Church Plant “Firsts”

This Sunday Evening will mark a number of firsts:

• First worship service of our new church plant at 5:00 p.m. in the Worship Center.
• First message from Jayson on the five biblical stories that tell what this “city on on a hill” will look be like.
• First opportunity to truely join in this adventure

The name of our church plant will reflect its location. The location is prayerfully under consideration. We do know that many are waiting for the location to be know before making plans to participate, but we encourage you to consider the vision and see if God might be calling you and your family strategically apart from the location. We do believe that this will be a significant work wherever the Lord designs.

10/26 PM – UPDATE:
Pastor Jayson Turner announced that the new church will be located in the Bellevue City core and will be known as “The Downtown Church“. For more details, listen to the message entitled “The Vine” soon to be available on the website.

Dr. Mitchell on a Family Issue

Senior Pastor Jerry Mitchell makes a significant point about families that get built around children and their wants and desires. Sometimes they need something different than what seems culturally acceptable.

You might find this online article by another pastor to be helpful if Jerry’s comments pique your interest.

Something New – A Church

If you have been around Crossroads over the past few months you have heard about several elements of our vision and strategy for the future. A key element in that strategy is the ten-by-twenty project. CBC intends to engage in ten strategic church building initatives both local and foreign by the year 2020. There’s a lot to be done to get to the place of doing all of that, including eliminating our residual debt from the relocation to, and renovations of, our Eastgate facility.

However, by faith and the “principle of first-fruits”, the church leadership has determined to move ahead with a church plant locally as the first of the 10 X 20 initiatives. Pastor Jayson Turner has been primed and prepared for such a task. A number of Crossroads members have indicated a willingness and desire to engage in a new work. A compelling report from a select group researching church planting in light of the 10 X 20 proposal led the Elders to understand that God was calling CBC act soon. So … with a great deal of prayer and dependence on God, we have embarked on a new journey of church planting.

What will it be like? What are the distinctives going to be? Where will it be? How will if function? Rather than tell the story myself, check out Jayson’s message from the information service and get it first hand. As you’ll hear, Jayson is going to be unpacking the core values of the new church over the first five “services” of the new church. They meet on Sunday evenings at 5:00 beginning on October 26.

Check the church plant website regularly. Look for followup posts on this blog. And, while we know it won’t be for all, we ask all our members and friends to consider if God would have them commit to this significant task.

A Note About CBC and the Economy

It has certainly been a volatile and discouraging season for Wall Street … and for Main Street. One would have to be living in a very deep cave to be unaware of an unprecedented stock market dive on top of the housing meltdown on top of the credit crisis on top of record energy costs mixed (at least in our backyard) with striking workers, and impending layoffs.

The question I’ve been getting over the past few weeks has been “How will all this affect Crossroads?” The best answer I have right now is “I’m not sure.”  Historically, Crossroads has been surprisingly resiliant in the face of economic uncertainty – even when we had to make significant changes in our plans. I have no doubt that the same will be true in the next days. God will provide what is necessary to do the work he has called us to and the people he has placed in our fellowship have been very generous.

That said, we know we must be careful managers of God’s gifts through his people. Two weeks ago the staff began the process of creating contingency plans for each ministry should contributions decline. We have cash flow reserves that should help cushion any drop in giving. Our financial team is experienced and they have weathered tough times before. And we are encouraged by the commitment of CBC members like the one I spoke with last week. He made it clear his family was committed to the same giving level even though his income has already decreased.

We’ll keep you informed.

A Little Known Ministry

Believe it or not books are not dead. At Crossroads they still get read (as opposed to being used as doorstops or decorative elements). Most of our pastors’ offices are full of real books, with real covers, with real ink, on real pages. And even though many of us also use digital libraries like Logos or Bibleworks, there is just something cool about researching and digging through a book.

Which may be why we continue to maintain a lending library at Crossroads – we want to encourage reading of good books. Biographies, reference books, commentaries, books for kids … the whole scope of Christian literature hangs out in our library. And checking one out is easy, just talk with one of our very helpful volunteer librarians.

The library is located near the center of our facility with a door off the Children’s Center hallway. It is currently open and staffed every Sunday morning. Stop in sometime … browse about … you might find something that isn’t even available for your PDA yet. And you just can’t beat the “booky smell” of a real library.

And, if you’ve always wanted to be a volunteer librarian, send a note to Betsy Ercolini (bercolini@cbccross.net) - she can give you the inside story and put you to work.

About Junior High

Junior High School is such a wonderful, terrible, fun, crazy, and hard-to-describe time of life. We believe it is a prime time for ministry, and why we are taking great care to find and develop a new long-term Junior High Director to work with Donny and the youth team in shepherding these great kids. Since last May when Matt and Amy Chapman left for ministry in New Orleans we have considered over 80 candidates … without success. Phil Peterson has been doing a great job of filling the gap (while juggling his other responsibilities), and we are very pleased to have Nick as a Junior High intern for the year, so we have the bases well covered. We plan to re-engage in an intentional search for a new Director after the first of the year. Pray for our youth team. I’ll keep you up to date on the process.

Junior High Ministry webpage

A New Resident in Training – Welcome Nick!

CBC is commited to training people for ministry and to that end we have had an intentional intern program for over 20 years – in fact, Pastor Jayson Turner was one of our earliest interns. As were Steve Allen (now a missionary in Zambia), and Matt Chapman, (now in New Orleans). Student Women’s Ministries Director Tami Dale also began at Crossroads as an Intern. 

And just this week Nick Ippolito joined our team as a ministry resident (i.e., an advanced intern). Nick was born and raised on the Eastside and you can read a bit more about his story here. He ventured out to a Bible school in New Zealand where he was asked to stay on an lead an outdoor adventure training program. And that extra time in Kiwi-land led him to Hannah who is now his wife.

Nick will be working and training with the youth team for the next year, with a specific focus in Junior High Ministries.