Journey Group Leader's Celebration

See you Sunday, April 25 from 6-7:30PM in the Atrium of the Old Mill Campus.

Don't miss the Journey Group leaders celebration! Tell stories from this year, get the summer and fall calendar information and hear the vision from Lead Pastor Mark Ashton. This celebration is open to current and potential Journey group leaders. Please turn in apprentice and referral names and contact information to Chris Reikofski at 938-1580 or chrisr@cccomaha.org.

dusty white transitioning from CCC

The following is an email that I sent out to all Journey Group leaders on February 19, 2010:

I hit “send” with mixed emotions as this email traveled to hit your inbox.

After seasons of prayer, attempting to listen to whispers from the Holy Spirit, lots of discernment, and many conversations, I have decided to leave Christ Community’s pastoral staff team at the end of March.

Over the last couple of months Jaci and I have been leaning into Jesus in deep and fresh ways. As a follower of Christ, as a husband, as a father, and as a pastor I want to consistently be living my life in great obedience to God and his pathway for my personal transformation and the transformation of those that I lead and shepherd. As a result of that long obedience, I have accepted a position at Coram Deo (www.cdomaha.org) Church, where I will be leading the discipleship movement with a Gospel-centered focus on spiritual formation and mission. I will be developing many things in this context: premarital and marital approaches, small group communities, counseling situations, and more.

The future of CCC is bright, clear, and strong. We have not made this decision because of strong discontent or a lack of future leadership opportunities at Christ Community Church. Rather, as followers of Christ, we must be willing to trade in our comfort for calling, our current focus for His mission, and our plans for His future in all things. If we trust Christ, we must go through life that way.

As your Journey Groups Pastor it has been an honor to lead and serve alongside of you. Your affirmation, trust, and faithfulness are among a few of the characteristics that I have cherished during our time at CCC. Your efforts are an asset to the kingdom, to Christ Community Church, and to those that you intentionally engage with for God’s advancement. Please keep leading well, engaging your people in discipleship, and assimilating well into what the future holds for CCC discipleship efforts.

Although transition is healthy, it creates extra work and discernment for those involved. Please be praying for the Discipleship Team. Pray specifically for Mark Ashton and Tim Perry as they trust God in provision of future leadership. Pray for Reid Brown, Lisa Brown, and Bonnie Borgum. You all know that these people carry a heavy load for the discipleship of CCC. I have been and will continue to pray for your future leader. I look forward to meeting him and partnering with him as we all labor together for God’s glory.

Although I will be taking some vacation time at the end of March, I am clearing my calendar to meet with you and others at CCC. All the way to the end, I will be giving my best days to God-centered conversations, helping CCC leaders determine strategies going forward, and assisting the ministry efforts as deemed necessary.

If you would like to grab coffee or lunch, don’t hesitate to email me. With 100+ leaders I won’t be able to make “all the rounds” but I will do my best!

As my Pastoral efforts transition, I echo the words of the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:2-5, “For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.”

Thank you again for your partnership in the Gospel and for allowing me to serve you.

quarterly training for Thurs 02/04/10 cancelled

Due to the leader retreat this past weekend, the JG leader training for Thursday, February 4th, has been cancelled.

Updates to the Fear Curriculum

After the release of the Fear curriculum, there were several corrections that needed to take place. Those edits have occurred along with a Leader's Guide placed at the end of the study packet. This Leader's Guide contains an answer key for three of the lessons.

Fear Sermon Series Curriculum

On January 10, a new sermon series "Fear" begins and your journey group can further discuss themes and applications concerning the fears we face. A seven session curriculum is available for free download on the Journey group resource page

We trust this will be a valuable resources to help make disciples.

Christmas Season Curriculum

Ahh - it's that time of the season when we can enjoy great food, fellowship with family and gear up for the Christmas season. It is also that time when you may find yourself wondering what should our Journey Group study as we near the end of the David series.
There is a Christmas study on the Journey Group Resource page (http://www.cccomaha.org/journey-group-resources.php) to use during the next month. It is entitled:

Advent: Clash of Two Kingdoms

This four-part study looks at the ways that Jesus turned things upside down when he came to Earth. As the introduction to the study says, "[Advent is] more than a nice tale about a baby being born in difficult circumstances. It is the strategy of God and the tactics of the Son. It's about life, death, blood, confrontation, darkness, light, and war. It's the clash of two kingdoms."

You can download this study and make copies for your group at no charge. This study has a leaders guide along with a participant guide. It will help your group focus on the true meaning of Christmas. Take note that there is some other excellent down loadable studies around growing as a RISKS taking follower of Jesus.

ACCELERATE

At Christ Community Church we're on a mission to "double our impact." On October 9th and 10th leaders from CCC ministries will cluster together to ACCELERATE their God-given gifts and potential around that theme.

As a Journey Group leader you will benefit in many different ways - leadership mindset and inspiration, tools for your leadership toolbox, interaction with other leaders who can relate to your current ministry context, practical workshops, and the list goes on...

Friday / October 9 / 7 - 8:30PM
Saturday / October 10 / 9AM - NOON
Visit the "news feed" at www.cccomaha.org for a detailed schedule and list of leadership development workshops.

