The Bounce from New Beginnings

a Church of the Brethren.

LET’S STAY CONNECTED!

This is our church's attempt to let know what's happening at New Beginnings Fellowship. We want to know what's happening in your churches too!

The more we can share ideas, concepts and strategies with each other-the more blessed our missions become.

We hope each church will consider producing an e-newsletter to share the "Yea God's" that are happening as well as sharing each others burdens.

Tom DeVore, Pastor-New Beginnings Fellowship

Leading a Turnaround Church

It's been an exciting ride since we closed the doors to the church for three months and re-opened on Christmas Day, 2006. During that three month period we assembled a "turnaround team" and reinvented ourselves. We decided to have a "go for broke" attitude and trust God not to let us go broke! So far it's working. Being in "maintenance mode" was no longer acceptable. We were going to be a missionally minded church-with our mission field being as far as we could walk by foot. We've hammered our community with door knob hangers every couple months, sent invitations, prayer walked, personally invited and we are experiencing a New Beginning. Folks-We started off with eight tired, weary, burned out people who still had enough of a fleeting hope, that they were ready to try anything to turn things around and become a healthy vibrant community of Christ Followers.

The result-We're now averaging fifty for worship-the place is buzzing with excitement, anticipation and hope. Kid's are running all over the place and we're scrambling to keep up! Don't get me wrong-we're certainly not where we want to be, but we've had steady numeric and spiritual growth this past year.

Last month our "Turnaround Team" set some high goals to triple in size by this time next year and add a second service. I told them "in order to do that it would take a total "God thing" for it to happen-let's let Him do it!" We've also set three things in place-tithe 5% to the District and 5% to Church Planting and 15% of our budget for local outreach. We figure if we can't "feed the sheep" with the other 75%-something is drastically wrong. We've received $10,000.00 from a generous donor to give birth to a new church within the next two years. We've restricted our giving to these objectives primarily because we believe (1) We must become a healthy church first-we have to reach our Jerusalem. (2) We believe we must support the District in our effort to become healthy again-we must reach out to Judea. (3) We must reproduce-give birth multiple times. (4) When we reach these commands of Jesus then, and only then will we reach the ends of the earth-going global.



Excerpts from New Beginnings Fellowship’s November 2007 Newsletter.
Visit them on the Web at www.newbeginningsfellowship.cc