The Avenue Blog

Summer Fun
A few ideas for making this season fantastic!

Happy Summer Break to all of the kids and teachers at The Avenue! We're excited for you all to enjoy some time away from school and soak in the sun during the summer!

As families look for ways to spend time together, we wanted to highlight a few ideas if you're hanging around town and looking for something to do!

Around The Town
There are plenty of fun things in Kansas City.
Here are a few we recommend!

Bible Camps
We also wanted to promote a few of our sending church's camps and invite all interested Avenue families to attend and/or volunteer! Because we are a small church in the midst of big change right now, we're unable to host these events ourselves; but are excited to promote LSCC's events they've planned for summer 2010.

by Danielle

I'll never forget the way that I learned of the crisis in Haiti a few months ago. I was checking Facebook and trying to understand why so many of my friends were praying for Haiti that day. It only took me one click to CNN.com to learn of the news. But the Haiti crisis isn't alone. I've also learned that MU beat KU, how awesome the movie Avatar is, or that it's Free Pastry day at Starbucks all through Facebook.

Websites like Facebook (or Twitter, and even The City) offer a unique privilege to those of us living in the days of social media. We receive not only instant news, but instant opinions. In a matter of seconds we can communicate a thought that would have taken us five minutes to say person-to-person. It's quick, easy, and connects us in a way never seen before.

As I've experienced the Facebook phenomenon, I've seen many advantages and disadvantages come from this website. I feel it's awesome to see people encouraging one another, celebrating birthdays and anniversaries, or even "liking" that someone just bought pretty new pink socks.

But I've also been discouraged as I've seen status updates cut down others, our leaders, and become a unique form of passive aggressiveness. As one of my friend's clever statuses put it, "If you don't have anything nice to say, say it on Facebook."

I encourage us all to see our Facebook status updates as anything else in our life, and especially as missional opportunities. The filter that we use when speaking face-to-face needs to stay on as we type over email and Facebook. The temptation to make a negative comment directed at someone else is overwhelming sometimes - I've been there myself. But we must remember that we have hundreds of other friends reading the same message - and many that don't know Jesus. Regardless of what we think about KU losing or the health care bill, our first responsibility is to share the Gospel and be ambassadors of Christ. And as Christians using social media, we've got an awesome opportunity to be missional with our Facebook, Twitter and other status updates.

Just think what a cool story it would be if someone came to know Jesus as a result of a conversation started by your Facebook status. Now, that's a story that blows learning of the Haiti crisis or any other news through Facebook out of the water.

Plant Churches!?
by Orion Berridge

For some, church planting sounds exciting and enticing! It feels like it’s the entrance into a plan that is bigger and grander than us – and all to advance the gospel. But for others, it sounds scary and uncertain. It’s what we think older churches do after they’ve perfected their ministries and become great at everything. Those feelings are natural. It’s actually how our church plant team felt when we began to meet about planting The Avenue. As we prayed about what type of mission God had for us, it was clear that God was calling us to be a church planting church. I remember the room being filled with uncertain excitement.

Church planting is more than a fad. It is well documented that new churches are more effective in reaching un-churched people groups than older established churches. Our hope is to never grow “old” as a church but to remain a church planting movement that is never content with 100 or 1000 members. We will continuously seek to join God on his mission to “seek and save the lost” (Luke 19:10), and we feel that to do this in our culture means to church plant.

In Matthew 16:18 Jesus says to Peter, “...I will build my church.” Reading this passage I realize that the fears and excitement that we all feel about church planting are valid. But those words “I,” “Will,” “Build,” “My,” “Church,” are all of God’s own words. He’s used them to tell us that He’s got it all under control. Our role in planting is to join him in that building. We’re not on His mission to create physical buildings, organizations, or even to grow the fame of The Avenue. But instead, our calling means that we’re to love people around us, and He wants us to connect with them through starting new churches.

We have recently announced that we are excited to begin the process of joining the Acts 29 Network. In November, Nick and I traveled to Louisville and met with Acts 29 leaders and partner churches. We came away refreshed and excited about the awesome possibilities of this relationship. This will not change anything with our sending church, LSCC, that we love and we will continue to partner with in ministry. This also goes for Great Commission Heartland, which is the regional network of Great Commission Churches - the association of churches that LSCC and The Avenue are part of.

It is our hope that God would work through these networks and relationships to create in us a strong dynamic of missional church planting DNA. We are joining Jesus in “Growing followers of Christ to plant missional churches” in obedience to Him and taking serious his words in Matthew 16:18 “I will build my church!”