See you at ACCELERATE!

Dusty White
Journey Groups / Adult Discipleship

Journey Groups adopt a missionary

Below is a note drafted by Craig Walter, CCC's newest member to the Bridge/Global team. We (Journey Groups / Adult Discipleship) are partnering with the following efforts. As you read this note from Craig be pondering this phrase in the back of your mind: "is there anyone in my Journey Group that could OWN this idea for our group?"

Journey Group Leaders,

As part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Christ Community Church has always been a very mission’s focused church. To me this means that we don’t just talk about “doing” missions so we can check it off our list. Instead, we actively participate in developing RISKS disciples who are at their very heart “missional” people.

What does that mean? "Missional living" is a Christian term that describes a missionary lifestyle; adopting the posture, thinking, behaviors, and practices of a missionary in order to engage others with the gospel message. I know that’s the heart of your Journey Group Pastor Dusty White for all of the Journey Groups here at CCC.

One way we strive to do this here at CCC is to connect the hearts and minds of our people to our missionaries who are serving the Lord throughout the world. As we deepen our relationships with missionaries, understand the way they think and the way they live, it impacts the way we think and the way we live.

So we are asking each Journey Group to adopt a missionary. To begin with, that simply means the following:
Someone in your group (maybe you as the JG leader but we recommend getting someone else in your group to own this) keeps up-to-date on the issues and prayer requests going on in the life of your missionary. In the attachment below you will see a variety of ways to keep in touch with your missionary. For all the missionaries we recommend you send them an email and ask to be put on their list to receive their newsletters. For some, you can get more in depth information by reading their Blogs or connecting with them on Facebook.

Each time your group spends time in prayer, you remember to pray for that missionary
Depending on which missionary you choose there may be other ways to be involved in their lives and ministry, but we will leave that up to you and your group.

NEXT STEP: Please email Chris Reikofski at chrisr@cccomaha.org so we can get the ball rolling with this project. She will send you out a PDF list of CCC missionaries for you to puruse. After looking through the list, if there is a missionary that you are naturally drawn towards please communicate that to us so that we can start from there. If no preferences arise, we can help guide your Journey Group to a good fit for the adoption process.

If you have any questions or need any assistance, please contact Chris Reikofski, Craig Walter, or Dusty White at 330-3360.

Blessings,

Craig Walter
Global Outreach
craigw@cccomaha.org
(402) 938-1575

P.S. We have a list of missionaries and brief info on each of them for you to puruse. We won't be putting this info on the blog post for sensitivity reasons. Please note that on a couple of our missionaries the information sensitivity is set to HIGH. This means you must be very cautious in your communication to them through email. Please contact me first before you attempt to contact them for any reason and I can help you understand the guidelines.

This blog has moved!

Dear blog readers,

Christ Community Church has a new website. Hopefully you will find www.cccomaha.org to be useful for all things up and coming at CCC. One of the necessary changes was to move this blog. To continue to receive updates, please subscribe using the following link:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/cccomaha/journey-group-leaders

Thank you,

Greg Nunamaker
Web Manager
Christ Community Church

double your impact AS A LEADER

What will it look like for you as a Journey Group leader to "double your impact?"

A leader has to think about a lot of things. If you're a husband you have to think about leading your wife. If you're a CEO you have to strategically lead your company to it's next goal. If you're a Journey Group leader you have to ask God for wisdom and discernment on how to lead the 10 to 12 folks in your group. Along the way, your envisioning community and discipleship as a few of the chief goals while thinking about your next curriculum so that you can reach those goals. While all of this is true, let me challenge a "step it up" moment...

As a leader, how can you double your impact? In other words, the survival of a leader's role is the stuff that naturally ebs and flows (group meetings, socials, agendas, curriculum prep, etc.) but the impact of a leader focused on doubling his/her impact runs deeper than survival.

IMPACT trumps COMFORT
For instance, one of our Journey Groups that launched October 2009 has already doubled in impact. The leader dove right into this group creating community and discipleship - the goals of Journey Group DNA, but also took it to the next level by April of 2009. What did he do? He doubled his group! Although he and his wife were gaining a lot of momentum with the 8 couples that we hooked them up with in October, they released and commissioned one of those couples to become Journey Group leaders for the fall of 2009. Impact trumped their comfort level.

I grabbed coffee with the leader (of the first group) and we laughed together about how the DNA of the newest group that they commissioned is way different. The demographics are different. The interests are different. The age range is different. The curriculum emphasis is different. A lot is different because one group's impact doubled.

As a church, as leaders, we're on a quest to answer the double your impact question for every individual. What will your role be as a Journey Group leader considering this movement?

What if you just tried to double yourself? What if you looked at your group of 8 to 12 folks and invested some time (discipled intentionally) into 1 or 2 of those people that you think has leadership potential?

Over the years in small group ministry and ministry in general, I've come to terms with the fact that somebody else can reach people better than I can. No matter how hard I try and making it "fit" with certain folks - there is always someone I know, that I can influence, to lead that "fit" way better.

So what will it look like for you - personally in your shoes - to double? Wrestle with the Lord on this question. Ask the Holy Spirit to inspire the answer.

On the double,
Dusty