First of all, speak with your pastors about your desire. The Bible speaks (in Galatians 6) of sharing all good things with those who lead you. Missions would certainly fall under this category. Your pastors should know that you have the desire for a mission endeavor. Seek their guidance. Your pastors are entrusted with the responsibility of making sure that those within their flock are protected. However, they cannot protect you if they do not know your plan. Too many Christians seek out an opportunity prematurely, before seeking any counsel. At times, Christians can end up yoking themselves with organizations who do not share their values or doctrinal convictions.

Your pastors, at Grace Fellowship, want you to be on mission. However, we want your experience to be the best experience possible. We have a few organizations that we highly endorse. There are others that our members have investigated that we think helpful. We have, unfortunately, have had members who had very negative experiences with various missions organizations. We want to help you prevent such catastrophes. We know that anyone who puts in the effort and work to go on mission evidently is wanting it to be productive and go well. Therefore, let us help you find the right organization.

There you have it. Grace Fellowship is pro-missions. We want you on mission, whether at home or abroad. If you choose to go abroad, which we hope you do, we encourage you to contact us. Let us help you find the right organization, talk about your goals, your desires, and how you should go about raising support. We do require any member seeking missions support through Grace Fellowship to meet with us first. This ensures that the church is endorsing your particular opportunity, which is biblical and vitally important as you move forward.

Soli Deo Gloria!

Our students have scattered to the four winds for the summer. Please pray for them as they endeavor to take classes, go on mission, participate in Summer Beach Project, and work. These students are the future leaders in God’s kingdom. Let’s take every opportunity we can to minister to them and support them. As we do, we are taking part in God’s great commission in very tangible ways. Soli Deo Gloria!

VIEW MORE PICTURES OF OUR PROGRESS HERE!

Construction is complete on our new outreach/fellowship facility. We completely renovated an existing building, about 4283 ft²; added a new addition, 1760 ft², and 2 new porch additions. This has resulted in a total building area of about 6043 ft².

This will provide a large meeting space with seating capacity of about 280 (eating at tables). The building includes a new kitchen, restrooms, a storage room, and some housekeeping, mechanical and electrical spaces, a meeting room, two classrooms, and two offices.

We are scheduled to renovate the parking area as soon as possible, repaving, re-striping, and adding new spaces. We are praising God for providing a venue to help with fellowship, outreach, and space for Sunday morning Bible Study.

Lily… Carson… Vitali… Inna… Kyla… Real kids who needed a mom and a dad. Real kids who got one.

We want to help make this journey a little easier for adopting families. God does not call everyone to adopt a child; but everyone can help these orphans through prayer and the giving of resources to help ease the financial burden of the families that God has called for His purpose.

Would you think about financially supporting Micah’s Hope? No gift is too small. Monthly gifts would go a long way in bringing more children home!

Soli Deo Gloria!

For more information on a Campus Outreach, visit http://cobirmingham.org/

Steps to Formation:

How Do We Create a Lasting Movement?

PRAYER:

The most important thing we can do is pray for God to unite His Body in our community. We will make prayer one of the foundational strategies for churches working together on an ongoing basis.

VISION CASTING:

It is critically important that our churches identify with and grasp the importance of: a) being externally focused by serving in our community, b) developing partnerships with other churches, ministries, and organizations. Ignite is based on churches serving and blessing the community together, which includes defining emphasis areas and/or partners     in the community, raising up lay leadership, and determining a plan to mobilize the church.

INTENTIONAL RELATIONSHIP BUILDING:

To be successful at developing partnerships between churches, it is of primary importance to begin building relationships among staff and lay leadership between churches. We plan to develop a monthly pastor’s gathering that will facilitate friendships and future ministry relationships.

INVITE:

As our core group of churches begins to develop the foundation of Ignite, we will begin to personally invite other churches to join us in the community transformation movement. From our small beginnings we hope to one day see the majority of our local church community working together for the Kingdom and the Glory of God!

DEFINE THE PROJECT:

Ignite has been developed using “Unite!” of Atlanta, Georgia as a guide and model. We will use Matthew 5:16 as the basis for our churches to develop a strategy to pray, serve, and celebrate together for the purpose of community transformation.

