This past weekend we released the first ever Hub Activities Guide. It has everything you need to know about the Hub and profiles 25 classes led by people who are passionate about their topics. The Vineyard OP staff did not sit around and dream up classes we wanted to teach. We turned to the Vineyard OP community of Christ-followers and asked, "What are you passionate about? What has God gifted you to teach?" The Vineyard OP community responded with 25 classes in our first semester!

We are looking to that same Vineyard OP community to invite. You're the connection into the community. We're not doing any mass mailings or radio spots for this first semester of the Hub. That's because we are looking to you, to the people of Vineyard OP, to invite the people you know to join you in a class. We want to be the best friend our community ever had, and the Kingdom advances best in the places where you already find yourself every day. The relational touch of someone who lives in your neighborhood or someone you work with every day is a better bond than a random invite from a stranger. Random invites are okay, but I bet you know someone you see almost every day who would love to join you in a class at the Hub and would give you a chance to get to know them better. And remember: 100% of the people you don't invite won't come.

Take some time to look over the classes being offered. We have a wide variety of subjects being taught at different times on every day of the week except Sunday. You can sign-up online now, so go ahead and invite your friend and get registered for the class of your choice. Some classes have limits for the number of students who can register, so you don't want to wait too long. All class registrations and fees must be received by no later than one week before the class starts.

We have hundreds of copies of the Hub Activities Guide available at Vineyard OP each weekend. Take as many copies as you need with you to give some to your friends and to spread the word about the Hub. Take some copies to leave wherever you find yourself each week: in your favorite coffee shop, at the grocery store, your racquet club, your gym, your salon, your workplace.

If  you are regular attendee or member at Vineyard OP you are welcome to come to the classes, but we ask that you bring a friend with you.  Vineyard OP believes the resources God has given us can be used to help our community fo Christ followers.  There's nothing wrong with that.  But we are called to serve our local community as well.  So, we invite you to join us in a class as long as you bring a friend who does not regularly attend Vineyard OP with you.  This is just another way to use the resources God has given to Vineyard OP to meet practical needs in our city, so spread the word.

That's all for now,

David Andersen

Vineyard Church of Overland Park

As you may know, Vineyard Church of Overland Park has been getting more and more involved in and with our community. About a year ago God gave us the vision of Vineyard Church of Overland Park becoming the best friend the Community of Overland Park has ever had. We want to be a church that sees what God is already doing and joining in. All across this world, we see multiple ways God is moving, both through faith based organizations and non faith-based organization. The fun part is listening to God, to see which ones He wants us to partner with. We believe Head Start of Shawnee Mission is one of those non-faith-based organizations where God is already at work. For example, we have heard stories about special-needs kids who were not able to walk, learn to walk for the first time during their time at Head Start.

Around ten years ago, Vineyard Church of Overland Park has been in a partnership with Head Start of Shawnee Mission. Once a year, at Thanksgiving, we would receive a list of families who needed a meal for Thanksgiving. Through the experience of delivering the Thanksgiving meals to the families, we found that Head Start already knew where the families were. They already have a relationship with the poor of Johnson County.

You ask yourself, there is poor in Johnson Country? That is correct! Based on the information provided by United Community Services and Johnson County Children and Youth Trends for the year 2009, there are 21, 998 people in Johnson County that live at or below 100% of the Federal Poverty Level. The Federal Poverty Line for a family of 3 for the year 2009 is $18,310, which is an income of roughly $9.50 per hour. 14% of these families living at 100% of the Federal Poverty Level in Johnson County are children under the age of five and nearly 50% of the families living below the poverty line include at least one child under the age of five.

Head Start of Shawnee Mission today serves 218 low-income children and families residing in the Shawnee Mission School District. I say all of this, because there is a need right in our own backyard and Vineyard Church of Overland Park has an opportunity to join in to what God is already doing through Head Start.

Last year, as a newly formed outreach team, we were asking God for direction in where He wanted our church to serve. What could Vineyard Church of Overland Park do to be the best friend our community ever had? Then it occurred to us, why don't we partner more with Head Start of Shawnee Mission? They already know where the families are and have relationship with them.
At the beginning in 2010, we began to deepen our relationship with Head Start through our Outreach Ministry. For three months, during the summer, we partnered with them by providing a Weekend Meal Supplement for the families of Head Start and we are excited to inform you that because of your generosity we delivered over 190 grocery bags to Head Start for their families.

We're so excited about this partnership. Join us as we continue serve our community by building more relationships with the organizations of our community.

Kevin MacPhail

Vineyard Church of Overland Park

On Saturday, June 12th, Convoy of Hope is holding an event for the people of Kansas City. The event is being held at Swope Park, and they are still looking for volunteers to help staff the many positions required to do something of this magnitude. You can go to the Kansas City Convoy of Hope website to learn more about the event and to volunteer or join in on supporting the event.

