It doesn’t take a rocket scientist…

Living in South Tennessee/North Alabama, you probably know or live close to an engineer. You may even be an engineer reading this email. In North Alabama, especially with Redstone Arsenal, the place is filled with engineers. I always loved the saying, “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do this” because I would always reply, “Well I wish it did because I know multiple.”

I have a lot of respect for engineers. Engineers possess this ability to curate plans/designs/blueprints to create many different things. These things can be incredibly complex and intricate or designed carefully and eloquently to allow for minimal complexity.

In 1 Corinthians 12, we are taught that we are a part of a living organism, Christ’s body, the church. No one part of the body can work on its own. In the beginning, God created this incredibly complex but sufficient system in our body to care for itself much like an engineer would create a mechanical feature. When you stub your toe on that coffee table in the living room, your body works together to address that pain. Your mouth opens, eyes begin to water, neurons move through your body sending signals to say, “Ouch! Help the toe!”

As the body of Christ, we are called to do the same. When a member of our church family is struggling, we can work together to satisy the needs of that member. Proverbs 27:17, “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” This is a beautiful virtue in the church. One that says we must not forget to care for those within our body, and when we do, we ourselves are strengthened. When the church body cares for one another, we take one step closer to living out God’s plan to use this collection of broken people to point in unison to a perfect savior.

March 17th, we are having a BINGO night at the church building. This is strictly to engage in fellowship with the body. We wanted to create opportunity and time for our members to better connect and get to know each other (and have fun while doing it). With better connections comes better understanding of each other. With better understanding of each other comes knowledge of better ways of serving and helping each other.

So please join us March 17th, as we meet together as the body of Christ to enjoy this time of fellowship.

Good Food with Good Company

The Christmas season is here and with it comes delicious Holiday meals. Families everywhere are already beginning to make preparations for family and friends to come over and share a meal together while celebrating the birth of our savior, Jesus. Dinner tables around the world will be crowded, inside jokes will be said, patience may be tested, and love will be shared.

In the early church, the apostles used the dinner table as a meeting place for evangelism. Jesus sat down and ate food with sinners. Something about sharing a meal with others at the table naturally invites conversation. Positive conversation leads to positive relationship building. As disciples of Christ we are called to love our neighbors. What better way to love our neighbor than to invite them to a meal where we can sit down and get to know them better.

Being invited to share a meal feels great. Knowing that you have a place at the dinner table and a plate of food saved specifically for you is honoring. We worship a savior who is the most gracious host and invites us daily to take our seat at his table, where everyone is welcome. Let’s do our best to encourage our neighbors to come to our Holiday meal Wednesday night, December 7th at 6pm to show that they are welcome and will always have a seat available to them.

Community Outreach Follow-Up

We had a great turnout for our Trunk or Treat in October. We had many visitors from the surrounding neighborhood’s as well as an amazing participation from our church family. The church office had multiple goals with the Trunk or Treat…

1. Provide a safe place for families and friends to come and get candy

2. Show Fayetteville that Washington Street is alive and well and here for the community

3. Introduce people to the loving body of Christ here at Washington Street

I think it is safe to say that we accomplished all three of those goals. We do have a fourth goal however and that is the follow-up. With over 30 visitors filling out our door prize raffle, we have 30 potential future members at Washington Street. We have 30 people who need to be invited to a family who gathers together weekly in love to worship the Lord.

The next step

This Saturday, December 3rd, we will be gathering together at the building at 12pm. Together we will pray for these families that visited. After a time of prayer we will divide up the names of the visitors and split our members into groups. These groups will go to the addresses given and offer an invitation to our Wednesday night Holiday meal on December 7th.

We are hopeful that you will be able to attend, weather permitting, and help us in inviting our neighbors to our family. Let’s be sure not to leave our love for our neighbors at the Trunk or Treat and follow-up with these families this weekend.