Weekly Newsletter

Hi Friends,

It's been an exciting week around here at Via Christus, what with the food drive and all. Anyhow, here are your weekly reminders:


Weekly Worship Gathering
As usual we'll be gathering this Saturday (July 22) at our home (505 Freemont St, Yorkville) for our Via Christus gathering. We'll be spending time from 5-6:30pm worshipping, sharing and studying scripture. Come join us to be transformed in your life and equipped to in turn transform the world!


Food Drive Pick-Up This Saturday!
Last weekend we distributed paper bags to nearly 2000 homes in the Yorkville area. This Saturday, the 29th, we will be collecting any bags left out. Even if only a fraction of the homes leave bags for us, we will still need all the help we can get to collect all the bags. We will be starting at 9am and working until we're done or until it's time to start our church gathering at 5pm (whichever comes first). We need help from as many people as possible (many hands make light work), so please let me know if you can help if you haven't done so already. Besides, it'll be fun - a chance to work alongside friends and help people in need at the same time! :)


Music & Movies in the Park
Every Friday night Yorkville sponsors either live music or family movies in one of the city parks. Live music is at the Town Square Park (along Rt. 47 just north of the river) on July 28, and August 11 & 25.

Movies are monthly on August 18 & September 15 and start at dusk in the Beecher Community Park (on Game Farm Rd - just take Somonauk St across 47 and it curves to become Game Farm). Bring some camp chairs if you want to come and enjoy a movie together with potential new friends from Yorkville. They also let you camp out overnight in the park if you so desire.


Hometown Days in Yorkville
Yorkville's annual Hometown Days Festival will be over Labor Day weekend, September 1-3. Mark your calendars and let me know if you're willing and able to help run one of our church booths.


Backyard Party
Because of the Food Drive we are postponing our Backyard Party till after Labor Day. We are tentatively looking at either Sunday, September 17th or Sunday, September 24th.


Emerging Women's Gathering
If you are interested in the emerging chuch movement (of which Via Christus is a part) and want to be encouraged as a woman in your leadership and ministry callings, you are invited to attend the Emerging Women's Gathering in Virginia Beach, VA from October 1-3. My wife, Julie, will be attending and leading some of the discussions at the event, so any of you ladies are welcome to go along with her. It should be a great time. Contact her at julieclawson@gmail.com for more info, or go here for details or to register.


That's all for now. Hope to see you on Saturday!

Blessings,

Mike


P.S. I just began training at the South Bridge Cafe in downtown Yorkville. Starting August 21st I'll be working there on Monday mornings. Hopefully it'll be a good way to meet people and make more connections in the community. If any of you are around Yorkville at that day and time you should drop by and say hello.

Hey guys, the Doable Evangelism blog (connected with Off-the-Map.org and the eBay Atheist guys) recently had a great article about a church planter in Merced, California (in the shadow of Yosemite). Bruce, the church planter, has foregone the usual advertising/marketing techniques of church planting in favor of building relationships one person at a time by getting involved in his community in any way he can. The article is a great example of the kind of approach we're also trying to take here in Yorkville.

It starts:

Near the granite-cliffed splendor of Yosemite National Park lies an ordinary California town called Merced. My family recently drove through this ordinary town, it blurred by as we sped through, it’s taquerias not tempting enough to slow us down for a road break. I kept my eyes open, though, for a Starbucks, not for coffee, but with the ridiculous thought that maybe I would stumble into Pastor Bruce Logue (aka Mercedian) who uses Starbucks as his church-planting headquarters.

I'd encourage you all to read the rest of the article. Just click here.

Our Haiti Missionaries

This past Sunday our parent church, LifeSpring, was visited by five of our missionaries to (and some from) Haiti. They are the long-term people on the ground that our church along with LifeSpring and several others, will be working with as we try to make life better for the people in the Gatineau region of Haiti. They shared their stories of how they got to Haiti and what they hope to accomplish there together with our help. Please keep all of them in your prayers as we anticipate the upcoming trips and fundraising drives that we'll be doing as part of our partnership together with them.


From the left: Dr. Katie Wolf, Nurse Cerise, Pastor Fran Leeman (of LifeSpring), Dr. Ramon Rene, Joline Moore, Steve Moore.

Switching to Sunday?

Thanks for the great discussion last night on goals and timeline and all that. I feel like the decisions we made were very important, and we reached some needed clarity on where we are headed in the near future.

I wanted to return to the question we ended with last night about when we should switch to meeting on Sunday mornings. The consensus last night seemed to be that sooner was better, and we tentatively suggested Labor Day weekend as a good time to make the switch. However, I want to make sure that everyone has a chance to voice their opinions and that we've considered all the ramifications and angles of the issue. So let's talk about it here. Does anyone have any additional thoughts about the matter?

Newscast on the Emerging Church

Hopefully most of you caught CBS 2 Chicago's newscast the other night which featured a segment on the emerging church and included a few brief comments from both myself and Julie. In case you missed it you can find a transcript and a video of it here.

What's Happening Around Via Christus

Here's your weekly newsletter of what's going on around Via Christus and Yorkville for the week of July 1:



Food Drive
As a service to the Kendall County Food Pantry here in Yorkville we'll be doing a food drive sometime later this summer. We'll be distributing paper bags with notes attached to as many houses as we have bags for and then collecting them again a few days later. That means we need lots and lots of paper bags. Please ask for paper every time you're at the grocery store between now and August and bring them church with you on Saturdays. Thanks!


Renaissance Faire Trip
We'll be taking a trip to the Bristol Renaissance Faire (just over the border in Bristol, WI) on Sunday, July 9. You are all invited to come along. It's too late to get the advance price, but if you still want to come you can get tickets at the door for $18.95. Just let us know so we can make travel plans. If you've never been to the Ren Faire before you can check it out at http://www.renfair.com/bristol/.


Music & Movies in the Park
Every Friday night Yorkville sponsors either live music or family movies in one of the city parks. Live music is at the Town Square Park (along Rt. 47 just north of the river) on July 14 & 28, and August 11 & 25.

Movies are monthly on July 21, August 18 & September 15 and start at dusk in the Beecher Community Park (on Game Farm Rd - just take Somonauk St across 47 and it curves to become Game Farm). Bring some camp chairs if you want to come and enjoy a movie together with potential new friends from Yorkville. They also let you camp out overnight in the park if you so desire.

There will also be fireworks out here in Yorkville on July 4 at the site of the torn down Countryside Center on the NW corner of 34 and 47. Let Julie or I know if you'd like to come out for them.


We're Going to be on the News! (kind of)
CBS 2 in Chicago is doing a piece on the emerging church in a few weeks and have interviewed both Julie and I for it. However, they are no longer planning to come out and film our church service this weekend. Apparently they didn't have a news crew available over the holiday weekend. The piece will air on July 10th at 10pm, so make sure you watch that night.


Hometown Days in Yorkville
Yorkville's annual Hometown Days Festival will be over Labor Day weekend, September 1-3. We'll be sponsoring booths at the Fest and at the con-current Arts and Crafts booth. For our church booth we'll be sellling goods from 10,000 Villages besides handing out church fliers. We'll need everyone's help to run that booth. Also, if you have any handmade arts or crafts to display and sell at the other booth please talk to Julie soon. It will also just be a good chance to come out and rub shoulders with others here in our community. Mark your calendars!