In 2009, at the Vineyard National Conference in Galveston, Texas, I got the joy of being part of what Convoy of Hope is doing. Galveston had been ravaged by Hurricane Ike in September 2008, and one year later the clean-up was still in progress. I remember Bert Waggoner, the National Director of Vineyard USA, saying how beautiful, lush and green Galveston Island had been prior to Ike. What we saw while we were there was a stripped landscape, yellowed by the sun.

The devastation left the people in need. Many had simply abandoned their homes and walked away. Others who remained were suffering through the beginning of the economic downturn paired with the slow rebuilding of the Galveston infrastructure.

Vineyard USA leaders determined to hold a Convoy of Hope event during the national conference to bring relief. The entire city of Galveston was invited, and all of the Vineyard USA pastors and staff attending the conference were asked to volunteer to serve.

I chose to be part of the food distribution team. Convoy of Hope brought in skids - literally hundreds of skids of food. We blocked in an area with two rows of skids and people walked through with bags. As they passed, I took my item and dropped it into the bag. Each person at each skid did the same, and, as the people walked, they ended with a full bag of groceries. We did this over and over again for hours until all the food bags had been filled. It was good, hard work.

But food distribution was only one of the services offered that day. There was a tent where hundreds of pounds of food was being prepared and served. Another tent offered free clothing, while another was a place where the attendees could receive prayer. Thousands of people were blessed that day.

Now we are doing the same thing here in Kansas City. It is exciting to see over forty Kansas City churches and many private businesses join in serving and supporting this effort. Kansas City will truly be blessed. If you are able to join in, please prayerfully consider what role you should play in supporting the Kansas City Convoy of Hope.

As the outreach pastor, I am aware that Vineyard OP is also going to Hope Faith that same day. As we considered what to do with this "conflict", we determined more opportunities to serve was better than fewer, and so we decided to keep both on the calendar. We know God will direct us to serve where He sees best.

God bless you,

David

I want to take a moment to give you an update on Vineyard Mercy Response efforts in Haiti.  From their website, Phil Schissler, director of Vineyard Mercy Response:

"Due to the generous outpouring of compassion and mercy by the Vineyard community, Vineyard USA Mercy Response is pleased and excited to announce plans for a building project to aid the people of Haiti. The Haitian people continue to suffer the effects of the devastating earthquake that occurred on 1-12-10. Our hope is that this project will be of long term benefit in providing a foundation from which other beneficial ministries may begin.

"The Vineyard Community, in partnership with Convoy of Hope and the Global Aid Network ("GAiN", a ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ) will be coming alongside a local Haitian church to construct a facility to house and feed relief workers. The facility will be located just outside of Port au Prince on a 40 acre site owned by the local church. When the construction phase is complete, the camp will be staffed and operated by GAiN and Convoy in conjunction with the local church. The camp will include facilities to house 150 relief workers, bathroom facilities, dining hall, kitchen, and staff housing.

"The camp will be self sufficient, with its own electrical, water and waste water systems. The construction of the camp will be a closed-end project for Mercy Response. The local church pastor, Esperandieu Pierre, GAiN and Convoy are committed to a long-term ministry plan based at the site. That plan includes enlarging the church, and the construction of a school, hospital/clinic, warehouses, and an orphanage.

"There will be an opportunity for teams to travel to Haiti to participate in the construction phase of this project and we anticipate starting construction in late June."

Over the next few weeks, Vineyard OP will be working out the details for a mission trip to Haiti to join Vineyard Mercy Response in their efforts there. If you are interested in this trip, please contact me and let me know.

I include this last little bit as an opportunity to explain why we would do something like going to Haiti to sleep in a tent on a cot in the heat and to work hard every day:  As we do our best to be a community that walks out a life of following Jesus Christ together, we are called to love mercy as God loves mercy.  In a world consumed by self-interest, where cynicism and fear are the lenses used to interpret the things that happen in this world, God calls us to act justly and to love mercy in humility (Micah 6:8).  This is not just a call to agree that justice and mercy are good ideas.   God is always calling us to a holistic response: mental asent, spiritual submission and an outward working that expresses itself in ACTION.

Later,

David

What If The Church is over.

*sigh*

We cleaned our paintbrushes, emptied the mop buckets, packed up the lunch leftovers and headed back to our respective communities of faith. It's kind of like when you were a kid in the summer time and your friend came over to spend the night, and then their mom called and said they could stay another night. Then, after two days of playing together, the time finally came when your friend's mom showed up for real to take them home. You and your friend begged for another day, but your friend had piano lessons or something. Do you remember how that felt? That's kind of what What If The Church ending feels like.

I mean, look at all the work we did! Look at how we worshipped together. I spent many a morning, afternoon and evening over the past months planning and coordinating with people who didn't even go to my church. That was amazing! I had my house phone up to one ear, saying "Hey" while saying "Catch you later" on my mobile at the same time. Well, it wasn't like that too much until the last couple days, but it was still cool.

Serve Day was an enormous event to coordinate, and lots of people put lots of time into making it happen. Anglicans framed walls with metal studs next to Vineyard-ites and the Heartlanders. We cleaned windows, replaced the flooring around toilets, painted walls, scrubbed bathroom floors and even disposed of unwanted computer equipment at one location. And I don't recall even one heated cross-denominational invective about predestination, whether or not Rob Bell is truly a Christian or the coming end-times apocalypse. What a great picture of the Big C Church serving together.

And now it's over.

...

...

*sigh*

...

But I guess that's the funny part, isn't it? We showed Kansas City that the Church can work together. We showed them that we could lower the drawbridges of our respective keeps and come out into the collective commons of our city and work together.

And we'll be ready and willing to do it again - next year. It'll be great fun to plan another massive outreach. And we'll be better at it now that we've done it once. Man. Next year. That's gonna rock. We will so show this city what we're made of next year.

Until then...

Well, why does it have to be "until then"? Many relationships were sparked as part of this whole What If The Church thing. Mark, Patrick and Dan are all on a first-name basis now - they'd actually recognize each other at the Paciugo stand now. And they even have something to talk about: "Remember when we swapped pulpits back in April? Man, those were crazy good times."

So how about this: What if the Church tried to work together outside of What If The Church? What if we dismantled our drawbridges, filled in our moats permanently, created neat little stone paths between our churches and planted some kind of pretty little flowers (maybe daisies?) all along the path? What if Christ Church is on my speed-dial? What could we do?

This is a fantastic idea. I'm pretty sure the three churches who thought this whole What If The Church thing up are way ahead of me and already had this in mind. So, I won't claim originality. I'll just thank God for the little nudge he gave me to help me rub my eyes and see the potential.

I am certain we are not the first ones to stand at the split in the path and try to do the cost/benefit analysis in our heads or on the back of a receipt we had in our wallet. I think it goes something like this:

"If we go this way, we go alone, but hey, we don't have to worry about offending anyone, and it's a lot easier to make decisions with fewer people...and fewer of God's Kingdom resources. But if I go the other way, then we go together. It may not be very easy. In fact, if we have time to get to know each other a little better, we might find out we really aren't relationally compatible. Look at all the emotional risk! And break-ups are so messy. Maybe we should just play it safe..."

Nope. Let's take the risk. God has each one of our communities of faith where he wants us, and we need to stay on task for the things he's called us to do in our neighborhoods. But we need to figure out how to combine our resources and reach this city for Jesus Christ - together.

Join me in praying that the longer term vision the leaders of What If The Church envisioned becomes a reality. Pray that we can find ways to work together without the need for a city-wide event. Pray that What If The Church thinking becomes the norm for Vineyard and our new-found friends. Pray that God shows us what that could look like.

Peace,

David

What If The Church Serve Day is Saturday, May 1st, from 8 in the morning until roughly 4 in the afternoon, and we are providing lunch. You can sign up at whatifthechurch.net. We want you there, and we need to know you're coming, so please sign up.

Now, you probably already know about What If The Church, but let me tell you again - we have 24 churches in the Kansas City metro area that are working together. That's amazing. They are divided into groups of three called triads, and our triad is made up of Heartland community Church, Christ Church and Vineyard OP. Our triad has selected eight sites where we are going to serve together on Saturday, May 1st. These serve sites are agencies that serve those in need in our community, so this is a big deal to get to help them. We're doing construction jobs - framing, sheetrock, door hanging, remodeling, pouring concrete - and we're doing other jobs too - cleaning, bingo calling, and just a friend to the elderly in our community. What we need to make this Serve Day happen is YOU. We need people to come out in force, take these jobs and serve like mad for the glory of God.

So, here's what you need to do. We need to know that you are coming, so we need you to sign up at the What If The Church website. We're down to the last week of sign-up - so let me show you what you need to do.

1. Go to whatifthechurch.net. There's lots going on here, but stay focused. You can come back and read all the other stuff AFTER you've signed up.
2. Click on the "REGISTER FOR SERVE DAY" link on the homepage
3. On the serve day page, click on "View serve day opportunities". This shows you a list of all the jobs you can sign up for - for all of the triads - not just ours. You'll need to narrow down the list before you can see just our triad's jobs.
4. Click the drop-down menu next to "Project" and you will see the list o serve sites. Look for the Heartland Community Church Triad projects to see our eight serve sites.
5. Then click "Apply filter" and it will filter the list down to just the jobs open for serving at Hope Faith Ministries.
6. So if you want to be on the Framing Team - just click the "Accept" button next to the job. If you don't want to do any of these jobs, just go back up and change your "Project" option and click "Apply filter" again.
7. When you click "Accept" you'll get the login page - most likely this is your first time, and we need to know a little bit about you ahead of time. So click on the "Sign-up" link and fill out the information and submit it. You'll be signed up for the job just like that!

That's it.

When you sign up for a job within our triad, you are signing up to work with people from all three churches - that's the point, you see. This is a going to be a great day, so get out there and sign-up so we know you are coming.

See you on Saturday!

David

What If The Church is headed into it's third and final week, and the excitement is growing for the "God Of This City" worship night on Wednesday, April 28th and the Serve Day on Saturday, May 1st.

Now, you probably already know about What If The Church, but let me tell you again - we have 24 churches in the Kansas City metro area that are working together. That's amazing. They are divided into groups of three called triads, and our triad is made up of Heartland Community Church, Christ Church and Vineyard OP.

This past week, Patrick Wildman, senior pastor of Christ Church was here at Vineyard OP.  You can check it out here.  Mark was over at Heartland Community Church, and Dan Deeble, lead pastor of Heartland was over at Christ Church.  This week they all shift one more time, with Mark going to Christ Church, Patrick heading over to Heartland and Dan coming to Vineyard OP.

Even though Mark taught the same message he taught here on April 11th, Big Shock, we thought you might be interested in seeing the videocast or listening to the podcast, so we are making them available here.  Enjoy!

What is "What If The Church...?"

"What If The Church" is a 4-week-long project among 24 churches in the KC metro area. These churches vary in size, denomination, style, locations (urban, suburban, etc) socio-economic levels, etc.  These churches are working together in groups of 3 called "triads".  Vineyard OP is in a triad with Christ Church (91st and Nall) and Heartland Community Church (Olathe).

These churches together are going to do 3 things:

• A 3-part teaching series together where the pastors from each church will swap pulpits for one week each.
• A blow out worship event on Wednesday, April 28th (more to come on this in the near future - be sure and watch the Event Center)
• Most importantly - we're all going to serve together throughout the city on Serve Day, Saturday, May 1st. Again, watch the Event Center for more info.

What If The Church started 3 years ago when one church decided to show up at another church to pray.  That led to a lunch, then to a thought: "What if..." we played a bit more like a team? In year one there were 3 churches involved.  The next, 12 churches. And now, 24.  Who knows what 2011 will bring?

So, we're all coming together as local churches to remind ourselves that we're a part of the CAPITAL C CHURCH.  We're putting into practice what Jesus prayed in John 17 - "that they may be one as we are one." (v.11).  We're "one" in Jesus and a people who believe together, pray together, and serve together.

Vineyard OP joined What If The Church because we have always been about "loving the whole Church" in all its varied expressions.  Instead of arguing about worship styles or drawing lines of division over obscure doctrinal issues that people way smarter than us cannot agree on, we want to emphasize our love for God and for others.  We want to join in with others who declare allegiance to Jesus as Lord and Savior and find ways to serve God and our city together.

Join us as we walk out this vision with our Christ Church and Heartland friends.  Over the next couple weeks, you will receive all the information you need to know where, when and how you can join us.

Thanks,

David

One of the attendees who went to Hope Faith last Saturday shared the following story with me, and I want to share it with you.

Here it is:

"I wanted to share what I thought was a pretty neat God story from this past Saturday at Hope Faith. My wife and I went down with our 2 daughters. We were assigned to unbagging clothes donations and re-sorting them to be prepared to be washed. After a couple of hours my girls came across several bags of clothes we had donated about 2 months ago. That in itself was pretty cool because they got to see exactly what was happening with our donations.

But a really cool thing was that at the same time they were unbagging there were folks in the store coming to get clothes. [David: Hope Faith's clothing shop is open on Saturdays, and volunteers are paired with a Hope Faith client to help them shop and select clothes].  One of the ladies was looking for a backpack-type bag that she could keep her things in. My daughter had donated something similar to that and it had her name on it. Well, they ended up bringing this woman back to where my daughter was and giving her the donated bag which just happened to have my daughter's name on it. The woman was overjoyed because she said that the bag must have been for her because she had the same name as my daughter!

A coincidence?

I don't think so.:)"

God is at work before we show up.  He is at work while we are there (wherever that may be).  He is work when we leave.

David