Did you know that approximately 85,000 in the Missoula Valley do not attend church regularly?
Did you know that the mission of River City Church is “Doing whatever it takes to reach people who are far from God and making them genuine followers of Jesus Christ”?
Seems like a perfect match!
Seriously though, since we moved times and locations back in January, we haven’t made a concerted effort to let people know about it.
We think that God is shaping River City Church into a unique community of people, and that there are a bunch of people in the Missoula area that would love to be a part of what God is doing with us.
So, we decided that it is time to get the word out.
We will be doing some outreaches in the community, including a neighborhood block party and pig roasts at the Griz football games.
In addition, we will be doing some advertising, including direct mailers, invite cards, posters, etc.
We are trying to raise a bunch of money to get this done. So far we have 4 of 5 pigs donated, and we’ve raised $1000. We’ve got a good start, but we’ve still got a ways to go.
If you’d like to contribute to the campaign, you can send a Paypal donation to giving@rccmissoula.org, or follow this link.
Check out the pig roaster below. It’s gonna be awesome!
GuideOn is a non-profit that supports the children and families of our fallen soldiers. Here’s an excerpt from James Clark, founder of GuideOn and a leader here at River City Church:
The older I get, the more compassion I have for others. As the father of three boys, I realize the importance of a role model in a child’s life. I often think about what would happen to them if I was no longer around. This is why I have started GuideOn.
In May of 2006 I was notified that my friend Matt had been shot down and killed by enemy fire in Iraq. He was a member of the Night Stalkers, an Army Special Operations unit and was flying the MH-6 during the attack. He is survived by his wife and two little boys. After finding out about the loss of Matt and other fellow aviators, I decided that I could not just sit back and hope that these kids would be okay. I wanted to make sure that after the loss of their father that I could somehow have a positive affect. I started having visions of kids who had lost their world, their idols, their everything. I had visions of taking care of these kids to see the beauty of a smile on a child’s face again. I want you to think of how a little heart has been broken, weeping and fallen.
Tonight as I kissed my four-year -old son good night he asked me, “daddy can I have a hug and 100 kisses?” I obliged his request of course, and as I was leaving his room I wondered who was going to fill the requests of Matts’ boys. We cannot take the place of these fallen heroes, but we can certainly have a deep compassion for the little heroes that they left behind.
Please partner with us and be a light to heal some little hero’s hearts.
James D. Clark
Founder
GuideOn is looking for 400 people who would commit $10/mo to support their mission. In other words, give up 3 Starbuck’s drinks a month or 3 beers a month to help out a child who doesn’t have a father anymore. Doesn’t seem like much of a sacrifice compared to what they’ve sacrificed, does it?
I’ve pledged $20/mo and I want to challenge you to pledge at least $10/mo to help them out. All you have to do is click this Paypal Link and you can pay with a credit/debit card or your Paypal account. Let’s spread the word and bless these kids!
2nd week in our new building. Much less stress this week!
No matter how well things go, change always adds an element of stress.
Continued the RCC Challenge in the area of finances. No talk on Biblical finances would be complete without a sermon on giving.
This is the topic that pastors fear most. Yet, the Bible has so much to say about giving that we would be wrong not to address it.
Started with this: God doesn’t need your money, He wants your heart.
Giving is about our heart more than anything else. Do we really trust God?
Next, 2 Cor 9:6,10 says that God gives seed to the sower.
I told RCC that it was popcorn Sunday and handed out bag of popcorn seeds. I then said that many of us have been eating the seed that God intended for us to sow.
I ended with Malachi 3 and a challenge to test God in our giving.
I gave a money-back guarantee. If you choose to take the challenge and begin giving 10%, and God doesn’t bless you, then RCC will give you your money back.
What’s there to lose? Let’s test God together in this!
The first service in our new building was great! I had a lot of people tell me that it felt like home.
The new building has a lot more usable space, and has a much warmer feel than our old space.
AND, it costs less!
I love the vision for Convergence Ministries, the group who owns the building. They want to share resources with churches to reach Missoula for the Kingdom of God.
We’re the fourth church to use the building. What a great way to partner with other local churches to reach Missoula!
We started the night with an open house with hors d’oeuvres and refreshments.
Worship went great, especially considering the sound system was all new to us. The presence of God was definitely felt last night.
I sort of forgot that it was night time rather than morning. Once inside the building, it all felt the same.
We kicked off a new Kidway curriculum and the kids loved it. We’ve got lots of classroom space!
We started a new sermon series called RCC Challenge 2010. I’m going to challenge RCC in the area of finances, relationship with God, and community over the next few weeks.
We talked about finances last night. I challenged our people to do the following: 1) Decide to follow the Word of God when it comes to finances, 2) Decide to be in unity with our spouses concerning finances, 3) Work hard and smart, 4) Get out of debt, and 5) Save.
We kicked off Love Missoula month by talking about being missionaries to our city.
All of us are missionaries.
I believe that in Acts 1:8 Jesus called us to go and be witnesses to our city first, our region next, and then the ends of the earth.
If we are making an impact in the cities God has placed us in, we have no business going anywhere else.
