KidsCo in the Park

By admin | August 12, 2008

This Saturday, August 16th, we’re going to be taking KidsCo out of the building and into the great outdoors! This is going to be a huge event for all the children in Independence, so don’t miss out!
Starting at 7PM and lasting until 9PM, we’ll be having free snacks, free games, and a personal favorite, the bounce house!

There will also be giveaways, including 4 car seats. And for the parents, we will have a car seat technician that can show any parent how to properly install a car seat.

Like I said, all of Independence is invited, so bring yourself, your kids, and your friends, and we’ll all have a great time. The festivities will be held at Bingham Middle School, located here.
See you there!

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Serving Independence - Upcoming Events

By admin | June 25, 2008

Hey everyone! Matt Scott here, resident shady-why do they let him hang around?-guy. Well, despite my reputation, I do have a few service opportunities to talk about that we can all be a part of. “Like what?” you say. Well, I’m glad you asked.

Popsicles at McCoy Park

This Saturday (June ~~23rd~~ edit: 28th! sorry everone!), we’re going to go to McCoy Park (info here) to hand out popsicles, or Flavor Ice, or whatever you call those awesome, cool treats. We’re meeting there at 1 PM and we’ll go until we can’t! This is going to be a great practical way to show Jesus to the community through our actions and our conversations with people. We’ll all be meeting up at the park, so if you can make it just look for me or Jason.

Extreme School Makeover

This summer, the Independence school district is working to improve many of their schools’ facilities. We can help them out by volunteering as part of their Extreme School Makeover on July 26th and 27th. To find out more about the event, click the link above, and to sign up online click here. As a group, we are going to sign up to work Saturday, July 26th in the AM time period at the Rock Creek/Korte Elementary school (located here). Also, if you want, you can indicate on the sign up sheet that you are part of the LifeConnection group.

Jeans for Guatemala

This project is very interesting and has far-reaching effects. The Maya-Mesoamerica Mission is helping women start their own small business to produce sustainable income. To help with this effort, they are asking for jeans to send to women to give them a product to sell.

Now I know that some of us have that pair of jeans that’s still good but for whatever reason don’t wear anymore. And I know we will probably try to sell them off at garage sales, with mixed success. In the next month or so, we will be going out on a Saturday morning to see if any garage sales have any leftover jeans they’d like to donate, but in the meantime, if you like to shop garage sales, keep an eye out for piles of jeans. I was able to get a whole trash bag full of them from some nice folks as they were closing down their sale for the day. If that happens to you, just bring them on a Sunday morning and look for me, and I will definitely take your jeans.

As a side note, they will not accept any jeans that have holes or are in any way dysfunctional (broken zipper, missing button, etc.).

That’s all for now, but keep checking here, your inbox, and the Loop to find out about more opportunities to serve our community.

Matt Scott
Community Services Coordinator

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OnePrayer: Risk-Takers

By admin | June 16, 2008

This week at LifeConnection we began a brand new teaching series titled OnePrayer. The idea was developed by LifeChurch in Oklahoma.

Basically, churches from around the world are joining together responding the the question, “If you could pray just one prayer to God, for the Church, what would it be?” Many are dong so via video, which enables churches to hear teaching from gifted communicators from all around the world. LifeConnection’s prayer Sunday morning was, “Lord, make us risk-takers.”

Being that it was Father’s Day, the message was geared especially to the dudes. I won’t go into great detail about the content of the message, I’ll simply have you go listen to it here. It’s not up just yet, but come back in a day or two and it should be ready to go.

Generally, we try enhance the musical worship by developing a song list that is consistent as possible with the teaching for the morning. Rather than bombard people with lots of different small ideas, we try to communicate one big idea. We took a little longer than usual settling down on the specific direction for the teaching when we were doing musical planning, so we were a bit less intentional with the consistency of that big idea this time around. Check out the set:

When I Think About the Lord: Shane and Shane
Forever: Chris Tomlin
Beautiful Jesus: Kristian Stanfill
How Great is Our God: Chris Tomlin
How Great Thou Art: LifeConnection style (who was the original composer?)

We were going to follow the teaching with How Great Thou Art, but Rev. Allen came up to us pre-service because he was concerned it was too pretty to follow a teaching that was going to challenge dudes to quit being so pretty. With that, we followed the teaching with Beautiful Jesus and How Great is Our God. In hindsight, it was a good move and actually very consistent.

One memorable statement from the morning: “We don’t work up the courage to become risk-takers by mustering it up within ourselves. We become risk-takers by catching a fresh vision of God.” With that, I can’t think of two better songs to follow a teaching like that than these. It turned out to be an intense and challenging morning. I know my testosterone levels have increased significantly and I finally have chest hair. Till next time.

–Carson

Topics: Worship Experience, Events, Worship Gatherings | 2 Comments »

Legitimate Questions

By admin | June 2, 2008

Yesterday we began the first teaching of our new series Legitimate Questions. We addressed the very important question, “How could an all-loving God send anyone to hell?” We had our friend Jon Ralls address the question and he was very helpful and thoughtful with such an intense issue. Check it out here.

