Note from Chuck
Hello Crossbridge!
It is 2012! That seems so weird to me. It’s like we are in the future! Where is my flying car and jet pack?! I hope you had a great Christmas and brought the New Year in with a great celebration. My oldest had her birthday on New Year’s so I rang in the new year by becoming the parent of a teenager! Oh Mylanta that makes me feel old! Whenever I say something like that my wife rolls her eyes and parents of older kids say something like, “Just wait”, like they know something about a coming apocalypse or something. It is how I feel though.
This Sunday we will be back to our regular Sunday schedule. So now that you have traveled and had your fill of the family and have spent too much money on Christmas let’s recalibrate our hearts by coming together as the people of God to proclaim the praise of Christ and hear the word of God. I’m excited to preach from a passage that God has put on my heart for you and hear what He has to say to us.
If you haven’t started already let me encourage you to join me in reading through the Bible this year. I am using the “YouVersion” app on my ipad and iphone for this. I have chosen the ESV Study Bible reading plan to read through. We will have a hard copy of this plan available this Sunday in an updated version of our Road Guide. If you are new, the Road Guide has multiple Bible reading plans in it and gives you a simple way to chew on what you read in the text and have a conversation with God about it. You can grab a Road Guide at the information table this Sunday!
I look forward to seeing you Sunday!
Chuck
Words from Chuck
Dear Crossbridge,
I want to tell you how thankful I am for your generous hearts! You did a marvelous job on the Christmas Toy Drive this year! Those toys will go to My Brother’s Keeper Outreach who this year is serving over 1000 families with their Christmas outreach! Through your generosity and the partnership of other local churches we are able to bless many families who are in need.
As the year is winding down I wanted to remind you that all financial gifts have to be turned in or postmarked by 12-31 for you to receive tax credit. As you are thinking of being generous this year I would ask for you to consider our Advent Offering. We are seeking to raise money to put toward a fresh water well with Living Water International (water.cc), gather scholarship money for 2012′s youth and children’s camp and build our benevolence fund so that that we might continue to bless those in need. Be sure to mark your checks “Advent Offering” so that we are aware of your desires.
One more thing for you to consider is giving extra toward our general operating fund as we are absorbing our building debt into it. Extra given towards that will help us pay off that debt as soon as possible.
Also a quick reminder of our upcoming gathering schedule, as this Sunday will be our last regular worship gathering of 2011. We will gather to light the candle of joy and finish our reflection on Isaiah 9:6. Our Christmas Eve services will be at 5:00 and 6:30 p.m. I hope you are taking the time to invite people to join us for these services. We will not have services on Christmas Day and we will only have 1 family worship service on January 1st at 10:00 a.m. Our regular Sunday service schedule will resume January 8th!
Waiting for Him with you.
Chuck
Living with Financial Wisdom
“Honor the Lord with your wealth…” Proverbs 3:9
This week in our PROVERBIA series we talked about what Proverbs said about living with financial wisdom. We wanted to point you to some resources that might be helpful as you seek to put into practice the things we talked about Sunday.
www.daveramsey.com : Dave Ramsey is the author of Financial Peace University. His biblically based financial planning has helped tons of people!
www.mint.com: A helpful tool to get organized financially.
www.ronblue.com : Christian Financial Counselors.
Books by Randy Alcorn:
Randy Alcorn has written some GREAT books on the theology of giving and financial stewardship. Any one of his books would be helpful to you.
Money, Possession and Eternity (This is Chuck’s personal favorite)
The Power of an Invitation
A couple of weeks ago I got to be the best man at my cousin’s wedding. At the rehearsal dinner there was a time for people to share stories about the couple, so I shared a story about my cousin. I spoke for a couple of minutes about our childhood, how meticulous he eats a snickers bar (you have never seen anything like it!), and then I shared how God used my cousin to change the course of my very life. You see my cousin was the one that invited me to church. He invited me to summer camps, lock-ins, youth group stuff, and of course church on Sundays. I went to the fun stuff but held back for a while on the Sunday church thing. After a while though I said yes and went to the church. I was so surprised by what I experienced: friendly people who were normal, teaching from the Bible that I understood and helped me see God in a new way.
The Holy Spirit used all this to open my life to Jesus and at a summer camp I surrendered to His call to come and follow Him. And it all started with an invitation.
Over the next few weeks we have some opportunities to leverage the power of the invitation to people we care about and need to be introduced to Jesus. God can use your invitation to literally change someone’s eternal destiny, like He did mine.
Would you pray and then take a step of faith and invite a friend who needs Jesus to one of the our upcoming events . . .
