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RESTORE Celebrates One Year

Sunday was an incredible day at Restore Community Church.  Everyone brought their "A" game from the hospitality (300 cupcakes), to the arts team, to the three individuals who were interviewed, to everyone who attended.  And God surprised us again.   In total 622 people showed up for the celebration.  That is 200 more people than attended at our launch in March 2008.  I can't wait to see where God takes us in the next year.

Here is a recap of the Restore journey put together so well by Nate Williams.

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What can happen in a Year

One year ago, Restore had our very first Launch Team meeting.  It was an informational meeting that surprised us from the beginning.  We sent out 50 invites, got 70 rsvps and had 76 people attend.  From that meeting nearly 30 people committed to join the Restore adventure.

How things have changed in a year.  Last weekend, we had a record 532 people celebrate in two Sunday services.  We have literally hundreds of contributors serving both within Restore and throughout the community.  Twenty four people have taken their faith public in baptism.  Twenty people have taken trips to Haiti.  Over 110 adults, 85 kids and 40 students are in weekly small groups.

I have dreamed, prayed, and planned...and God continues to do immeasurably more than I could ask or imagine.

Hold on...it's going to be a crazy next year.

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The Vision of a Leader

Today at Restore, we continued with our series through the book of Nehemiah called, The Leader Within.  From Nehemiah 2 we discovered that the vision within a leader comes to life when the heartbreak of a leader shifts its focus to the way things should be.  We shared the story of Zach Hunter, a 15 year old young man who created Loose Change to Loosen Chains focused on eradicating modern day slavery.  His heart broke for children in slavery and he had to so something about it.

The highlight was sharing a video of my dear friend Lane Hunter, who is dying of a rare intestinal disease, who through his passion to share Jesus with everyone he can, touched the life of Jan Boothe who now attends Restore.  Thanks COMMUNITY and TJ Friesen for putting the video together.  Enjoy....

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Reproducing

This week I had the opportunity to speak to the launch team for the Lockport Campus of Parkview Christian Churchin Chicagoland.  This is an amazing church who are doing great things to reach people who are far from God.  They are passionate about reproducing their mission.

Last Sunday at Restore, I announced our plans to reproduce.  Beginning September 14th, Restore will launch its second Sunday morning Celebration service.  From a space perspective, we don’t need 2 services.   So why should we do this and why is this the right time.  Great question.

Our mission at Restore is

1. Helping people find their way back to God.
2. Mobilizing Christ Followers to change the world.
3. Reproducing leaders, artists, and churches.

 

So as our staff prayed and talked together these past couple of months we discovered a few things.

 

1. Some of our most dedicated contributors weren't able to fully experience what it meant to be 3C Christ Followers.  Theses dedicated small group leaders in Kids' City and Student Community have been contributing nearly every week since launch with no chance to celebrate together with the Restore family
2. We also realized that God has brought us dozens of new people who need to find a place to contribute by using their time and talents.  Jon Ferguson, one of my friends and mentors, has always told me that for people to feel "a part of it" they need a relationship and a responsibility.
3. The last thing we realized is that one of our mission statements is to reproduce and one of our values (spirit-led, missional, reproducing) is to reproduce, so we need to be about reproducing.

So beginning September 14th, Restore will have two services one at 9:30am and one at 11am.  Between now and then, we will be recruiting and developing new contributors and leaders to fill the expanded roles.

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Romeoville 10th Anniversary Celebration

Ten years ago, Community Christian Church became a multisite church.  I had the privilege to be the Campus Pastor when the Romeoville Campus launched and 552 people showed up on that very first Sunday in 1998.  That was one of those days completely marked in my memory.  Today at the Romeoville Campus, they celebrated the last 10 years.  I didn't get a chance to be there, but I was able to send this video message.  I can't wait to see what the next 10 years bring to COMMUNITY and the Romeoville Campus.

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Alan Hirsch

Today I am at Community Christian Church in Naperville hanging out with NewThing affiliate pastors.  We have been dialoging about the distinctives of this Network.  Here are a what we are wrestling through.

1. 1.  Reproduce at all levels
2. 2.  Collaborative Leadership
3. 3.  Risk Taking
4. 4.  Communitas

This afternoon we are listening to missiologist Alan Hirsch.  From extensive research into what has happened in the underground Chinese church over the past 60 years and his biblical understanding, he comes up with the following observations.

