March 2008

Dear Friends:

How did you spend your extra day this leap year? Our team was out in the small community Bella Vista on Feb. 29th facilitating a special night to bless a school campus that 3 churches have been separately loving over the past few years. 12 fellowships were represented, 130 were fed a tasty tri-tip dinner and most stayed to prayerwalk the campus and raise their voices in a time of praise and worship led by our WeR1 Band. The fundraiser dinner, a marvelous community effort, raised $622 to bless the school. We know this is just the tip of all God wants to do to bring His grace into that community!

Catching fire
The Grace in Motion team helped a pastor do some demolition and bring his home up to code so his son could come home from jail. Long story..... but, 27 people from 11 different fellowships jumped in and saw the task through. The commanded blessing of God (Psalm 133) ignited hearts and everyone experienced His presence. The laborers left refreshed and TOTALLY FIRED UP for God! One guy admittedly didn’t want to come out, but he pressed through the feelings and came obediently and God radically touched him. He’s still flying high. He said, “God broke through my ‘heart of stone’ and now I’m a walking grace-in-motion guy going all over town telling people about God and blessing whomever I can!”
Next service day: Mar. 15th. Meet 9 am, Salvation Army on Hwy 273 south.

Non-photo ops
Foregoing large-scale events for the time being in order to deepen relational ties is a strategic decision we made this month. I met with the mayor of Redding, as well as some key pastors this month. In the next 30 days, I will personally meet to share vision with 30 area leaders. Many of the city and county authorities I’ve wanted to connect with are on the Youth Violence Prevention Council in our area (people like the chief of police, county superintendent of schools, former mayors, current city council members, etc.) At the invitation of our Sheriff, this council voted me in at February’s meeting. With one fell swoop, I am instantly in relationship with these community leaders who are facing a huge giant. We have been praying to make a difference in the community. Now, we are in touch with those who are tuned in to the health and vitality of the various sectors of the community. Pray that we can truly serve them with God’s wisdom.

Birthdays
February is the month when 2 of my 4 children have birthdays so there was a whole lot of PARTYING going on! February has also been the month when new stuff for transformation has been born. The idea of spearheading weeks of prayer and prayer tents all came about in Feb 05. In Feb 06, we hosted the first of many community leader’s gatherings, and in Feb 07 we welcomed Roy Meade as our first intern. Feb 08 is no exception; this is the month we birthed the GRID.

The GRID concept
Our city is approximately 10 miles wide by 12 miles deep. The CHURCH is plentiously salted throughout this humanity, in different campuses, workplaces and family environments where people live, work, play and do life. Less than 20% of the100K souls that live here find themselves in church on a weekend, so the other 80+% will have to be touched by the Kingdom through the Church in those other environs. The GRID is simply a framework for intentionally focusing that effort into the 120 one-mile-squares which cover the greater Redding area.

We have been looking for the right visual image to make this tool really effective. The search took us to the city, county, federal and private sources, without success. But the Lord knew where this treasure was hidden. Karen tells of the discovery process: “After hitting another dead end, I thought that we were just going to have to hand draw the lines onto a AAA map. I prayed one of those "God, if you're in this..." prayers for something better. Then, at a meeting with my son’s teacher, it popped into my head to mention the need to him, and he put me in touch with a guy at Dept. of Fish & Game who had such a map. Twenty four hours later, I had a digital copy of just what we’ve been looking for – no drawing, no scanning, and no copyright problems!” See what God can do!

After chatting with a couple of pastors this month about the opportunity to build this GRID together, it is evident to me that God is in this! Some churches have already adopted schools or neighborhoods nearby. Compiling this info into realtime user data will allow us to see what’s happening, what’s lacking, who is where and how we can connect and bolster efforts on all levels. Imagine inspiring and connecting those with this heart in each square mile as the whole city comes alive in God’s dream! We have the potential to make this a totally “ADOPTED” & “PRAYED FOR CITY” in a short amount of time.

It’s already working
A local body shop manager is reaching out to those who work with him. I stopped by to encourage him and drop off a “Tracking with Transformation” DVD. I spoke peace to him, lifted him up and prayed for God to break-though, specifically for peace for an employee who was in a stressful situation. The next day, the employee we had prayed for told the shop manager how in the last 24 hours he had come to a peaceful resolution with his girlfriend to end their relationship. The man said, “Last night was the first night in 2 years that I haven’t had to take drugs to sleep!”

Now to the GRID - This guy’s shop is yards away from another marketplace minister who shares the transformation vision. Although these men work at different offices, they both want to see Jesus bring His Kingdom into that part of town. So, we connected the two, and together they are spurring each other on and anchoring their portion of the GRID. Imagine… a KINGDOM buddy system activated across town that helps us truly, “see to it no one misses the grace of God!”

The hard work of transformation continues
You know, if transformation came about by sending letters back and forth, talking God stuff and inviting each other to meetings, we would have seen it come long ago. But it takes more than that. Getting out there, interacting with people, building relational bridges and credibility, spending time hearing leaders’ hearts, serving and connecting the people, finding God’s solutions to community problems and communicating gracefully with all is hard, but necessary work. A sustainable transformation effort will not come about without sacrifice. We thank YOU for generously giving of your time, talents, and treasure to support us in this Kingdom labor; it is paying off! If you haven’t yet made a commitment to support, this would be a good time. Please help us continue to focus on what God has called and graced us to do in this season of momentum. Together, we will build the working net and see transformation dawn all over the region.

Pressing forward,

Jon and Natalia Thompson
Team Leaders

 

 

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