1. Spectrum Art Show
- This is our second Spectrum Art Show. It is an art show designed to be a gift to our community by providing local artists a place to show their God-given talent. This is not a church service nor will there be a Gospel presentation but this event might be a good step for some of your friends who aren’t ready for a Sunday Service yet.
- It is Friday October 14, 6-10PM, here at 1049 Eldridge.
2. Ladies Retreat
- Ladies take advantage of this weekend getaway to invite a friend who needs to hear the Gospel and be introduced to a loving community of regular people. Let me encourage you to focus on people who are not connected to Jesus or to a local church at this time. We love other Christians of course and the other churches in our area but our mission is not to be a vendor of religious goods and services to all Christians in the area but to create gospel environments for the people we have been entrusted with and those outside the faith we want to see saved.
- The retreat dates are, November 10-12, and you can learn more by going here.
3. Patties and Pies on the Porch – Sunday November 6!
- That’s right we will have our 2nd Annual (is it annual if you only have done 2?) Patties and Pies on the Porch! On time change Sunday (the good one with more sleep) after each service we will enjoy some yummy burgers on our front porch and some of the best pies in the city made by you! You can sign-up to bring a pie on Sundays using your Connect Card.
- Our Porch Sundays are great times to invite someone new to discover what God is doing at Crossbridge.
The power of invitation is amazing. Leverage it for His glory and our friends’ joy!
Inviting with you!
Chuck
Words from Chuck
Dear Crossbridge Family,
Sunday I announced at the end of our Worship Gatherings that we had raised $150,000 toward our debt retirement! We are praising God for His provision and the sacrificial giving of many of you. While this does not retire the debt completely, the Elders are still encouraged for our future and what God wants to do with us. We are in the process of negotiating with our bank to pay off the balance. That will look like us refinancing the loan. Our goal is to refinance it for twenty-four months with the plan to pay it off in twelve. We will be making this a budget line item in 2012.
In light of this, your giving to the weekly operating budget of the church is, as always, very important. If you want to give specifically to the retiring of the building debt you still can! Please make sure that this is in addition to your regular giving and not in lieu of.
God is doing great things in our church. We are seeing gospel fruit in the lives of many people. In the last few weeks we have seen some of our highest attended Sundays. We are hearing of great gospel conversations in our Community Groups and plans to serve our city within these groups are coming forth.
Continue to pray for us that Crossbridge would be a gospel movement in our city making more and stronger followers of Jesus! This Sunday we will keep pressing on with this vision as we continue our study through the book of Proverbs in our “PROVERBIA” series. If you haven’t noticed yet, this series is very practical and would be very easy to invite people to. Over the next few weeks we will be studying what Proverbs says about wisdom and our friends, family, work, finances, and decision making. Who is God putting on your heart to invite? Pray and ask Him for courage and an open door to invite someone new to join us!
You are a great church to pastor Crossbridge. I am hopeful for who Jesus is making us into!
See-ya Sunday,
Chuck
Chuck’s Thoughts
Dear Crossbridge!
What a great time we had this past Sunday celebrating the faithfulness and grace of God at Crossbridge! 9 years! Wow! From setting up at Sartartia Middle School, our various service projects, dropping Easter eggs from a helicopter, to leasing an old grocery store, and countless stories of lives changed by the power of Jesus! It has been a great ride and I believe that God is just getting started in bringing about a Gospel movement in our city!
BIG thanks to all of the servants who made Party on the Porch a success! We had some unexpected things happen to us Sunday, but so many of you jumped in and pulled it all together. I want to give a special thanks shout out to Reed Cutshall, Jan-Michael Jenkins and Hugh Durlam for being examples of men who just oozed servant leadership on Sunday. They jumped in and did above and beyond the call of duty service! Way to go guys. If you know them be sure to thank them for their service to the church.
Special, special thanks and prayers go to Adrian and Shelia Garcia. The Garcia’s Coordinate our Porch Events and do an amazing job at planning these special Sundays for us to have fun, connect with each other and invite new people to our church. Shelia and Adrian were the behind the scenes people that made almost everything we experienced outside at the birthday party happen.
The Garcia’s were unable to be with us Sunday because their eighteen year old, Cameron, was in a pretty bad car accident Sunday morning. He doesn’t have any life threatening injuries now but was pretty banged up. Please be in pray for Cameron that God will continue to heal him. Today is the first day he was able to get out of bed and will have an extensive recovery period. Pray for the entire Garcia family during this season as well. Many of you are already praying for them, and have been to see them. As usual, you are a loving church and respond well to people in need!
This Sunday we will be continuing our series, “PROVERBIA”. If you missed last week please check out the pod cast here.
