saturday night we’ll be pulling together the people who have committed to help get RiverChurch off the ground for a RE/GROUP Meeting. We’ll be talking about the Vision of RiverChurch, and how the Launch Team members see themselves fitting into that vision. We’ll be making plans for our official launch in January as well as talking about some other great stuff coming up this year. This meeting will follow our normal time of Saturday night worship together, only I MAY teach a shorter sermon, we’re still not sure that’s even possible. :)
At any rate its going to be a great day. So if you’ve been wanting to partner with RiverChurch or just come along and help us out a little, we’d love to have you at either of these important events.
We’ll see you there.
RiverChurch kicked off our weekend worship experiences this past Saturday night, and what a GREAT night it was. Our weekend services will provide us the opportunity to grow together as a true community: worshiping together, and growing together in the Word. We are using this time to develop avenues of ministry into the city of Chattanooga, as well as initiatives within our faith community. Over the next 4-5 months we will be further developing our launch team, gearing up for our “Going Public” phase in January 2010. If you live locally and would like to help us we would love for you to join us on Saturday nights. Here are some other great opportunities to join us THIS WEEK:
- Hamilton County High School Prayer Walk – We’ll be gathering at Central High School tonight, Tuesday 8.18 at 7p to pray for our local High School.
- Help Hillcrest Day – We’re going to be working around the grounds of the Hillcrest Elementary School, cleaning, raking, painting, repairing windows, etc. We would love for you to join us as we help spruce up this local elementary school. We’ll be getting together at 8:22 on Saturday 8.22. Hillcrest is just off of Highway 153 exit 5B. After you get off of the Highway you’ll see the school up on the hill to your left.
Directions to RiverChurch @Fifty Eight Commons:
Highway 153 to exit 5A.
At the first traffic light turn left.
The Fifty Eight Commons will be on the immediate right.
The Fifty Eight Common sits between the Exxon station on the left and Sonic Drive-In on the right.
Enter the building at the front middle entrance down the hall to suite 103.
. . . because RiverChurch is coming!!!!!!!
Saturday night is our very first service and we would love to have you join us. We’ll meet at 6p at the Fifty Eight Commons. We’ll worship together, spend some time in the Word, and even offer a special time for kids ministry as well.
Dress is casual, so come and celebrate with us.
Can’t wait to see you there.
ed Letter Days are important days, special days, days where memories will be made. And RiverChurch has a few Red Letter Days coming up in August. Make sure you mark these dates on your calendar (preferrably in red ink.)
August 1 – Backpack Preparation Day We’ll be joining the people at Mt. Canaan Baptist Church to stuff backpacks for The Nehemiah Project. We’re so excited to be involved in this. It’ll start Saturday morning from 9-4 Make sure you plan to be there and go ahead and make plans to help us hand out backpacks on August 13 as well.
August 2 - Launch Team Meeting - If you are interested in helping us plan for our upcoming Saturday Night Services. Make sure you plan to meet us here at 6p. This is gonna be a fun night!!!! Promise!
August 9 – Vision Meeting – This is going to be a great time to meet the pastor and launch team of RiverChurch, and to hear about our upcoming weekend worship experiences, as well as the ministry opportunities in which we will be involved. If you’ve thought about checking us out, or just been a little curious, this would be a great tiime to come hang with us. Rumor has it there will be food there too. 6p at the Tennessee Riverpark Pavillion.
August 15 – Weekend Worship Experience – We’re so excited about this we can hardly wait. This will be the first of our Saturday night worship experiences. A great time to come together to worship and to spend some time together in the word with some teaching from Pastor Shannon. While the location is TBD, (we’ll post that soon) we’ll start at 6p. Can’t wait to see you there.
So here are some of our Red Letter Days, hope you can experience them with us.
We’ve officially be on the ground for a little over a month in Chattanooga. Since we’ve been here, we’ve had our second vision meeting, started our first small group/prayer meeting, and started a lot of new relationships with people here in the community.
While things have been challenging on the personal front for us; things seem to be moving full steam ahead for RiverChurch Chattanooga.
With these positive signs of moving forward we are met with new challenges and questions to be answered. The biggest one I’m praying about right now, is when to start meeting on the weekends, and when on the weekends should we meet. We have had a significant number of people express genuine interest in being part of RiverChurch but there Monday through Friday work schedules make it difficult for them to meet with us during the week. If we could meet on the weekend, we potentially have over 60 people who have said “We’d definitely be interested in being part of your church.” That’s a pretty good sized launch team. I really think God is giving me some direction about the when to meet issue. It could possibly be how we meet for a long time. It would be a significant deviation from what’s typical in this particular area, but I have a strong sense it may work. I also believe meeting at the time I’m feeling like we’re supposed to meet will significantly contribute to our ability to fulfill the vision God has given us as a church to make a lasting impact in our community.
Meeting time is a big issue, but meeting location is even bigger. There is a place that I’ve been looking at since we’ve been in town. I’ve driven through the parking lot almost weekly, praying that if this is the place God wants us to meet to please open the door for us to meet there. It has extremely long term potential for us, as it sits right in the middle of our target area of Chattanooga. I called the guy who owns it yesterday, and he’s only interested in selling it. But he agreed to meet with me and a couple of our board members tomorrow, yeah tomorrow (Friday June26). So I’m a little jittery about that. We can’t buy it, but like I said I really feel a connection to this place and believe this could be where God wants us. If it is, He’ll work something out.
One big piece that I feel like we need to be developing is our worship time. Especially when we begin to meet on the weekends. So, I’m praying that God will direct us as it relates to a worship leader. I’ve talked to a couple people and we’re waiting to see what God will do now.
So that’s an update on where we are. If you’re interested in knowing more about RiverChurch please shoot us an email at riverchurchchatt@gmail.com.
Last week we started looking at what the Bible says about Prayer. In our discussion we gained a better understanding that prayer is our way of having conversation with God. Conversation, not a monologue.
We’re continuing the “Prayer Is. . . ” study, this week as we look at the fact that prayer is an act of faith. As I’ve been studying this thought today I’ve reflected over some of the prayers I’ve prayed that I distinctly remember God answering. Prayers of provision. Prayers of healing. Prayers of wisdom, guidance, peace.
Do you remember a specific prayer that you have prayed that God has answered? Tell me about it:
