Happy New Year!  I can’t tell you how excited I am for 2011.  I have no idea what this year holds, but I know Who holds this year and I continue to sense God moving in our church to grow us, stretch us, and move us beyond our walls to share Christ’s love with our community.

This past Christmas, we sponsored a family for Christmas from Deer Run.  Four kids had a fantastic Christmas because our compassion.  We collected 163 coats for the VLT Academy in downtown Cincinnati.  Kids will be warm this winter because of our compassion.  We restocked the shelves for Serve City, a homeless shelter in Hamilton.  Homeless people will continue to be cared for because of our compassion.  Serve City told us that they have never had a church respond to a need the way we did.  I’m humbled by your generosity and so proud to partner with you.  Let’s continue to meet the needs of our community in 2011.

We are well on our way to eliminating our second mortgage and many of our facilities issues.  Thanks to your generosity and commitment to Center Pointe, our total campaign commitment came in at $245,959!!!  That’s 98% of our goal! OUTSTANDING!  Thanks for trusting the Lord and for trusting your leadership.  If you did not make a commitment, it’s not too late.  Get involved and help us knock this out!  It would be awesome to exceed our goal of $250,000.  In the process, you’ll experience God’s blessings through the joy of generosity.

Work is underway on our strategic plan.  We are planning, praying, and working through the next steps for our church.  I would like to ask you to commit to praying for our strategic planning team.  This team is made up of staff, elders, and volunteers that meet weekly on Tuesday nights.  I’m looking forward to what God reveals to us through this process.  I’m confident that it will be uncomfortable and that it will require great faith.  If our plan doesn’t need God’s help to accomplish it, then it’s not big enough…plain and simple.

We are kicking off a new series this weekend call Txt Msg.  We’ll be spending 4 weeks on the Bible…why we believe it, how we got it, how to study it, and what it does for us.  Don’t miss this series.  On January 9, we will be laying a challenge before you to read the New Testament in 30 days.  I can’t think of a better way to kick of 2011 than to dig in and study God’s word together as a church.  Think about how rewarding it will feel to have read half of the Bible in 30 days (well…at least more than 1/3)!

Let’s enter this year with great expectations.  Greater things are yet to come and greater things are still to be done in this city!  Let’s be about the business of God’s mission to make disciples.  Looking forward to another year of being on the Journey with you!

Shawn