Party on! A great way to share the Christmas story

Posted by Christine Hall

Most of us have a desire to share the Gospel, but we don’t know how. A very easy way to do that is by hosting an evangelistic Christmas Gathering—a holiday party featuring seasonal treats, sharing of Christmas traditions and a brief, non-threatening gospel message.

When I began my walk with Christ I attended a Bible study that came out of a Christmas Gathering. I had never studied the Bible before and the materials were very easy to use. I have since hosted Christmas Gatherings for co-workers, neighbors and mothers at my children’s school. This year my husband and I are hosting one for an apartment complex in our city. I am convinced that hosting a Christmas Gathering is one of the easiest and most effective ways to share my faith.

I will say that I don’t know if sharing my faith is ever comfortable for me. But it is worth it. I’m glad someone took the risk to tell me about Christ. I was very afraid to share Christ with the people I knew. But I had to be willing to risk what other people thought of me if I really cared about them and where they’re spending eternity. Are you willing to risk your reputation for the sake of the gospel?

We provide training, which will be held from 6:15-8:30p.m. on Monday, Nov. 9th at Sonshine Center in Menasha. You will see a demonstration of what actually happens during a Gathering and discuss everything from spiritual preparation to follow up. The cost is $12 and includes a detailed instruction manual.

A trained speaker will be provided for your Gathering (or you can choose your own speaker and have them attend training the same night). Speakers are given a clear presentation of the gospel which they personalize and share at your Gathering.

To register, please call Doris Steinberg at 751-3855 or pick up a brochure at the information station in the CTR lobby.

CTR’s Food Pantry takes a new approach

Did you know that CTR’s Food pantry started out the year serving about 16 families each month? The number of people in need of the Food Pantry’s resources is growing, according to staff ministry leader Tracy Komassa. “We have seen an increase in the number of families coming to CTR’s Food Pantry in the summer and now the fall months, and we’re getting many more voice mails requesting food,” she says.

Faces behind the forms

In order to meet people’s physical as well as the spiritual hunger, the Food Pantry team is taking a new approach to how people are served by consolidating the food pickup hours to just one day a week. The idea is to ensure that families and volunteers can meet face to face and begin to develop personal relationships with the families while helping them find community resources they may not know about.

Komassa says many of these families have never been inside our doors before.

“We want them to feel comfortable with us and know that we here to help. By getting to know them, our volunteers are also better able to meet additional practical needs as well as their spiritual needs. We are open to giving them tours of our church and hope they feel welcomed,” Komassa says.

The need

CTR’s Food Pantry Team has almost a dozen volunteers—not nearly enough to handle the influx of food and people in need. Komassa says it would be awesome if more volunteers could be available during the new Food Pantry Hours on Tuesdays from 8:30 – 9:30 a.m. or 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.

As for food, the pantry can always use donations to help meet the hunger need in the Valley. “Most of us think of canned goods, but what we always run short of is the grains like boxes of breakfast cereal, pastas and rice,” Komassa says.

If you can help, please call 730-8383 ext. 416.

Tomatoes: The Legend of Louie

A personal story shared by one of Christ The Rock’s master gardeners, Tammy Borden.

I confess, I’m not much of a vegetable gardener.  I much prefer the delicate beauty of flowers and using them to design a stunning landscape.  For some reason, a pepper plant swaying in the breeze doesn’t bring me the same delight as that of the tender blossom of a bleeding heart or daffodil.

But then there is the tomato… Yes, I know, to the true botanists out there it’s not technically a vegetable, but a fruit.  Although, in 1887, the U.S. Supreme Court did apparently rule that it was indeed a vegetable. So legally, it seems, the tomato is not a fruit. Ah, but I digress.

For me, it’s not the most attractive of garden plants, so that’s not why I cherish it so much.  And it’s not so much that I even like the taste of tomatoes.  I would much prefer a freshly pulled carrot after wiping the dirt off on my sleeve, or those sweet sugar snap peas plucked right from the vine.  Yes, my love of the tomato runs deeper than my taste buds.  My love of the tomato is because of love itself.

Compassion Gardens have begun!

Posted by Patty Dempsey

Our Campus Garden planting team digs in.

What a great morning we had planting our brand new Campus Garden!  On Saturday, May 30th, fifteen people (some not shown in picture)  joined together to help plant our 30×50 foot Campus Garden. Our vision for the garden is to invite anyone in our church to help.  As food becomes ready to harvest, we openly invite you to take some of the food if you need it, take some to give to a family you know who could use it, or help bring the rest to a local food pantry.  If you don’t have your own garden or simply want to work together on a garden with other people, here’s your chance.

Planting takes planning!

Last Saturday on our planting day, even in the on and off drizzle we had a lot of fun.  It was especially exciting to hear people connect through their own garden stories and sharing of garden tips.

We had beginners working alongside experienced gardeners, and everyone got down and dirty in the mud!

