grace gardens are growing!

Grace Gardens are looking beautiful here in the middle of an Iowa summer.  Both garden spots have created a place for neighbors to meet one another and to be involved together in the neighborhood.

standing strong in Jesus

Harvest's VBS, "Kingdom Rock" has been a hit this week!  One theme this week is "Stand Strong" as the students learn about standing strong in prayer.

kingdom rock partnership

Harvest's VBS is this week, and Orchard's sharing some of its resources from Orchard's earlier summer VBS of similar theme.  Music, decorations, and friends from OHC are a part of the exciting mix of plans that Des and Amy from Harvest have prepared for this week's Kingdom Rock.  Our prayers are that God will inform every heart of every child and grown up of His great love and the best invitation ever to live with Him in His awesome Kingdom reality through Jesus!

Quotable Monday

Is today's American Church more like the Early Church in the first few centuries......

Justin Martyr sketched Christian love this way: “We who used to value the acquisition of wealth and possessions more than anything else now bring what we have into a common fund and share it with anyone who needs it. We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies.”

Clement, describing the person who has come to know God, wrote, “He impoverishes himself out of love, so that he is certain he may never overlook a brother in need, especially if he knows he can bear poverty better than his brother. He likewise considers the pain of another as his own pain. And if he suffers any hardship because of having given out of his own poverty, he does not complain.”

or like the English Church in the mid 1700's?.....

“It is worth dilating for a moment on George Whitefield and the state of the Christian faith in England in the middle of the eighteenth century. Since the time of the Puritans and the religious wars of the previous century, England had decidedly turned its back on any expressions of what we might call serious Christian belief. Having led to so much division and violence, religion was now in full-scale retreat. The churches of mid-eighteenth-century England all but abandoned orthodox, historical Christianity and now preached a tepid kind of moralism that seemed to present civility and the preservation of the status quo as the summum bonnum. And so, understandably, people looked less and less to the churches for the ultimate answers to their questions, and a fog of hopeless and brutal superstitious spiritualism crept over the land. The poor, as is ever the case, would suffer the most from these changes in Britain’s religious atmosphere.”

Excerpt From: Metaxas, Eric. “Amazing Grace.” HarperCollins. iBooks.

God's Spirit on the move; CCDA on the move

It is fascinating to see and hear how God's Spirit is moving in similar ways across our country; how He is stirring the Body of Christ with a mounting desire to unite and reach out on holistic mission in our communities in ways that are transformative for all involved.  It's also not surprising that there are similar challenges and roadblocks that plague us as we desire and attempt to do this.

It's been an honor to join a group in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, today to hear about their heart and unique callings, as well as their collaborative efforts to wholistically restore their community. CCDA is here facilitating an intensive today and tomorrow and helping participants ask questions, have conversation, and think critically about how we walk out the Biblical mandate to care for the poor.