Church, yesterday was a great day as we heard about 4 different short term mission trips that happened this summer. These teams represented 28 members of our church or just over 10% of our attendance from Sunday! It was a very encouraging day!
We know that many of you were touched by the messages that you heard and some of you may be wondering what you can do. We have listed 12 ways that you can make a difference beginning today! Please prayerfully consider how you can best be part of God’s work.
**Brainstorm with your Life Group how together you can be part of God’s work!
**You can speak to anyone in the office about these opportunities.
JOIN THE MISSION:
VOLUNTEER WITH REFUGEES COMING TO CANADA
The Calgary Catholic Immigration Society has put out a call for volunteers to be Cross-Cultural Guides with people from all over the world. See the poster from CCIS at the Connection Centre or speak with Hope Pawlak for first hand information about this rewarding experience. CCIS is expecting quite a few more refugees to land in our city over the next few months.
SPONSOR A STUDENT
Trevor and Sheri Wise shared pictures of students that they support as well as students supported by Terry and Muriel Harkness and our congregation. Find out how you can support a student today.
JOIN FRIENDSPEAK
You can join FriendSpeak at any time. We always have a waiting list of people wanting to improve their English. People who improve their English will very quickly improve their quality of life in Canada and those who hear the Gospel while improving their English will benefit even more.
PACK BROWN BAG LUNCHES
You can contribute to this easy ministry by offering 30 minutes, every 6-8 weeks to make lunches for hungry kids in Calgary. Alternatively you can stock our freezer with nut free baking to use.
HELP WITH FEEDING THE HUNGRY
We feed hungry and homeless people every Wednesday at 11:30 a.m. For many this is the only chance that they have to sit around a table with “family”. The people we serve look forward to this wonderful break in their week. It is an easy way to shine God’s light. Please have a look at our sign up sheet and see if you would like to come and help. You are also welcome to come and join us for a lunch and see what this ministry is like.
PARTICIPATE IN OPERATION SHOEBOX OR BACKPACK
Join with our youth in providing gifts to those around the world or local teens who need God’s love at Christmas time and all the time!
CONSIDER A COMMUNITY KITCHEN
This is a ministry in the building phase. We have many immigrant families that we are connected to who would enjoy learning “Canadian” dishes to feed to their children. In turn, they are eager to teach us some recipes from their home. This is a wonderful way to connect with a variety of people and to share a cultural experience together.
PRAY FOR OUR CHRISTMAS OUTREACH
Our staff is considering how we can best help people at Christmas time. Is it through hampers? Gifts to the homeless? Another idea? Please be praying that God will lead us to His solution. We welcome your thoughts and ideas.
GIVE GENEROUSLY
We have missions around the world that we support. Your contribution here is making a difference in the life of someone across the world. Besides providing an education to people, our missions help people learn about God and how to teach others about the Good News.
Our budget also allows us to feed many hungry people in our community every month through our pantry. We have outlined easy ways to give on our website.
CONSIDER A SHORT TERM MISSION TRIP WITH LIFELINE
Has God been stirring your heart to step out and serve Him in a different culture? Have you felt a desire to experience how He is working in another part of the world?
Lifeline Christian Mission’s vision is to ‘Spark a life on mission for God. Everyone. Everywhere.’ As part of this, we offer short term mission trips to many of our locations including Haiti, Honduras, Arizona, Cuba and others. Our trips are more than a destination or stamp in your passport; it’s an opportunity to serve and experience God moving in another language, culture, and people!
This past summer we just took a team of individuals and families from Northern Hills Church, to our location in Grand Goave, Haiti where we participated in building a house for a needy family, served kids in a VBS, distributed food, clothing, shoes and baby bundles to needy people throughout the community. It was an amazing experience and time of growth for our church, and personally for those who went. We are looking to see if anyone from the Calgary Church of Christ would be interested in a trip, or organizing a team, to serve Him and see how He is working in another culture in another part of the world. If you are interested then I would love to hear from you. For more information go to https://lifeline.org/go or you can reach me (Colin Hattrick) at [email protected].
And you never know: on this journey, God may ignite a spark in your life to create possibilities to serve Him in unimaginable ways!
HAVE CONVERSATION ~ DARE TO DREAM BIG!
A great dinner or Life Group conversation starter is: What can God do with $XX,XXX? One conversation revealed that $40,000 could supplement 20 refugee families in Canada with $2,000. This gives them a much better start to their life as currently a family of 5 lives on less than $30,000 a year, and if they can’t get into Calgary Housing, much of that is taken up with rent. It could also buy 133,000 meals in Haiti for those in need – currently they are short by 800,000 meals a year. $40,000 could also build 8 hurricane proof homes in Haiti.
READ “WHEN HELPING HURTS”
Last winter our staff (and a couple of others) read “When Helping Hurts” by Steve Corbett and Brian Frikkert. This book is helping us to better understand how and when to help people. If you would like to borrow a copy, talk to Hope and she can loan you one.
“With more than 225,000 copies sold, When Helping Hurts is a paradigm-forming contemporary classic on the subject of poverty alleviation and ministry to those in need. Emphasizing the poverty of both heart and society, this book exposes the need that every person has and how it can be filled. The reader is brought to understand that poverty is much more than simply a lack of financial or material resources and that it takes much more than donations and handouts to solve the problem of poverty.
While this book exposes past and current development efforts that churches have engaged in which unintentionally undermine the people they’re trying to help, its central point is to provide proven strategies that challenge Christians to help the poor empower themselves. Focusing on both North American and Majority World contexts, When Helping Hurts catalyzes the idea that sustainable change for people living in poverty comes not from the outside-in, but from the inside-out.”