Getting Plugged In - Week of November 9, 2009

If you are looking for a place to serve in the next couple of weeks, we have a huge opportunity for you!

On Wednesday, November 25th, we will meet at the church at 9:00 a.m. to cook Thanksgiving Dinner. Everything from green bean casseroles to dressing will be prepared in advance for Thanksgiving Day.

On Thanksgiving Day (November 26th) we will open the doors of our church at 11:00 a.m. to serve a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner (ham, turkey, and all the trimmings) to anyone that wants to join us between 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m.

This meal is specifically designed to offer a place to those who are far away from their families, have no family to be with, or have no other safe place to go and have a meal on Thanksgiving Day.

When the meal is over at the church, we will make meals out of the remaining prepared food and deliver them to folks that are unable to get out to join us.

If you would like to help in the cooking, serving, or delivery of meals, we invite you to contact Russell at acts242@hotmail.com or call the church at 409-962-5762.

Eating Disorders and Recovery Support

We are passionate about recovery here at Encounters! While our worship services are designed to be open to everyone, we spend a great deal of our time between worship services working in the recovery community as one of our many outreaches. Many are becoming familiar with our Midweek Encounters (that looks at the 12 steps from the perspective of the scriptures) and our Came to Believe meetings (our Christ centered 12 step meeting on Saturday nights at 7:00 p.m.). God has done some amazing things in these groups and meetings to date; and we anticipate even more great things.

One of the things that people sometimes don't get about us, is that we are working in all kinds of recovery communities; not just in relation to drug and alcohol addictions. We work with those recovering from self abuse (cutting, etc), shopping addictions, debt, gambling, sex addiction, pornography addiction, codependence, and eating disorders, just to name a few. Our program is not designed to take the place of well established recovery programs, but rather to supplement those programs with a deeper connection to Christ.

As such, when we discover a really good program that is fruitful, we do everything we can to partner with them and to refer folks their way. This keeps us from re-inventing the wheel and allows us to better care for the resources that are given to us.

A couple of months ago, I ran across a great support network and program for those struggling with eating disorders. It all started by reconnecting to an old friend through Facebook of all places! Shannon Cutts is the friend I am referring to. Shannon is a "compassionate advocate of our right to feel good about ourselves, our bodies, and our lives. As a popular speaker, writer, and award-winning songwriter, she travels year-round, sharing her powerful message that yes, recovery from eating disorders is possible!"

She has written a book called Beating Ana, a book about how the author overcame her own 15 year battle with both anorexia and bulimia. She has also started a global online support network called MentorCONNECT.

If you or someone you know is struggling with one of a number of eating disorders, I want to encourage you to check out MentorCONNECT for yourself.

You can take the virtual tour of everything they have to offer by clicking here.

And you can take a virtual tour of the community forums by clicking here.

If you would like to find out more about Shannon, you can check out her blog here.

And finally, if you want some more general info, publications and educational things related to eating disorders, you can click here.

If you have ever wrestled with an eating disorder, you are painfully aware of just how few resources are available. After treatment, the person wrestling with these types of disorders is pretty much thrown back into normal life with little to no support and accountability. We offer these resources to you not to replace your treatment plan or the program you have in place, but rather as an additional tool in your recovery arsenal.

Keep checking back as we are planning on having Shannon join us shortly after the first of the year for an afternoon of education and discussion involving eating disorders and how to get help.

Getting Plugged In - Week of November 2nd

We are starting a new series here at the Encounters' blog entitled Getting Plugged In. This series is designed to help you get plugged into the things we do here at Encounters. Every week we will post opportunities for you to serve along with all of the information you need to contact the right people to get plugged in.

Here are some of the opportunities for service that we currently have available:

Bus Driver - we have a 22 passenger mini-bus that is available to use to pick up folks for Saturday services and meetings. The folks that we will be picking up reside at various treatment facilities and shelters. Drivers for our mini-bus need to have a CDL license with a passenger endorsement on it. We currently have two drivers, but would like to add a few more. With four or more drivers, each driver would only have to commit to one Saturday a month. If this is something that you are interested in, please contact Russell at acts242@hotmail.com

Worship Team/Band Members - do you have musical gifts? Do you sing or play an instrument? The Encounters Worship Team is looking for new members to help flesh out our current worship team. The team currently meets on Tuesdays at 6:30 p.m. in the sanctuary for rehearsal and arrives at 4:30 on Saturdays to prepare for and lead worship at 5:30. If this is something that interests you, please contact Kevin Watts at kev081801@yahoo.com for more information.

The Good Book - this is our church bookstore and we would like to make it available to folks on Saturday evenings as they come to worship. We are going to be adding some great titles to the store that relate to recovery and there are already a lot of great books and resources for our journeys in the Christian faith. If you would be interested in serving at The Good Book, please contact Ray Cline at rjcline@hotmail.com

The Hospitality Team - This team takes care of the refreshments for our weekly meetings and services, as well as planning and working our special events. Whether you have a little time or a lot of time, the Hospitality Team can use your gifts of hospitality and compassion. For more information, please contact Donna Graham at graham.donna1@gmail.com

Please be sure and check back weekly as we will be updating the opportunities for service.

