On Sunday we collected our Impact offering and God continues to be a faithful provider. We casted a vision to Restore and asked for $100,000 in one morning, approximately 10x what normally comes in. This money would go to the launch of our 2nd campus in Liberty.
I am thrilled to share that on Sunday, the people of Restore responded in faith and gave an overwhelming $137,000!!! The people in this church community continue to blow me away with their generosity.
Rick McKinley of Imago Dei in the Northwest, says “It isn’t giving ’til it hurts” and I know that people have made HUGE sacrifices to see the Jesus mission carried out here in KC.
Thanks Restore!! My prayer is that God continues to bless us, individually and as a church, that we might continue to be more generous with what is HIS!
Much of what has happened in the last 12 months at Restore has revolved around reproduction; it was the theme of our last 12 months. We’ve reproduced:
contributors
leaders
small groups
celebration services
and now a new church Liberty
A culture of reproduction is in place at Restore, it’s embedded deep and I love that. We, as a First Team believe that this next year be about TRANSFORMATION. We have the 3 C’s at Restore: Celebrate, Connect, & Contribute. What if in the next year all 3 of these experiences could be taken deeper? What if…
we didn’t just celebrate together on Sunday but we all heard from God daily thru prayer and reading the Bible
we didn’t just connect in the social space of small group but began intimate relationships of accountability and transformation
we didn’t just contribute our time and money but were transformed into people of generosity, recognizing that all we have comes from God
Much of what I’ve posted this past year has to do with mission and movement. It’s our culture, it’s what we do, and will continue to do. Now I see my focus and the focus of Restore turning more towards the heart and it’s transformation…
1. Sunday was a big day at Restore. We announced the launch of our 2nd campus in Liberty, MO led by Nate Williams. Liberty is set to launch in the Spring of 2010.
2. Along with that, we challenged our people to either GO or Stay to GO. We got an overwhelming response from people saying that they we’re either going to Liberty or staying and stepping up into a contributing role.
3. If you made a GO commitment, you’re next step is to tell the Facebook world. Go to Restore’s GO page to find out how you can share your GO with others!!
4. Of course, we love to tell stories at Restore. Here’s Tracy’s GO story
On my vacation last week I read the book Good To Great by Jim Collins. I know I’m behind in just now reading this book, but better late than never.
As I read the book, I passed everything through the filter of the Church as a whole, my chucrh, and their impact. The Hedgehog Concept was the most interesting part of this book for me. The Hedgehog Concept asks 3 questions:
What are you deeply passionate about?
What drives your economic engine?
What can you be the best in the world at?
The answers to these questions have pointed organizations into the direction from good to great. Here’s what it looks like:
So apply this to your church, your ministry, your mission, and ask yourself these 2 questions:
What are you deeply passionate about?
What drives your transformational engine?
What can you be (not, what are you) the best in the world at?
About a year ago, Patrick O’Connell, myself, and the entire Restore team began to formalize and organize where God was leading us to take action in our city. I remember Patrick and I driving across Colorado and Kansas, heading home from The Externally Focused Church conference, dreaming up our mission statement, our values, and our methods. It was fun getting it off the ground, but Patrick and the ReachOut leaders in the past year have done an amazing job leading Restore in serving and loving our city. Below is a video to promote a citywide serve day next week, but it also asks some tough questions and gives a recap of the last 12 months of ReachOut. For more on ReachOut, visit serve.love.change.org
On Sunday, Restore celebrated it's 1st birthday! It was a great morning with an attendance of 622!
To end the morning we showed the following video. This video sums up what God has been up to at Restore this year. Lives have been changed for eternity in this past year and we wanted to celebrate that.
Going into the week, I didn't feel like we had the appropriate song to end the morning. So I did something I haven't done for a while… I wrote a song. What I love about it is that the song was specifically for our community at Restore and to sing it as a community was AWESOME!
Nate, once again, rocked this video. And thanks to Patrick & Josh for the extra help! Enjoy the video & song!
For whatever reason, this was one of the hardest series to get through of Restore's first year. Smashed fingers (3 different people), lighting complications, school play set to work around, relational conflict, 3 flat tires, 1 car accident, snow storm, a funeral and more…these are some of the things that the Restore team and our leaders faced while executing this series.
At the same time, it was one of my favorite. The way it ended was the highlight. To end the series seeing more hands lifted high than I've seen at Restore, singing "I will rise when He calls my name. No more sorrow, no more pain" was awesome.
Ed, a Restore attender, shared his story of tough times throughout this series and I wanted to share. Thanks to Ed for sharing! My prayer is that lives are transformed and God is glorified.
