Summer schedule and church as food

It's official! I've been credentialed as a pastor with the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches and am now the lead pastor for the young church plant Life Point Community Church in Portage, MI. Nikki and I are excited to start the adventure and help grow God's kingdom in breadth and depth.

The core group is approximately twelve people at this point and since the church is very young, we're taking summer 2009 to solidify our structure and ministry plan. Why? Church is church, right? Well, we could think of it this way: if church was like food, there would be two components—nutrition and flavor. Nutrition is what makes the body healthy, the vital stuff that God needs to see happen in His Church (big "C"). This may include worship, discipleship, acts of service, leadership roles, etc. Flavor is what makes the food taste good. Good flavor is different for different people; it's debatable, adjustable, subjective. As long, as you get the nutrition right, flavor can be modified according to who is eating, i.e. church (little "c"). This might include worship style, meeting places and times, programs, etc. We're reading the book of Acts and Deliberate Simplicity by Dave Browning over the next several months as we refresh ourselves on Church "nutrition" and work out Life Point's "flavor" before we really get things rolling in September. The goal is to have a clear vision of Life Point's ministry by the end of August.

Check out our summer schedule. We'll have an updated version soon with meeting places included. If you're interested in hanging out with us through the summer, contact me at kyledouglass@mac.com.