Coming in 2010 - Part One

2009 has been another banner year for Grace Church and all of our ministries. But plans have been in the works for quite some time for the new 2010 year which we are about ready to embark on and which has me very excited. Today and tomorrow I will use my blog postings to tell you about just ten of the things that I am most looking forward to taking place in our ministries in just the first six months of the upcoming new year. 2010 is certainly going to be an awesome year!

Year Of Prayer – January 1, 2010 through December 31, 2010 will be a Year of Prayer for our entire ministry. We will begin the year with a 5-week message series in January that we are calling “Pray ’10.” For these 365 days we are asking that every scheduled class, service, meeting, appointment and activity throughout our entire ministry begin with prayer. Each month we will be doing a “Monthly Prayer Challenge” together as a church. During the month of July we will have another message series on prayer as we look at the lessons we can learn from some of the great prayer warriors in the Bible. We will then end our year of Prayer with a very special self-guided prayer event taking place on New Year’s Eve.

Love: Going For Gold – During the month of February we will be taking time to focus on what is often called “The Great Commandment” given by Jesus to love God with all of our being and love our neighbor as ourselves. Since Jesus gave this as the most important of all the commandments to strive for we will use this month in which we all will be watching the winter Olympics to learn how to “Go for the Gold” in loving God and others.

The Opening Of Our new Café – Lord willing, by the time Easter weekend rolls around our current construction project will be completed including the foyer renovation, the office expansion and the opening of our new Café allowing us a great location to not just attend church here at Grace each Sunday, but to also be able to take the time to connect with one another. It will also give our growing youth group a great atmosphere to meet in each Wednesday.

Vision Month – The month of March will be our Vision Month for 2010 with the theme, “Foundations!” We will use this month to attempt to get everyone who is part of the Grace Church Family to all be on the same foundation level when it comes to several key areas that will allow our church to become stronger and more effective in meeting people where they are and helping to move them to where God wants them to be.

Easter – Easter will be special for many reasons here at Grace. Grace Kid’s Ministry had over 1300 children attend last year’s Helicopter Egg Drop. This year, on the Saturday of Palm Sunday weekend, this event will again occur but as an all day event. Following our annual Good Friday Night of Worship we will be having four identical Easter Worship Celebrations including one Saturday service on the night before Easter as well as our three regular Sunday morning services.

Tomorrow I will describe the final five highlights of the first six month of 2010.