Mission Trip to Dominican Republic & Haiti

The CCSR mission team has returned from their Jan 5-10 trip to the Dominican Republic and Haiti.  The progress they

witnessed at the Guayajayuco water pipe dedication is nothing short of inspiring and miraculous. Please visit the Benevolence page for a trip summary.  On Sunday Feb 7 the team will give a presentation of the entire trip in Fellowship Hall immediately following the 10:30 service.  Invite friends / non-members, this will be great!

 
Preparing CCSR and your hearts for 2010 from Pastor Smith... 

During Super bowl XXXVII, FedEx ran a commercial that spoofed the movie Castaway, in which Tom Hanks played a FedEx worker, whose company plane went down, leaving him stranded on a desert island for years. Looking like the scruffy Tom Hanks in the movie, the FedEx employee in the commercial goes up to the door of a rural home, with a package. When the lady comes to the door, he explains that he survived five years on a deserted island, and during that whole time he kept this package in order to deliver it to her. She gives a simple, "Thank you." But, just as she is closing the door he asks, “What was in that package after all?" She opens it and says, "Oh, nothing really, just a satellite telephone, a global positioning device, fishing rod, a water purifier, and some seeds." All those years in the middle of nowhere tying to survive! If only he had known what was in the package! He had all the ‘essentials’ he needed to survive and be rescued, but --!

In preparing to begin the New Year here at Community Church, I’ve been praying, contemplating, and asking myself what more we could be doing to attract people to our church. Why have so many people left the church, generally speaking, and what can we do as a church to attract the so-called “church dropouts” back to the church? This is not just a challenge for the church today. In the 1st century, the author of the letter of Hebrews writes, “Let us not neglect our meeting together, as some people do, but encourage one another, especially now that the day of his return is drawing near” (Hebrews 10:25). In their groundbreaking study, Thom S. Rainer and his son, Sam S. Rainer III, discovered that more than two-thirds of churchgoing young adults between the ages of 18 and 22 are dropping out: 70%!!! The ultimate reason for them leaving the church is they “did not see church as essential to their life”; “church” is considered no more important than work, leisure activities, or simply doing nothing!

Well, there’s good news! There are churches that are retaining and attracting people. They’ve discovered that a church must be ‘essential’. I believe that last May 3rd, God led me, and you as a church called me, to lead you as a pastor to be such a church; to be a church that people see as ‘essential’ to their life; the kind of church recorded in Acts 2:47, “…And each day the Lord added to their fellowship …”. God has provided us everything we need! Truly, now is the time for us to get it right, for our church to become an essential part of people’s lives again: an ‘essential church’.” I’m passionate, focused, and will do “whatever it takes” to make that a reality here. Can I count on you to join me as I follow the Lord?  You are essential’!

In Christ’s love,

Pastor Brad Smith

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The Community Church is a independent Christian congregation.  We have no formal affiliation with any denomination, but fit broadly into the Protestant stream of Christianity, with our worship and organizational structure most closely related to the Reformed tradition.