Engage Community Church

Wow, its been a few weeks since I’ve updated the blog. Engage is about 9 weeks old now!  Since we began we have seen some pretty exciting things happen at Engage.  We made the paper the other day. Click here to check it out. Engage exists to help people find life with Jesus. The people we hope to engage (no pun intended) are people who would not typically imagine themselves going to church on a Sunday morning or something crazy like that. People like my friend Amy B. Here is what she said:

“I like Engage because it is a comfortable atmosphere that makes it easy to build friendships and ask difficult questions (though I haven’t actually had the courage to raise my hand and ask a question yet, the topics get me thinking about my beliefs, which is something I haven’t done for a very long time, if ever). So thank you for that. So why did I start going to Engage?  Well, I am at a point in my life that I would like to discover my beliefs and build a relationship with God.  I am trying to become a more positive person.  Nothing in particular has happened to bring this about, I was just invited to your church at a perfect time.  Since the first time I went, I knew I would love it and feel comfortable there.  And I’m meeting the most wonderful people!  I would like to get my husband involved too.  Like myself, he was not raised in a religious environment, so it might a little difficult to get him interested. I know he would like you a lot because you very down-to-earth friendly people. I think he might be intimidated because he doesn’t want to feel like someone is pushing their own beliefs on him or looking down on him for not being very religious…but I know he wouldn’t feel that way with you.  I think it would also help strengthen our marriage.”

How many more people are out there who feel like something beyond them is calling them to explore, investigate, and discover what else is there beyond the routines of family, work, and weekends.  We want as many people as possible to hear about the relational message of Christ.  One of the things I love about God as we know him in Jesus is that he always speaks our language.  Over the last 400 years the Christian Church has sent out people to different countries and cultures to introduce people to the message and teachings of Christ.  Often times a tribe or specific culture has trouble grasping the irreligious message of grace, sacrifice, death, forgiveness, and resurrection in Jesus…that is, until the messages gets translated in their language.  One person said it this way after hearing the message of Jesus translated in their own language, “I didn’t know how to know my Creator until he started speaking my language.”

Engage is committed to speaking the language of the people in our area who are somewhat skeptical of organized religion and for whatever reason, maybe, turned off to faith in Jesus.  We are a Church that says, “We may not agree with all of your beliefs, ideas, and criticisms but we understand where you are coming from. Now, let’s dialogue and get to know each other.”  Now we are at a point where we want to introduce ourselves to the surrounding community in a unique way that hopefully speaks their language.   As you can see we are going to send this mailer to thousands of addresses later this month.  We are doing this because we believe there are others out there who may be looking for God in some way…but not know where to go or how to take the next step.  Maybe they would see the mailer and begin to realize that God has already been looking for them. Engage Mailer April 5th

We are going to send this mailer to roughly 12,000 addresses–encouraging people to join us on April 5th for a visit to Engage and exploring the theme, “Why Jesus thinks religion gets in the way of knowing God in a relational way.” Click here to learn more.

During the month of April we are sending another batch of mailers to an additional 10,000 address inviting those people to join us at Engage on April 26th.  Now, I know what you are thinking.  What if??? What if?? All of those people actually show up.  Well, first, that is a good problem to have. I’d rather have that problem than the opposite.  Secondly, our mailer is not targeted at the average person living in our area.  Most people living in South Central, PA are fairly traditional, conservative, people who believe they should attend church on Sundays.  Engage isn’t trying to reach that person. There are many other churches around who are doing a great job helping those people find deeper life with Jesus.  Therefore, I don’t think we are going to have thousands of people show up.  But we may have 60-80 people?? We don’t know! All we know is it is a risk, you are right!! We think, however, that it’s an appropriate risk, a God-sized risk.

If you are a praying person…we need you to pray.  We need you to pray that the right people show up as a result of the mailers.  We need you to pray that we aren’t totally overwhelmed on the 5th, 12th (for that matter–Easter), and the 26th.  And we need you to pray that we have enough helpers and volunteers at Engage who can step in and help with Engage Kids, or help with greeting our guests, etc.  We don’t want people to have a horrible experience if they risk their time to come meet a bunch of strangers at Engage. So we will need all the manpower we can muster on those days to ensure our guests have a favorable experience and want to return to further engage with Christ and what matters most.

We need you to pray that people can see Jesus in a way they have never thought of or imagined.  We want them to know that God speaks their language!!!