Quickest Summer Update (and Late too!)

1.  Revamped Children's Ministry

One of our Leaders was Awaken Man for a Kids Series we did.  I don't know who had more fun?

Last spring we took a look at our Children's Ministry and evaluated what was going well and what could we do better.  If we want to continue to be a church that reaches young families that are far from Christ we said we needed to provide the best top notch ministry possible.  We also felt like we should not just create a revamped Children's Ministry, but instead a brand new Family Ministry.  We wanted to implement a ministry that was not just fun for the kids, but also engaged their parents to walk with their kids during the week.  This fall we have seen an entire shift within this ministry where kids are excited and asking parents to bring them back.  Numbers are increasing, volunteers are more excited, and we are teaching our parents to engage their children during the week around the gospel.  Please pray as we continue to work out the kinks of this new ministry and philosophy of ministry over the Fall.



2.  Restructured Leadership
Over the summer we looked at our current structure and leadership.  We realized for us to move into the next season there is some shifting of personnel and formalizing some other roles of leadership in the church so people know there are others besides myself who can lead them.  As we have moved people into different roles and set expectations we are seeing the church follow along.  Please continue to pray as we work out the kinks of this new structure over the Fall.

This is one of our new leaders Mike raising up a new group of leaders.

3.  Community Impact

Just a part of the fun at our 5th annual soccer camp!

We held our 5th soccer camp this summer where we touched over 200 kids from the community.  We estimated we connected with about 150 families and are continuing to build an identity in the community that we care and are here for our city.  Leading up to this event we were asked to help with the kids area at the local fireworks that attracts upwards of 10,000 people.  Our volunteers did such a great job we have been asked to oversee the whole kids area next year for July4th.  This is a huge opportunity for Kingdom Impact.




4.  Raising Up Shepherds
Up to this point a lot of the care and shepherding fell on my shoulders.  Over the summer we realized that for us to continue to grow and move forward as a church that needed to change.  We have been able to train and raise up some other leaders that are willing to look in on people and really have the heart and gifting of care and shepherding.  We have strengthened our Community Group model where this will mostly come from.  Please pray for this structure of Community Groups to continue to grow and for new leaders to be raised and trained up.

Connie explaining a game at one of our Community Groups

5. Church Planting
Over the summer I have had a unique opportunity to become involved in some church planting initiatives within our area and within the state of Virginia and abroad.  I have been asked to work with other church plants in our area as a Church Planting Strategist, which for me is a real privilege to work alongside other church planters and in my experience help them not to make the same mistakes I did, haha.  I have also been asked to serve on a state board for church planting through V3, which has a vision of planting 1500 churches throughout the country in the next few years.  I am mostly excited about these things because of the coaching, networking, and learning that will happen by being around people who have done this for a long time.  This will be a huge blessing to my leadership and will spill over into Awaken.

One of our Worship Gatherings.  Please continue to pray that God continues to give us favor to reach people for Christ.