LEADERSHIP:

In addition to identifying an overall leader, or Director, to give leadership to Ignite, an overall leadership team made up of representatives from the local churches will be formed. This team should be diverse ethnically, culturally, and denominationally.

STATEMENT OF FAITH:

Relationships are easiest to establish and develop when, at first, we focus on our  similarities instead of our differences. We do, however, need to agree on the basic essentials of the Christian faith. A statement of faith helps to determine what beliefs are most important and non-negotiable. Ignite will adopt the Lausanne Covenant, which is a broadly evangelical document balancing word and deed ministry.

COMMUNICATION:

One of the greatest challenges of bridging the gaps between churches is developing an effective means of clear communications. Possibilities include postcards, letters, brochures, websites, e-mails, etc. All of these forms of communication are good, but the  very best ways to communicate are through personal phone calls or visits. Additionally, our monthly luncheon provides a great forum for communicating, building relationships, and inviting other churches to join the common effort. The main purpose of a luncheon would be to cast vision, build relationships, plan, and pray for the community and each    other. A luncheon can be held at a local restaurant or one of our churches.

LONG TERM ONGOING PARTNERSHIP:

From the very start, Ignite will have to decide that if we are going to see transformation occur within our community, our efforts will need to be ongoing, and not just coming together to serve during a big event.

Long Term Partnering includes:

Having the Leadership Team develop vision and mission statements.
Having the Leadership Team meet monthly to plan, continue along the overall vision and chart progress.
Developing a central means of distributing communications.
Host monthly Ignite luncheons that are for casting vision, networking, and sharing about needs in the community.
Host gatherings of “community outreach” lay leaders from the churches to talk about how to serve together in the community.

KEY INGREDIENTS (CORE VALUES)

PRAYER – Prayer is the foundation and the key for Ignite!

RELATIONSHIPS – Relationships are what drive the Ignite movement. It will begin with a focus on several big events that launch the effort, but it will continue through relationships between people from different churches that are sustaining and fueling the movement!

DIVERSITY – The Leadership Team and the churches that are going to be part of Ignite should be a mix of African American, Hispanic, and Anglo and should represent a mixture of denominations.

LONG TERM MINDSET – It is essential to think long term if we want to see community transformation take place. This is challenging because our culture is so driven by events, but it will take significant time for “the church” in the broad sense to develop an external focus and to really work together in mass. It is easy to want to “give up” because the process is slow.

ON GOING PARTNERS – It is much easier to bring churches together for large events than it is to have churches working together on a regular basis. We will try to focus on connecting people from various churches to partner together on a regular basis to meet holistic needs in the community – word and deed. We will hopefully begin seeing fruit, but it is hard work and takes initiative. Most churches are consumed with ministry that is within the four walls of the church. However, as churches work together they realize that their ministry can be more effective because of the combined gifts and talents.

FOCUS ON COMMUNITY TRANSFORMATION – If we focus on the differences in our theology, then Ignite will fall apart. We must focus on a passion for Christ and a desire to see Him transform our community and our city. We will come to realize that we must work together if we want to see kingdom change in our community – no one church can change the community. As part of Ignite, churches can be part of something much bigger than themselves.

MULTI SECTOR COLLABORATION – Ignite will need to focus on getting the nonprofit sector to work together (churches and nonprofit organizations) We want to also connect with the private sector (business) and public sector (education and local government) to transform our communities. This will hopefully be reflected in leadership going forward by teams of key pastors, Christian business leaders, and public sector leaders working together.

LOCALIZED PARTNERING – The most effective partnering takes place between churches that are close together geographically. We want to facilitate relationship building between these churches. Transformation of an entire city or county begins with transformation in the smaller areas that make up that city or county.

MULTIPLICATION – Ignite will launch with however many churches are willing to work together in these ways. We hope to cast vision and come alongside churches in other areas of the city and county so that the whole of Calhoun County is impacted. We also want to help other churches in  counties in Northeast Alabama that have a similar passion for community transformation.