It’s not too late to invite a friend to join you for this great series in God’s word. Click here and watch the video trailer we made for the series.
You are a great church and I am honored to be your pastor!
See-ya Sunday
Chuck
Prayer Network
Prayer Network at Crossbridge
Vision Breakfast this Saturday!
Hey Everybody!
Every week we have several, sometime dozens of prayer requests turned in by our church. For the last nine years we have had a prayer time to receive these and spend time praying over these requests, asking God to move on behalf of His people. We have seen Him answer so many of these requests. Surgeries have gone well, people healed, jobs found, relationships reconciled, needs provided for and people saved! God has ordained to move through the prayers of His people. We talked about that some this past Sunday as we prayed for God to give us boldness.
In an attempt to be more committed to prayer as a church we are re-launching our prayer team under a new name, the Prayer Network. We are seeking to develop a network of people at Crossbridge committed to praying for the health of our church at large and the people personally. The primary responsibility of the Prayer Network will be to pray for the prayer requests of our faith community. We will attempt to meet once or twice a year for a time of telling stories, being equipped in our praying and mutual encouragement.
Do you want to grow in being a person of prayer? Then send an e-mail NOW to charlotte@crossbridge.cc telling her you would like to come to the Prayer Network Vision Breakfast this Saturday. It starts at 9am and will last one hour. There is no childcare provided and this will not be a child friendly environment so please make arrangements for your children.
At the breakfast we will go over the expectations of the network. If you sign-up for the network you will receive a copy of the book “A Praying Life” by Paul Miller.
If you are a regular attendee or Partner of Crossbridge you should come to this breakfast and learn more about how you can learn to pray and how to pray for our community even more. E-mail charlotte@crossbridge.cc! I’ll see you this Saturday!
I am honored to be your pastor!
Chuck
Words from Chuck
Crossbridge Family,
I know you are looking forward to a long weekend, slightly cooler temperatures (one forecast said 87 as a high – I may need a jacket!) and RAIN! I am seriously thinking about sitting in a lawn chair outside in the rain the whole time if it happens! I hope this weekend you will take some time to rest, recreate and renew your spirit through time with God.
There are so many exciting things happening in the life of Crossbridge right now. Community Groups and mid-size groups (i.e. Ladies Bible Studies and Men’s Leadership Lab) are starting up. We will celebrate 9 years of being a church community on September 18th with our Party on the Porch. That day we will also kick off our fall study of the book of Proverbs as well! The last two weeks we have seen tremendous crowds at our Sunday gatherings. And last Sunday we baptized 6 people! Praise God!
This past Sunday we also took our “Opportunity Offering”. We have been talking about this for months and you can learn more here (insert link). Many of you gave and committed to give over the next few weeks. Some of you have let us know you were out of town or there was another reason you didn’t give or commit this past Sunday. We will have the Opportunity Cards available the next two weeks in the handout and you can always give online as well here. Thank you for your faithful generosity! We will be announcing in a few weeks where we are at with the construction debt.
You are a joy to pastor!
Chuck
Words from Chuck
Dear Crossbridge Family,
This Sunday is what we are calling our “Opportunity Sunday”! Not only will we have the regular and amazing opportunity to worship through singing, Biblical teaching and communion but we will get to witness several believers declaring the allegiance to Jesus through baptism and give of our finances toward the retirement of our debt on the build-out of 1049 Eldridge.
I trust that you have been seeking God about what your role is in retiring our debt so that we might move forward in our mission to make growing followers of Jesus Christ. God provides to and through His people so that His name and gospel may continue to move forward. No matter what amount you are giving this Sunday there are no small gifts. The gifts may not be equal but the sacrifice will be. Some of you have asked can we give this out over time and the answer is yes. We will have commitment cards in the Sunday handout for to tell us what amount you will be giving over the next month till October. If you are reading this and have no idea what I’m talking about go here (insert link to Opportunity page) and get caught up on what we have been talking about these past several months at Crossbridge
God is doing great things here at Crossbridge! We get the privilege of celebrating that by watching people declare that their lives have been changed by Jesus and giving toward the mission of the church so that more people might be changed by Jesus through the ministry of this church.
If you call Crossbridge your church community then this is not a Sunday to miss!
Expecting Great Things!
Chuck
Renewal: What is it Good For? Pt2
Here are some resources if you are interested in doing further study on the topic of renewal/revival.
Revival by Martin-Lloyd Jones…click here to order.
A God-Sized Vision by Collin Hansen and John Woodbridge…click here to order.
Renewal as a Way of Life by Richard Lovelace…click here to order.
