Wednesday's SPCF meeting

Hamish and Molly - I hope you guys made it to the mother-land safely. Our time at the NACC this week was terrific. The meeting went well. Whitney was selected to be the secretary for the meeting. She took some detailed notes, which I'm sure she'd be glad to post or email if you're interested. A couple of noteworthy things:

1. Jeff Metzger invited and introduced two new possible SPCF board members: Brent Foulke and Jeff Swearingen. Brent has a great reputation preceding him. He doesn't have much going on...He's just Vice President of Field Operations at Orchard Group (formerly Go Ye Chapel Mission), Director of the Church Planter's Assessment Center, and Lead Pastor of a church he planted in NY called Christ's Church of the Capital District. I don't know as much about Jeff, but I think he is affiliated with Brent somehow. Jeff is a church planter in Cape Coral Florida. From their questions and comments we could tell that, if they agree to join the board, they will bring a breath of fresh air to SPCF with their experience and sense of accountability.

2. About the plane tickets. When E. Richard Crabtree passed around the quarterly financial report we realized just how tight things are with their current budget. Nonetheless, they agreed to take care of whatever we couldn't raise on our own, citing your conversation with Bill Weber about Western Hills Church of Christ possibly helping with this. Let us know if we can make phone calls to this church or do anything for you to get things started. We want to take this off your plate as much as possible.

After the meeting we were able to get several good interviews with Randall, Reuben, and Jeff Metzger for our fund-raising video. These guys are naturals in front of the camera! Their words will do a great deal to help inspire our people to give to the cause. I will get started on editing asap, but don't expect to see anything for a while. I've got a lot of footage to sort through.

Randall met with the four of us after the interviews and gave us some perspective and insight on fund-raising and financial living in NZ. We were kind of freaked out by all of the information he threw at us, but it was good to hear now instead of later. He met with Joe and I again the next morning at 7:30am to go over some more things in detail. Randall has already been a blessing to us as a coach and mentor. Joe and I felt much better after meeting with him that morning...well, I should speak for myself...I felt much better.

We wish you guys could've been with us. We did get to spend some time with Reuben and Anna. They're great! We set a date in August for the four of us to meet with them again and get to know one another better. We'll look into getting you guys back here for that as well. Just kidding. We are thinking about and praying for you guys. Let us know how things are going when you get a chance.

A Roundabout Idea

Hey guys,
Hope everything is going well for each of you in your respective corners of the globe.

I was searching the website of a church in Indy and I came across this section (use link below).
http://www.nvcl.org/templates/cusnorthview/details.asp?id=28074&PID=178177

I thought it was a great parallel, and maybe something we could feed off of in our dreaming/planning for our own church plant.

Just a thought. Have a lovely weekend!

contacts and meeting notes

Here is a copy of the email I sent out to everyone today. The link for registering wasn't right in the email. Click here to register.
---------------------------------------------------------
As requested, here are the email addresses of those who attended last Friday's meeting at CCU.
(email addresses not shown to protect the innocent)

Notes:
-We agreed to move forward with the Oct. 31- Nov. 3 assessment in Johnson City, TN. Click here for the cpac website.
-SPCF does cover assessment costs.
-We discussed that it would be beneficial to have Jeff, Bill, and Reuben with us for the assessment.
-Bill and/or Jeff will discuss funding for two one-way tickets for Hamish and Molly at the SPCF meeting in Louisville next Wednesday. If they are not able to cover that expense, the rest of the team will look to raise money for it.

I will contact CPAC and let them know that we are planning to attend the October/November assessment. For those of us taking the assessment, there are something like 40 pages of pre-assessment forms to fill out according to Brent Foulke (director). Joe and Hamish will also need to register on their website to get started (it takes about 1 minute). That's all for now.

Thanks again, everyone, for your time and input in last Friday's meeting. We had a wonderful time. We're looking forward to getting to know each of you better.

An Eye-Opening Weekend! or God and the Disney Channel or Go Decatur! A Round of Applause for Your Step-Mother

Friday's meeting was fantastic. God has been so faithful, revealing just enough to keep us on the edge of our seats. It's clear just how excited we all are about what He has in store for us. At the moment Whitney is sitting next to me on another computer. We are composing an update for her missions committee. Pray that God will move in this particular area of fund-raising for us. You should know that you are all in our prayers as well. God will certainly provide all that we need (Philippians 1:6).

When we got home on Saturday we crashed on the couch and flipped on the tv. About five seconds later Whitney said, "Did you hear that?" There was a reference made to the Maori people and New Zealand. Some kid on the Disney Channel was doing a Haka dance. We were both like, "whoa." But it gets better... The next show was Kim Possible. She made this comment and I quote, "I just got back from a mission in New Zealand." Whoa again. And then again today on HGTV a lady was buying a rug that was made of New Zealand wool. Perhaps these are all coincidences. But all this raises a question in my mind: Does God speak to us through the Disney channel and HGTV??????

For Friday...

(By the way, I hope I'm not insulting your web-intelligence Hamish and Molly, but be sure to check the comments under the most recent posts. That is where we carry on conversations based on each specific post. Also, we have another blog called Hector and Rory's book club where we discuss the current books we are reading about church planting n' stuff. Joe may have sent you an invitation to that one as well.)

Okay For Friday...
I just wanted to make sure everyone got the email about the Church Planting Assessment Center. I was hoping we could discuss this in detail at the meeting. Perhaps (with the help of SPCF?) we could get Hamish and Molly back to the states for this important step in the building of a potential team. The link below will take you to the website. There are two more assessment times available for us this year: August 14-17 in Johnson City, TN and October 31-November 3 also in Tennessee. Check your schedules and begin thinking about this so we might come away from our meeting with a plan. Thanks!

Click: http://www.churchplanting4me.org/

I'm in too!

Hey all! With Hamish joining, I was feeling left out. Thanks for inviting me too! I'm really excited about our meeting on Friday. It'll be so good to see you all again.

Ta Da!! (Grand entrance)

Hello all! I have finally succumbed to myself and entered the digital age. Now I can communicate better with you young whippersnappers and you new fandangled technology. Thanks for inviting me in!

Roundabouts

Some of you may remember from New Zealand the Roundabouts. Well hold on to your shorts becuase roundabouts are coming to Springfield, IL! There are big plans to update all of downtown and there was an article in the paper about roundabouts alone. They are going to be going in all over Springfield! At first I was really excited and then I remembered a time in NZ while on a roundabout that we were about smashed by a bus, now, I am just plain terrified.

Roundabouts

Some of you may remember from New Zealand the Roundabouts. Well hold on to your shorts becuase roundabouts are coming to Springfield, IL! There are big plans to update all of downtown and there was an article in the paper about roundabouts alone. They are going to be going in all over Springfield! At first I was really excited and then I remembered a time in NZ while on a roundabout that we were about smashed by a bus, now, I am just plain terrified.