1. Every Christ Follower has the complete potential for world transformation.
2. Language drives actions and behavior.  He challenged us that when we begin to call ourselves a movement or identify with a movement, we will shift our behaviors to that for which creates a movement.
3. We need to recover the Ephesians 4 roles of apostle, prophet and evangelist within our churches and movements in addition to the accepted roles of pastor (shepherd) and teacher.  He boldly stated that you cannot have missional movements without the presence of apostolic ministry.
4. From Ephesians...."Some will become leaders....All will be ministers."
5. "Make an office out of it and you will kill it."
6. The 5 fold mission is essential APEST (Apostle, Prophet, Evangelist, Shepherd, Teacher)

Phenomenology of Movements includes

1. Foundation is Jesus as Lord
2. Communitas
3. Disciple Making
4. Missional - Incarnational
5. Apostolic Environment
6. Organic Systems

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Restore Launch Video Recap

At the Launch for Restore this past Sunday, we were blessed to have Jeff Boriss and Dave Dummitt from 242 Community Church in the house and they were shooting video for us.  242 Community is one of Restore's financial partners and part of the NewThing Network.  This video is a quick recap of the day. 

Thanks Jeff.

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Restore has Launched

It was an awesome day.  God is so good.  It started with the weather. It was 65 degrees yesterday and 70 today.

We prayed and prayed and God answered. We had some great stories of people far from God who are taking steps to Jesus.  I love watching people get it

We talked about becoming 3C Christ Followers and 40 people signed up to join a small group and hundreds took Replenish bags for our food drive.  I love this church!!!

The day went so well from setup to teardown.  The service went great from music, to video, to powerpoint, to teaching, communion and offering.  Tommy Bowman and the band were awesome.  It was so fun to be in that space and tell people about Jesus

We had people who came from VA, CA, IA, MI, AR, and IL to serve and celebrate with us from MO and KS.  Overall we had 420 people.  320 in the adult service and 100 in Kids' City and Jr High.

Here are some photos of the day...

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2 Days till LAUNCH

Its Friday night and in 36 hours Restore Community Church will launch its first weekly celebration service.    I couldn't be more excited.  I have met with each of our staff team this week and they are unbelievably prepared.  God has blessed Restore with a passionate staff team and a gifted launch team.  In addition there are 25 "missionaries" coming on Sunday morning from our partner churches to serve.

We are launching with a relationship series called "Crazy Little Thing Called Love".  I am praying that God will show up in an amazing way.  I know that people all the way from CA to VA and everywhere in between are praying for us.

If you read this...say a prayer or two.

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Restore - Preview Service #1

Yesterday Restore Community Church had our first preview service at Park Hill High School.  Overall it was a great success.  Having our first preview six weeks out from our launch gives us significant time to discover and correct issues.

The morning started off a little challenging with picking up the trailers.  Patrick O'Connell and I thought we were giving ourselves enough time by beginning at 5:30am, however the storage place where the trailers are kept is on a hill and the drive had a sheet of ice on it.  Unfortunately, our truck was only a two wheel drive.  After a couple attempts and a trip to the local 24 hour grocery store to get ice melt, we finally got the first trailer to the school and backed into place at 7am.  We retrieved the second trailer will a little less difficulty and had both there by 8am.  Only a hour late, so we were a little rushed to get everything together by our 10am service.

It was all hands on deck with our staff and launch team and they did a wonderful job pulling everything together from guest services, to creative arts, to stuco and kids' city.  Kudos to team mobilization.

For our preview services we chose to use the Arrested Development series, from the NewThing Big Idea, talking about Spiritual Development and the role of the individual, the church, and the Bible in guiding a Christ Follower from infancy to spiritual adulthood.  I think this is going to lay a strong foundation as we begin this journey together.

There was very positive feedback from adults and kids alike.  One of the kids who came asked their parents if they could come back the next week.  I was so proud of our team.  Just the stuff you want to hear.

We had great support from friends and family.  Sherry Gossman was here and wrote a great post about her experence (read it here). We had Jason Allen and a group from LifeConnection Church in Independence, and a group from Indian Creek Community Church and a large group including Justin Moxley from the Heartland Project and Cedar Ridge Christian Church.  Here were the numbers.   We had 96 total with 60 adults, 24 in Kids' City, and 12 in Stuco.

Our staff will do a full recap and review this Wed and make improvement plans for our Feb 3 preview service.

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