We opened up the morning with Nickel Creek’s Doubting Thomas. If you’re unfamiliar with the band you should check them out. The band’s mandolin player, Chris Thile, is among the best in the world. And thankfully, we had our friend Roger Brant, who’s ability nearly matches Thile’s, to play on the song with us. The tune was a perfect fit for the beginning of Legitimate Questions.

What will be left when I’ve drawn my last breath,
Besides the folks I’ve met and the folks who know me,
Will I discover a soul saving love,
Or just the dirt above and below me,

I’m a doubting thomas,
I took a promise,
But I do not feel safe,
Oh me of little faith,

Sometimes I pray for a slap in the face,
Then I beg to be spared ’cause I’m a coward,
If there’s a master of death I’ll bet he’s holding his breath,
As I show the blind and tell the deaf about his power,

I’m a doubting thomas,
I can’t keep my promises,
‘Cause i don’t know what’s safe,
oh me of little faith

Can I be used to help others find truth,
When I’m scared I’ll find proof that its a lie,
Can I be lead down a trail dropping bread crumbs,
That prove I’m not ready to die,

Please give me time to decipher the signs,
Please forgive me for time that I’ve wasted,

I’m a doubting thomas,
I’ll take your promise,
Though I know nothin’s safe,
Oh me of little faith.

Our musical worship set took place after the teaching:

Mighty To Save: Hillsong
Marvelous Light: Charlie Hall
Sing to the King: Candi Pearson

The morning’s musical set was great! I was very encouraged to see the congregation responding to God through the music. It was one of most fun mornings we’ve had yet.

–Carson Conover

Topics: Worship Experience, Worship Gatherings | 1 Comment »

A Generous Sunday

By admin | May 26, 2008

Yesterday we finished up the last message in our most recent series called Helix. We spent the last 5 weeks tracking through what we call our church’s core DNA. We hope to become a Missional Community of Beauty, Truth, and Generosity. So then, we took the time to consider what it might look like for us, individually and corporately, to become generous with our time, talent, and treasure.

We tried to highlight this teaching by choosing songs that would be a fit thematically. Check out the set-list:

Take It All: Hillsong United
Offering: Third Day
How Great is Our God: Chris Tomlin
Beautiful Jesus: Kristian Stanfill
Take My Life: Chris Tomlin

Overall, it was a great morning! One of most penetrating thoughts I recall is that, ultimately, we must understand that the gospel–God’s solution for the problem of sin in the person of Jesus Christ–is what will compel us to give our lives away to the world in generosity.

Philippians 2: 5-8
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

–Carson Conover

Topics: Worship Experience, Scripture, Worship Gatherings | No Comments »

Replenish Independence

By admin | May 16, 2008

Last Saturday I had the privilege of spending time with my friends from LifeConnection in an effort to replenish the city of Independence with much needed resources of food. Local food banks are in a great shortage, making it much more difficult for them to provide families in our city with the food that they need. So, we met last weekend at Bingham Middle School to gather empty grocery sacks and head to homes in the neighborhood. We simply traveled door-to-door inviting people in our community to serve alongside us by filling up those sacks with non-perishable foods. These sacks will then be collected and brought to the local food pantry at Immanuel Baptist Church.

The God of the Bible is a radically generous God. So, we too, want to embody the kinds of things that He values. What a simple way to take part in what God is doing in our own community! I find Replenish Independence to be a great way to honor God by valuing the people He is concerned about. Our hope is that you will feel welcome and encouraged to take part in this project with us too.

We will meet again tomorrow, the 17th at 10am, in the parking lot of Bingham Middle School to re-group and head back to those neighborhoods to pick up the food. We will simply travel to those homes, pick up the sacks off of their front porches, and then transport them to the food bank. It’s going to be a great morning and we hope to see you there!

–Carson Conover

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Good News on the Support Trail

By admin | April 24, 2008

You may not have realized this but in order for LifeConnection to exist we need tons of outside partners to give monthly financial support. We have a goal of becoming self-sufficient (existing on only our internal giving) within 3 years (by February 2011). This will allow us time to grow as a church and see our internal giving meet our needs. But until that happens we will need God to raise up like-minded individuals who will join with us financially.

Over the next few months we will be losing some significant support as several one-year commitments come to completion. So I have been praying that God will raise up new support.

I just found out a contributor that was leaving in May will continue on until the end of December at a lower level. While we will be losing significant monthly support from this organization their continued support at a lower level will help us immensely and I am so grateful to God for answering our prayer.

We still need to see God raise up new funds over the next several months. Feel free to pray with us in this regard. God has been so faithful to provide every financial need we’ve had to this point that we trust he will do so with this as well.

Thanks for your prayer.

Topics: Update | No Comments »

Praying with LifeConnection

By admin | April 8, 2008

This past Sunday we considering Encountering God through Prayer. As a church we want to pray with and for one another. So we are going to inaugurate a weekly prayer post here on the LifeConnection Blog.

How do you post a prayer request here?

2 Ways: