Upstream – January 3
I hope that your Christmas and New Year’s Eve were full of the love and grace of God expressed to you through God’s endless creativity…a family member, an expression of love/thankfulness, a quiet moment in the rush, a timely word read in Scripture, a glimpse out of the corner of your eye of the true meaning of the incarnation of Jesus, or the beauty of this special time of year. I am rich with these moments this past season and continue to look forward to 2012 as a time where I will, hopefully, continue to have eyes to see and ears to listen what the Spirit would have for me.
Here are some things to keep before you this week at River Life:
MLK Service, Season of Service, Gospel Choir
On January 15th, River Life will be joining many churches of Sacramento at 6:00 p.m. for a Martin Luther King, Jr. service. This service will kick off 6 months of intentional service to greater Sacramento in preparation for Luis Palau coming this summer. This is a very special service! If you would like to be a part of a 150 member gospel choir for this service, this coming Saturday there is a practice at Capital Christian Center from 10 a.m. to noon. The next practice is on the 13th at 7:00 p.m. and the dress rehearsal is the 14th from 10 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. If you like to sing, come along!
Sunday Schedule
Don’t forget we are back to our normal 9:30 start time for church this Sunday. Parents, be sure to bring your kids to the fellowship hall by 9:30 so they don’t miss out on any of the Green House activities.
Country Club Challenge
Please join us after church this Sunday for the Country Club Challenge put on by our Men’s Ministry. We will be going bowling, laser tagging, pizza eating, video gaming, etc… with the men of the church and the kids. The cost is $16.00 to cover all of the above and it’s a great time to be together. Please contact Chris Hardwicke at Riverlifebrothers@comcast.net if you would like to get more information or would like your kids to go! Also, if your kids are grown and gone, we’d love to have you join us! Some of our kids, at River Life, do not have a dad that will be going with them and we could use some extra “dad” types. Since you’re on Chris’ list of men, I’m sure you’ll be getting an email from him this week inviting you (stalking you?) to come along! What would do without Hardwicke?! What a gift and good leader!
Youth Ministry Parent’s meeting
January 15th, right after church, there will be a parent’s meeting for parents of any junior high or high school student. Bree will be giving us important information regarding the direction of our youth ministry. Please make sure you are there so you can be fully in the loop regarding our ministry to the youth of our church and the youth of our community! We are so blessed to have Bree leading us at this time in our history!
CHIC sign ups!
CHIC stands for Covenant High In Christ. For more information, click here: http://www.chic2012.org/. This is a triennial event for our high school students in the Evangelical Covenant Church. Bree will be leading our high schoolers to CHIC this coming summer and we will begin some fundraising here at River Life. That being said, if you have high school students, we need to get them registered! Please contact Bree and let her know of your desire to have your students go to Tennessee this summer!
Some important meetings to be aware of for prayer:
Meeting #1: Please be in prayer for our Leadership Team tonight as we meet to continue to be attentive to Jesus and what He’s doing in/through River Life. Next week in Upstream we will be giving you some important information for the next couple of months here at River Life!
Meeting #2: Please continue to be in prayer for our team that is going through an intentional discipleship process (called a Huddle) this month. We are going to doing some different things this month for the purpose of us being attentive to what God is saying. Ask the Lord, on our behalf, to speak to us as we attempt to follow him where he is leading us.
With that, my hope is that your year has started off on the right foot. Have a wonderful week and hopefully we’ll see you on Sunday as your schedule allows. We will be back into our series called Covenant and Kingdom and will be taking a look at David in the Old Testament. Nacho will be leading our worship this summer with our fantastic worship volunteers and we are so blessed to have musicians to lead us when we gather.
Grace & Peace,
Bret
River Life Covenant Church
“There will be swarms of living things wherever the water of this river flows.” Ezekiel 47:9
