Around Our Network / June 18, 2014

Dear friends,

This note is about how God has been moving in our Network. It doesn’t include all of the things that are happening, but hopefully it is a good compilation. Read it like a newspaper.

What’s been happening in the Network? June 18, 2014

We worshiped God and made new friends at our PMs

At Broad & Washington -- Our very inventive team led us in the first evening of our season of “Second Acts.” Steve Falkowski worked around our internet issues. Mike Furfari stepped in to the art director’s role with some creative stuff. Most of all, the room felt alive with the Spirit. Listen to BW’s public meeting here.

At Frankford & Norris -- We began using the Psalms and Circle of Hope “proverbs” to frame our new season’s call to discipleship. The holiday, summer tour, and other plans made room for Dan Snook, our PM Coordinator, to call together a unique team to lead music alongside Vanessa’s creative rendering of Psalm 27. We prayed for 4,000 foster youth in Philadelphia, including Ashley, Alyssa, Vincent, Clarissa, Dylan, Sam, Mya, Alyssa, Loius, Kierra, and S’mirrior (suggested by our social workers). Listen to FN’s public meeting here.

At Marlton & Crescent -- Our network’s teaching pastor, Gwen White, helped us sit with our boredom and find the blessing in it. Her encouragement was to embrace it so that connection with the Truth of Jesus can be found. What a blessing she is!

At Broad & Dauphin -- We started our new series all about the transnational body! It was all about Eastern Europe and Northern Asia; it was fun to try to speak in the emotive language of Russian. Naomi Sonne led us well, and so did Sarah Good. We also strived to answer the question: Do I have to tell people about Jesus? (Find the summary here.) Listen to BD’s public meeting here.

We were trained on how to Love with Purpose

One of our pastors, Rachel Sensenig, lead the Monthly Cell Leader Training at Frankford and Norris on Saturday. We talked about intentionality in relationship-making. Our strategies for authentically including the next people are Spirit-filled and important. It’s really fun to be on mission together!

Our Imaginarium focused on being agents of transformation and our Leadership Team met

On Monday, we gathered at Marlton and Crescent for our version of the “rolling Council meeting.” We pondered the question, “Are we agents of transformation?” and generated some ideas about movement into deeper transformation. Following our time of imagination, the three Core Teams (Compassion, Capacity, Church Planting) and the Coordinators all met. At the end of the night, we all joined together to pray for each other and our transforming mission.

We started praying with voices from the Middle East and Northern Africa @ Circle of Hope Daily Prayer

In honor of Pentecost and the movement started in that one room in Jerusalem, we are remembering all of the places that the Spirit has moved across the world. Look forward to hearing from voices both past and present on our blog: cohdailyprayer2014.wordpress.com.

St. Anthony’s voice was particularly inspiring:

“I saw the snares that the enemy spreads out over the world and I said groaning, ‘What can get through from such snares?” Then I heard a voice saying to me, “Humility.’”

The Broad and Washington Monthly Game Night traveled to Marlton and Crescent

A scheduling conflict at Broad and Washington turned into a missional opportunity. The regular BW gaming crowd showed up at MC and more people got in on the fun and friend-making. Eric Bursky hosted the last-minute event and I hear he was putting pictures on social media well past midnight!

Our blogs were great places of sharing and thinking...

Did you see Rod’s post about Don’t take my coffee away, Jesus! Pondering our addictions is a good place to start thinking about justice. Jonny got us thinking about the U.S.’s new interest in Iraq (new war, meet the old war) and pondered whether or not Christians were straining out gnats, and swallowing camels.

The The Way of Jesus website received more upgrades.

It is an organic trip from the start of faith to the finish using the oldest metaphor on the planet: earth, wind, fire, and water. We have begun to collect resources for every era of the journey. The site gets more complete and useful all the time.

Aaron Foltz is the new manager at Circle Thrift Broad

Aaron (who has an MTS from Palmer) is charged with not only making the store work, but making the mission work. He is hired for extra time than our managers usually get in order to figure out how the store helps us plant churches.