Upcoming Concert

Hello family,

I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that we have another big event coming up at our church. On Saturday, November 14th, Kerri Crocker and Shelly Wilson will be in concert in our sanctuary. Many of you know Kerri from previous visits and Kerri and Shelly have been ministering together with their music for a number of years.

This concert is absolutely free (CD's will be available for purchase). The concert begins at 5:00 p.m. with the Encounters Worship Team doing a short opening set. Then Kerri and Shelly will take over until about 6:30 p.m.

One of the things that I have been most impressed with when these two have come to do an event is how they are able to connect to a variety of age groups. They will cover some golden oldies and will have some fresh stuff from their latest CDs. It will surely be a concert that you won't want to miss!

If you would like to find out more about Kerri and Shelly and to listen to some of their music before the concert, I invite you to visit their websites listed below:
www.kerricrocker.com
www.shellywilson.com

If you have any questions or would like more information, please feel free to contact me at acts242@hotmail.com.

Remember, the best is yet to come!

Russell

Trunk or Treat

Today we had the privilege to participate with the larger church in our annual Trunk or Treat event. During our time together, we saw lots of great costumes, consumed everything from sno-cones to hot dogs and candy to popcorn, handed out frisbees with the Encounters logo and Facebook page address on them, and invited folks to come worship with us next Saturday night.

At the end of the afternoon, we had given out 500 frisbees, 550 worship invitations, and more than a dozen bags of candy!

Here are a few of the pictures from today's event:






To see more pictures from this event, go to our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/encounters and while you are there, leave a comment and become a fan!

Random Acts of Kindness

Today we got together as a community of faith (representing not just Encounters, but all three services at UMT) and served in our community. We did a number of tasks on the home of 2 pastors in our area. We hung doors, hung waterproof backing in a shower to make it functional, fixed 17 cabinet door latches, replaced child safety latches, repaired a garage door remote, spackled and hung doors on 5 closets. It was a good and productive day.

While we got a lot accomplished, there is more that needs to be done. We are going to get together again on Saturday, October 10th to attempt to complete the work we have begun. We believe that these little Random Acts of Kindness are just one of the many ways that we can share the love of Christ with the world around us.

If you would like to join us in these activities, we invite you to contact us at the church office or via email at acts242@hotmail.com.

Worship at Encounters

Many people have been asking a lot of questions about Encounters, especially our worship services. We wanted to take this opportunity to describe these services in a little more detail.

First, our community is a mosaic of people. Some are from the recovery community, but many are not. You do not have to be in recovery to attend this worship service. This service is for anyone looking to grow in their relationship with Christ. We are comprised of folks with a wide array of faith experiences and we gather together to seek to encounter one another and to encounter God in deep and meaningful ways. Here is what you can expect at worship:

Expect to Come As You Are
We gather together to worship in everything from shorts and t-shirts to work uniforms to business casual attire. We are convinced that it is not how we are dressed that is important, but how our hearts are that matters to God.

Expect Current Music
When we gather to worship, we will sing songs that have been written by artists like Third Day, Kutless, David Crowder Band, Chris Tomlin, 7 Day Slumber, Skillet, Toby Mac, Brandon Heath, and many, many more. Our music is very contemporary in orientation (and tends towards the rock or edgier side of the scale).

Expect Top Quality Multimedia Engagement
Utilizing the best of current technology and multimedia resources, we seek to engage multiple senses and multiple means of both receiving and retaining the messages of our biblical teachings during worship.

Expect Other Forms of Engagement
In addition to a message given orally every time we gather for worship, we also bring our messages to life through faith journeys (where members share portions of their stories and how those stories are intersecting God's story in our midst), dance, skits, and other forms of visual and performing arts.

Expect to Pray
We have opportunities to share our prayer concerns by writing them on prayer cards and depositing them into one of our carpenters boxes during the service (a team of people pray for those concerns every day of the week following the service). We also have opportunities to pray or be prayed for during each of our services.

Expect Communion
Known as the Lord's Supper, the Eucharist, and by a number of other names, we believe that communion is a means of grace and that we should attend to this sacrament regularly as the church. Currently, we are participating in communion on the first Saturday of every month.

Expect Great Coffee and Snacks
Both before and after the service, you are invited to join us for coffee and snacks in our coffee bar area just outside of our worship space.

There is much more to expect when you join us at Encounters, but the best way to know what to expect is to come check us out for yourselves. Our next two worship services will be held October 3rd and October 17th at 5:30 p.m. We meet in the sanctuary of the United Methodist Temple located at 4101 Highway 73, Port Arthur, Texas.

For more information please contact Russell at acts242@hotmail.com