Gardening is for the shoe-hardiest among us!

The Campus Garden is just one of the gardens in our new ministry called Compassion Gardens.  If you’ve seen the grounds of our church lately, you have noticed the transformation that has been taking place not only with the Campus Garden, but the Hmong Gardens as well. 

CTR Reaches Farther at Double Portion

We just received a wonderful letter from one of our Community partners who came to our reaching farther challenge weekend a few weekends ago, and we wanted to share it with you:

Dear Christ The Rock,

           Participating in the Reaching Farther Challenge Weekend was an uplifting experience for everyone from Double Portion. Everyone who worked at the booth was overflowing with enthusiasm and joy in describing their experiences. They talked about being blessed by the church service with the understanding gained from the goats and sitting on the floor, and they were touched and gained insight by visiting the booths of other missions. Everyone considered it a blessing to be a part of the Reaching Farther Challenge Weekend.

          The connections and relationships made at the booth have breathed a new life into Double Portion. Our volunteers who met the “Rockers”, as they called themselves, were impressed that those who came to the booth didn’t have to be persuaded to serve the needy.

OAKS spreads its branches

“As she stood in what was left of her belongings after the fire had destroyed everything, she made the statement that the Lord had impressed on her heart recently not to hold on to the things of this world too tightly. Wow! Was that ever true in one of the most heart wrenching attempts to help a husband and wife who had just lost it all.”

Stories like this one are an incredible reminder not only of how change can happen in an instant, but also that we are all called to help when one of our neighbors is in the midst of a storm. Or in this case, a fire.

This is just one of many stories you’ll find on the new OAKS page, as our Organized Acts of Kindness and Sacrifice ministry spreads its branches and unites its volunteers with our CTR Body online. The new site is in its infancy, and will eventually allow you to click on a calendar so you can see the needs and opportuntities to help people right in your own neighborhood or community.

She is loved!

Posted by Nancy Leschke

Each February for the past four years, the this One’s for the girls team has brought a reminder of God’s love to the women who work in local exotic dance clubs.

In honor of Valentine’s Day this year, we will be visiting clubs on February 10, 11, and 12. Each woman will receive a small gift of chocolate, with a gift tag telling her she is loved, and that she is precious to God.

We hope to visit six clubs, including a new club in Green Bay that we visited for the first time at Christmas. Thank you for praying for the Christmas gift nights! We had many meaningful conversations with the young women we met. The girls were surprised and delighted to be remembered with a gift, and we talked to many who were new and had never before received a gift from the team.

Your support is so important to us, and we would greatly appreciate your prayers for our Valentine nights. Thank you for caring about these dear daughters of God, and for being an essential part of sharing Christ’s love with them!

Christmas Gifts for the Girls

As all of us go about our Christmas preparations, the team members of this One’s for the girls have been busy planning our Christmas gift nights.  We visited one Fox Valley club already, with plans to visit three more in the Valley and one in Green Bay.

Would you please pray for us on December 10, 17 and 18 as we visit with young women who work as exotic dancers?  We deeply desire that each woman would feel God’s love for her, and that the Gospel message attached to each gift would sink deeply into each heart.

A voice and a mission

If you’ve been coming to Christ The Rock in the past year, you may have heard the gorgeous voice of Danen Kane, a local musician from Little Chute.

There is just something about his authenticity and honesty as he sings to and plays for his Creator, and that’s what makes Danen such an inspirational worship leader on weekends here. We are blessed to have him on our team and in the missions field where Danen ministers to people locally and globally who are hungry for a message of healing and hope.

Next weekend Danen will be at Cup O’ Joy in Green Bay for a concert, and you can catch him Friday, December 12 at 7:30 p.m. He is encouraging all who come to bring a non-perishable food item for the Salvation Army Food Pantry. Click here to find out more, or visit Danen’s MySpace page.

A meal of abundance

What a blessed Thanksgiving tradition we have at Christ The Rock.  Ever since we’ve been a church (26 years), we’ve served some sort of meal in our community. And for the past 15 of those years, we’ve done it in a very big way.

This year our Thanksgiving Meal chairman Dave Lemke personally cooked 200 turkeys in our CTR kitchens and organized a team of 500 volunteers. In all, 3,200 meals were prepared and served.

The turkeys and all of the side dishes are donated. With 5,000 servings of potatoes and stuffing, 2,500 servings of green bean casserole and cranberries, and about 400 pies and various donated pastry and bread items, everyone had enough.

Volunteers served about 1,200 of those meals at Monarch Gardens in Appleton, and the remainder were delivered to people’s homes. For many on those routes, our delivery people were the only human contacts they had for the holiday traditionally spent with family and friends.

As the need continues to rise in this down economy, we are very thankful that the donations of time, money and food has not fallen off. God is great!

Check out our photo gallery of Thanksgiving 2008: