First Meeting: Aug 19th at 7:00pm

On Tuesday, we'll get caught up with each other in 2 ways:

1. What's been going on?
2. What has God been teaching you?

Please email me 3-5 photos from the summer by Monday night (8/18) so that your photos can be in on the slideshow. Prizes* may be awarded for:

• Craziest photo
• Most creative photo
• Best thematic representation of the Sermon on the Mount message

Remember to send those photos!

* Prizes may include: fruit roll-ups, toys that Tommy has outgrown, coupons, princess stickers, pencils/crayons/chalk, rarely-used business cards, cool drawings, 6 free months at Mountainside fitness, a song, advice on how to run a yard sale, or many other questionably valuable items

Potential Schedule

For the past couple years, we've been doing the Study/Potluck/Study/OffWeek schedule and it has worked fairly well. After the game night last Friday, some of us brainstormed changes to the schedule to see if we could get more informal fellowship. I also wanted to try to incorporate all of the elements of the home-group (previous post)

Here's an idea that we came up with: (see to the right for an example of the 1st 8 weeks)

We still have 2 studies and a potluck per month, but have added in a night which will alternate monthly between a men's and women's night out - mostly just to have fun and build relationships.

It gets the family potluck moved to a Friday so it's not on a school night and each family would still just need 2 babysitting nights/month.

What do you think?

Home Group Elements

It seems like at our stage of life, everyone is busy. But we've all made a commitment to participate in a home group.

Why?

For me, it is to learn more about my God and my Savior - for my own sanctification and to somehow try to glorify Him. But also to experience the joy of fellowship with my friends and to hear and tell how God works in our lives.

I love it when God opens my eyes to a new or deeper truth about Him, but I also love getting together with a brother and working thru a trial or just talking football.

Now that I think about it, I can come up with 6 elements of being in a home-group that are important, at least to me:

1. Study - #1, that's really why we meet
2. Prayer - individual and group
3. Worship - singing praise to Him
4. Intentional fellowship - prayer-requests, accountability, carrying each others burdens, etc
5. Chill-time fellowship - like the awesome game night we had last weekend
6. Family fellowship - allowing kids to observe our home group and see strong Christian families

What about you? What elements are important to you?