2017-2018 has been an exciting year for CNV as we continue to love the Village of Carlisle. We want to love on this village in 3 ways: 1. Authentic Worship 2. Community 3. Transformed lives. We try to make decisions based on these three ways to love Carlisle. We want to be available to the people in this village to help and share our lives with them. This update features some of the ways we are doing that.
In November of 2017, we as a church began to meet for corporate worship on a bi-monthly basis. We believe that authentic worship is more than just meeting together on Sundays, but we also believe that as a group of followers, it is good to worship together. These services have been as big as 85 and as low as 45. On average we ran close to 70 in these services. While the number isn’t important to us, we do understand that each number is a person God has brought to us. Most of the people that attend are families that have zero church background and we thank God for that. In May, we have begun meeting each week for services, and that has been going really well. Connections are being made outside of these services, which in turn have been helping with building community around Carlisle. We also have our Village Crossing Bible studies that meet once a week. And our Village Bible Study for students, which run around 50 students every Wednesday.
We closed on, and have almost finished the renovation of our Ministry Center. This center has already been used to host bible studies, meals, local little league association drafts and just a place for people to hangout in. We have designed our ministry center to be just that, a place where people can gather and enjoy each other. As we push to put the finishing touches on the center, we pray that it will be a tool to help build community in our Village. Another thing we have started to help build in this community is turquoise tables. Last July my wife read a book called The Turquoise Tableby Kristen Schnell and fell in love with the idea of putting a turquoise picnic table in our front yard. Little did I know that impact that it would have on my neighborhood. It has become a connection point for the people around our house. We as CNV-Carlisle have purchased 5 tables and have plans to place them strategically around our village to promote community. We do ask for prayer that these tables will be a tool to help us share gospel to the people of Carlisle.
These tables are allowing us to be able to share our transformed lives. A transformed life is best explained as a life that has been broken and Christ and His Gospel have begun the process of putting the pieces back together again. We want to share our lives with the people around us, brokenness and all. In March we started a challenge called Connect6, which challenges our members to make at least one inward connection (invite someone into your life) and one outward connection (do something to help build a connection with someone around you) a month. We meet every first Wednesday of the month to celebrate the connections God has allowed. This has been an incredibly humbling journey for us, as we thought we connected pretty well, but it was just with each other. It has been awesome to hear the stories of these connections. Three new families actually joined us for April’s celebration.
By concentrating on authentic worship, community and transformed lives, we have been able to have many Gospel conversations with the people of Carlisle. Because of these conversations, 13 have decide to follow Jesus with their lives. We plan to have a baptism service this summer, to share in the celebration of new life. We are excited to see where God takes us as a Church and thank you for all the prayers and support.
In His Footprints,
Eric Clarkson
Lead Pastor
The Church in the Village - Carlisle