The primary way we will take our cities for the Kingdom of God is through prayer.
Anybody can serve, but only God’s people can serve through the power of the Holy Spirit. We need to be filled up each and every day.
Jesus’ disciples were very ordinary people until the day the Holy Spirit came down upon them. They were never the same again.
From that day on they were filled with dunamis power that resulted in the lame walking, the blind seeing, the dead living, and THOUSANDS of people coming to place their faith in Jesus Christ.
If we want to see revival in Missoula, we have to pray it in.
We also talked about the need for the church to be the most generous people on this planet. I doubt we’d be accused of that right now. We have some work to do.
Generosity opens doors to hearts and cities. We need to be the most generous people our city has ever seen, both with our time and finances.
When the church of Missoula comes together in prayer and generosity, we’ll see this city turned upside down for Jesus.
Several of you mentioned that you’d like to give, but forgot your checkbooks today. Remember, you can give to RCC online at anytime using our Paypal Link found on our website.
We’re going to wait until Tues before we send in our contribution to One Prayer…So if you want to give and weren’t able to today, there is still time. Click HERE to pay with a credit/debit card or your Paypal account. We’ll assume that any contributions given through Paypal in the next 2 days are meant for the One Prayer initiative. As always, your contributions are tax deductible.
Thank you RCC for your generosity! I am so amazed at how God has used our young church to impact this city, and now the nations! This is just the beginning!
Well this is the 4th and final week of our One Prayer series. We’ve had some great video teaching the last few weeks and we have one last video this week that is going to be phenomenal.
As I’ve mentioned a number of times over the last month or so, part of the One Prayer initiative is to plant as many churches and transform as many communities as possible in Sudan, China, India, and Cambodia. This last year 660 churches were planted and they aren’t finished yet. This was all accomplished through the giving of churches participating in One Prayer.
How often do we get to be a vital part of changing lives all around the world? This is a chance to impact lives for eternity.
We’re going to take up 2 offerings this Sunday. First we’ll take up our usual offering. Then, we’ll take up an offering above and beyond our normal giving and we’ll plan on sending that in to One Prayer. Andrea and I have made a decision to make a substantial contribution to this effort, and I would like to challenge all of you to pray about also giving generously to this great cause.
Please take a moment to visit the One Prayer website and see everything that has been accomplished, and everything that is planned for the coming year. I think you’ll agree it’s money well spent!
Happy Father’s Day! We “honored” fathers today by showing a music video titled “Cletus Take the Reel”, a spoof on “Jesus Take the Wheel”. Hilarious. Look it up on YouTube.
Attendance is staying strong. We’ll keep praying for those empty chairs.
We continued with One Prayer and heard from Craig Groeschel again on, “God is…Father”. Great Father’s Day message.
I think one of the most difficult attributes of God for many of us to grasp is that of father. It’s because we’ve all had imperfect earthly fathers, and we tend to think of God the Father through the lens of our earthly fathers.
We’ve got it backwards though. We need to use our Heavenly Father as the ultimate father role model, rather than our earthly fathers. God is Father.
We’re going to conclude One Prayer this week with a special guest speaker. We’re also going to take up an offering as our contribution to the One Prayer church planting initiative. We’re going to help plant 1000 churches this year! Go God!
Worship rocked today! Ryan King came over from Lewiston and led worship. The team did awesome.
There seemed to be a flow today. Really sensed the Spirit moving.
Attendance was up quite a bit. Looks like the “Empty Chair Prayer” is working! See my earlier post on this if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
If I’ve learned one thing through planting this church, it’s that you can’t just apply some recipe to church planting and hope that it will work. You’ve got to hear God in every instance. In the case of praying for empty seats, I really believe that God told us to do that. So we’ll keep doing it.
Steven Furtick was right on with “God is Great, God is Good”. A number of people responded to the call at the end.
Offering was up today. God is good!
People’s lives were changed today. God is great!
Ended with my new motto/challenge to the people: “Go and make God famous in Missoula this week!”
Numbers were back up to normal today! I just love the dynamics of a full room.
Emily led worship for her first time today. She did an awesome job! We had a full band and a new vocalist. Way to go Arran!
We started One Prayer today! I think the video message went great.
Craig Groeschel pretty much knocked it out of the park today with, “God is…Love”
Very powerful message. I’m already looking forward to next week’s message!
We had our communion meal and a church business meeting after the service today. As usual the food was great.
Had to talk about finances today at the business meeting. I don’t like to have to talk about them, but we were short last month and we haven’t paid rent yet. Things need to change for us to make it through the summer months.
So get this: I FORGOT TO TAKE AN OFFERING TODAY! What?!?!?!?!
Seriously folks, of all the times to forget, this was a very inconvenient time.
However, I told the church where we were at and people stepped up. Thanks to all of you who gave for the first time, gave beyond your normal giving, and those who gave sacrificially. I knew you’d do it! You rock!
Bottom line: this isn’t my church. This is God’s church, and his people (RCC people) care enough to keep it going. That totally fires me up!
Remember to pray about giving to the One Prayer church planting initiative. We’ll be taking up an offering on June 28th, exactly 1 yr from the date of our very first church service in Missoula!
