Sunday mornings at Emmorton

What will Sunday mornings look like at Emmorton Elementary School?

The Vine's core leadership is praying and reflecting on how we can effectively use our time on Sunday mornings. One of our values is to guard against pulling our people into too many planning meetings. This means, the more we can accomplish on Sundays, the more time we'll have for family and mission!. So here's our first stab . . .

8:00/8:30 - set-up and prayer

9:30 - "grassroots" worship - think participation! have an instrument? bring it. made a worship video? show it. write a poem? read it. We'll use The City to collaborate on the worship theme and bring the best ideas to share during this time. Families with children will worship together.

9:55 - fellowship and kid check-in time - we'll take a break, grab some coffee and conversation and check our kids into children's worship.

10:05 - teaching - time to hear the Word and apply the Word, we'll use media - video, drama, prezi, etc. to learn

10:25 - communion - every Sunday! we promise

10:35 - community-building breakouts - a time for discipleship and team building as we learn how to "bear fruit" as The Vine. We'll spend time discovering our personal mission, affinities, spiritual gifts, how we fit together as a team, training on the tools we'll be using, planning events, etc.

no later than 11:00 - pack up

we recognize this a major shift from starting at 11:00. Remember, our mission. remember your call. We are moving places and times to love our community into a relationship with Jesus Christ. Starting between 9 and 10 is optimal for our culture as is ending by 11:00. Share your comments.

Project 10:2b

Will you pray with us and for our mission?

Project 10:2b is an easy way to remember The Vine daily in prayer. Simply set your watch, cell phone or PDA alarm to 10:02 a.m. or p.m.

Why 10:02?

In Luke 10:2, Jesus tells his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field. " (NIV)

Eugene Peterson in The Message translates Jesus' words this way - “What a huge harvest! And how few the harvest hands. So on your knees; ask the God of the Harvest to send harvest hands."

We are praying at 10:02 and invite you to join with us where ever you are. We need harvest hands and we need to ask God (actually beg from the depths of our souls!) for workers. The good news is - God wants to answer this prayer. He's just waiting to be asked! So join with us. Let's see God increase His Kingdom through the prayers and mission of Christ's followers.

Community Prayer Watch . . . Give Me Your Eyes

Yesterday, The Vine experimented.

We "went."

to Starbucks, Bob Evans, Walmart, Target, Klein's, Kohls, etc.

Our mission? To not "love our neighbor" in theory but to see actual faces of the people who live around us, work around us, play around us . . . and to ask God to help us love them like He does. We went out to pray and to begin to develop a heart, after God's own heart, for our neighbors. And yesterday was Sunday, which meant we were praying for many who choose to do something different on their Sunday mornings than go to church.

I took two of my kids to Walmart - to pray aisle by aisle and to be open if God wanted to use us to bless others. At first, it felt weird pushing an empty cart around Walmart - we were there for a higher purpose but I mean everybody else was there to shop! Then when we did put a few things in our cart, it felt weird because I felt like, why would we be shopping while we were praying? (Still have that nasty habit of compartmentalizing my spiritual life - left over from my days as a "Modern.")

After a morning of worship in the market place (yes worship - read Romans 12:1-2), we came back to Bel Air church to share our experiences. Everybody had a different story. All good. Some began to dream of how we could do ministry in the market place. "We need to begin hanging out at Starbucks - being available." Very cool . . . because that is the essence of missional - to go where people are and do worship (yes worship - have you read Romans 12:1-2 yet?) there rather than trying to get people to come to our worship in our building on our terms.

Alan Hirsch, my mentor from afar, says we have this missional DNA inside of us, but it is latent. It needs to be awakened. (a great book - The Forgotten Ways - read the review if nothing else) Yesterday, while everybody else went to worship, we WENT to worship. Go. Going. Matthew 28:19-20. Awakening latent missional DNA.

While in Walmart, without even realizing it, the words to the song below began flooding my heart. What if we prayed this everyday? "God, give me your eyes. . ."

Going shopping today? Tomorrow? Going out to eat? Paul says, "pray without ceasing . . ." I think I get it. And forty plus others get it too.