One Body

I'm so proud to see what JLM is accomplishing as a church. The relationships that are forming confirm that we are helping God build a great place to bring people together. Several of us come from different backgrounds and it's amazing to see how God combines us into "one body." In November, we'll rebuild and invest in a ministry that will expand these relationships even more!

Children's Ministry 101

I'm really excited about our next service at JLM! On Wednesday night we'll have the first course in our new Ministry Development training series. CHM 101 will kick off our training series with three Professors who will share some insight into The Power of Sunday School, Reaching Out to Kids, and The Ingredients of Children's Ministry.

I plan to turn our usual Wednesday night schedule on its head: participants will each take part in the course topics in a few unique ways, requiring them to return to their childhood for an evening as we prepare to reach kids for the Kingdom. Imaginations will be reignited. Silly hats will be worn. And no students will receive their official Certificate of Completion for the course until they have successfully sculpted a balloon animal dog!

Rick McGee, Pastor
Joyful Life Ministries

Kids Say the Most Memorable Things

We're about a week away from our Kids Krusade service at JLM and the preparation has caused me to think back to other opportunities Becki and I have had in children's ministry. Anytime we talk about Sunday School and Children's Church we have to mention Nathan. If there was real-life version of Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, it was Nathan. He was in our Sunday School class when we worked as youth ministers and Sunday School teachers at a home missions church in Indianapolis. It was Nathan who tied his own shoe laces to the table; just for kicks and just to make our lives more interesting.

It was also Nathan who provided one of the funniest moments in that church's history:
One of the usher/deacons was the keeper of the peace at the church. Nathan never made that easy. One particular service, while all the Sunday School classes were in the sanctuary with the adults, Nathan caused enough commotion to catch the usher's eye. The church sheriff headed for the seven-year old lawbreaker. He got Nathan out of the pew and into the center aisle. As he marched him down the middle of the sanctuary, Nathan looked up at him, and with complete sincerity said, "What are you gonna' do? Kill me?"

It took great will power to not laugh out loud in that moment. I will always believe that the usher cracked a smile, just for a second, before putting on his tough face again. I'll always remember Nathan's words in that moment. I hope he remembers some of ours.

Detour

We just finished our latest series at JLM. Detour was one of our longer series and I really enjoyed taking a closer, and sometimes humorous, look at the paths we take in our lives. The series tag line: Get off the Wrong Road...Stay on the Right Road...in Your Life summed up our goal to make sure we take the good detours and ignore the bad detours. I'm so thankful that God offered me a detour off the road that I was traveling when He found me. And I appreciate that He has kept me from taking the detours that the enemy has tempted me with since then.

How about you? Are you traveling the path that God first called you to travel? There's still time to recognize that you took a detour into bumpy territory. There's time to follow the sign that God holds up; the Detour sign that will point you back to the right road.

I appreciate the comments and feedback from the members of JLM that helped us dig deeper into this series and helped us make it relevant to our situations.

Bro. Rick McGee

Pastor

Joyful Life Ministries

Reset

Do you remember the original Super Mario Brothers games? If so, you have good and bad memories of the infamous reset button on the Nintedo console! If you were making progress on a new level and your little sister hit the reset button out of meanness, you discovered the horrors of starting over. On the other hand, if you were about to watch Mario plummet to his demise in a pit of lava, you could hit the reset button yourself and avoid watching your hero's death. You discovered the joy of starting over.

"Reset" is JLM's look at this starting over process. We're currently resetting ministries and the people who fill those roles. We're reexamining our level of excitement and passion for the things we've been involved in. Not as excited as you used to be? Hit reset. Have another direction you'd like to go in life and ministry? Hit reset.

The reset button can be dreadful or exciting. We're choosing to change in a positive way and see the opportunity for a new life as an exciting event in our lives! God's reset button? "If any man be in Christ he is a new creature, old things are passed away, behold all things are become new." (2 Corinthians 5:17)

Signs of New Life

Our current series, just in time for Spring, is called Signs of New Life. It's a series of messages and Bible studies dedicated to studying the New Life that Jesus Christ brings. Jesus once said, "These signs shall follow them that believe..." and indicated that there were miracles, signs, and wonders that would be part of the Christian church. Here's a list of the messages in the series:

1) Modern-Day Miracles (See previous blog for details)
2) Going Green (Offering an Alternative to People Paying a High Price for Their Life Choices)
3) Haven't Been There, Haven't Done That, Haven't Got the T-Shirt (Seeking More
from God? God can Still Blow Your Mind!)
4) Consumed (Everyone will be Consumed by Something. Why not Let it be the Spirit of a
God Who wants the Best for You?)
5) Reset (God has a Reset Button for Our Life When We're Headed in the Wrong Direction.
"If any man be in Christ he is a new creature. Old things are passed away, behold all things
are become new.")
6) Stuck Outside (Everything God did, Everything Jesus Accomplished, was for the Purpose
of Bringing People on the Outside to the Inside; to Call People who felt Distant from God to
a Close Relationship with Him.)
7) Oh What a Change! (The Greatest Agent of Change in This World is the Holy Spirit.
When a Positive Change Occurs in Your Life, Something You Couldn't Possibly Do on Your
Own, God Gets the Glory)

Modern-Day Miracle

A couple of weeks ago a young lady in our church reported an urgent need for healing in her body. Her doctor found a mass that was cause for serious concern. The church responded to the need with prayer and fasting: every person in the church committed to praying and fasting until we received news of a miracle. We weren't alone in this response; other friends and family members at other churches also joined in praying for this need.

One week later our friend received a call from her doctor: The mass was gone! The doctor reported that what she had seen and felt was not there anymore.

We celebrated the news of this answered prayer, and faith is building in our church as a result! We are committing to more prayer and fasting for other needs. We understand that prayer and fasting aren't methods of earning the blessings and miracles God has for us. But we do know that Jesus called us to sacrifice and pay the price to see some of the things He wants to provide. I'm so excited to see everyone coming together to meet others' needs!

Dedicated to the Vision for Richmond

One week from today, Joyful Life Ministries will host its dedication service. Together with many friends and family members who have prayed for the church, we will celebrate what God has done and dedicate ourselves to what He still wants to do. Looking back over almost two years of ministry, the hand of God is evident in our short history. From our beginning as a Bible Study Group in a local coffeehouse to our first service in a hotel conference room, God has blessed our efforts and established us more deeply in the community.

JLM now has a great facility and location that allows us to increase the impact we have on lives here in Richmond. It has also enabled us to begin ministries that were impossible to start before, when we were using borrowed rooms and buildings. In January, we hosted our first Marriage Conference in this new location. We've been able to have separate classroom sessions for various groups in our church. We're thankful for what God has done for us and we're looking forward to even more!

Short Time, Big Changes

Blogging capabilities and my knowledge of them have changed so much in a short time. Par for the course in our wonderful age of technology. I'm hoping to update the look of our former Ground Up blog and move all old blogs to this new location. Check back soon for a look at our archived articles and for more updates on the progress of planting a church...always an adventure! We've got so much to share; part of the reason the blog hasn't been updated more often is because the church has been so busy taking deeper root and becoming more established. Still, I'd like to keep you up-to-speed on the blessings and miracles we're experiencing. Watch this space for Good News!