including our website. If you receive our updates to this website, then let us invite you to our new website (scroll your mouse over the white space below):
This is the new and improved website for RiverChurch and will be the place for you to find a lot of great information with a great new look. Special thanks to Trey Taylor and Casey Lee, from Bay Community Church for helping us out with our new digs.
We’ll see you on the other side.
I gotta tell you that the book of Psalms is one of my most favorite books in the Bible. Not because it has short chapters, which make it easier to read. Okay maybe that is a definite plus, BUT I love to read the Psalms because sometimes when I’m just at an absolute loss for words to say to God, I go read what David or some of the other contributing Psalmists have written, and I find my self saying to God, “Yeah, what he said. . . “
The Psalms are a great place to go especially when I want to love God with my words, when I want to say Thank You, but “Thank You” just seems to be to weak. Sometimes I feel like I spend so much of my time praying prayers of “please” and so little time “thank you.” For the last six or seven weeks we’ve been learning a little more about what prayer is. We’ve learned that prayer is conversation, prayer is powerful, prayer is sometimes not answered the way we think it should be, prayer is an expression of our faith, prayer is standing in a place of need for someone else.
Tonight our focus is going to be a little different. We’ve spent the last several weeks praying for RiverChurch, as well as our individual needs. But tonight we’re going to spend some significant time just thanking God for what He has done and what He is going to do in our church and in our lives.
We’re going to pray our own prayers of thanks to God but we’re also going to look to our favorite Psalms and share them as an expression of praise and gratitude.
I’m having a hard time deciding which one of these is my absolute favorite:
Psalm 61 - “From the ends of the earth I call out to you, I call as my heart grows faint, lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”
Psalm 46- “God is our refuge and our strength an EVER PRESENT help in trouble.”
Psalm 115- “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.”
I hope you can be with us tonight. But if not tell us what’s your favorite Psalm?
ed Letter Days are important days, special days, days where memories will be made. And RiverChurch has a few Red Letter Days coming up in August. Make sure you mark these dates on your calendar (preferrably in red ink.)
August 2 - Launch Team Meeting - If you are interested in helping us plan for our upcoming Saturday Night Services. Make sure you plan to meet us here at 6p. This is gonna be a fun night!!!! Promise!
August 9 – Vision Meeting – This is going to be a great time to meet the pastor and launch team of RiverChurch, and to hear about our upcoming weekend worship experiences, as well as the ministry opportunities in which we will be involved. If you’ve thought about checking us out, or just been a little curious, this would be a great tiime to come hang with us. Rumor has it there will be food there too. 6p at the Tennessee Riverpark Pavillion.
August 15 – Weekend Worship Experience – We’re so excited about this we can hardly wait. This will be the first of our Saturday night worship experiences. A great time to come together to worship and to spend some time together in the word with some teaching from Pastor Shannon. While the location is TBD, (we’ll post that soon) we’ll start at 6p. Can’t wait to see you there.
So here are some of our Red Letter Days, hope you can experience them with us.
Of all the exciting stuff that seems to be happening with RiverChurch, there is one particular area that we are extremely excited about: backpacks. The very first outreach opportunity for RiverChurch will be a partnership with a local organization called the Nehemiah Project, that is working to put literally thousands of backpacks together to be delivered to students in the lower income communities of Chattanooga. In a couple of weeks we will be assembling the backpacks complete with school supplies and a Bible, and the following week, we’ll be personally handing these backpacks out at a local school. Our very first offerings, that we have received at our weekly prayer time, have been solely designated to help purchase these backpacks. We’re making a small dent, but a dent nonetheless.
Let me share with you a portion of an email that was forwarded to me this morning about why this project is so important:
Several Principals shared with me the great things that were going on at their schools, because of the volunteers that had come to know their schools through the partnerships of The Nehemiah Project. They also shared heartbreaking stories of the poverty of their students, and how one school had gone to all dark blue uniforms because the parents did not wash the clothes of the children. And another story of how they have set a policy that if a child gets in trouble at school and is in need of being sent home, they are to not send that child home until they have had school breakfast and school lunch, because that will be the only food that child will have that day. -Beth Trussell, Executive Director, Nehemiah Project.
While this is the sad reality that kids face right here in Chattanooga, it simply reiterates the need for the Church to BE the Church.
If you would like to help provide a backpack for a kid this year, you can send a gift of $10 designated for “backpacks” and we’ll make sure the Nehemiah Project is able to help one more kid this year.
Send donations marked “backpacks” to:
RiverChurch / PO Box 22054 / Chattanooga, TN 37422
Its so cool to witness little signs of growth within the faith community of RiverChurch. In many ways its like watching little green leaves pushing through the soil that covers the original seed. Each week that we come together for our time of prayer I can see more and more signs of life:
- a community of Christ followers is truly forming
- we’re becoming more and more like family
-we pray together, worship together, laugh together and cry together.
And more growth is obvious. So many people have told us that they would love to meet with us, but work schedules make it so difficult for them to join us. So we’re making plans to start a weekend gathering in August. As of now our plans are to meet on Saturday evenings. We’re still trying to secure a location. But this gathering will be a time of worship and sharing the truths of Scripture for adults and Children. This will not be our official launch, but it will give us the opportunity to be more prepared for an official launch in January of 2010.
We’ll be explaining why we’re meeting on Saturday night’s a little later. But if you would like to help us prepare for this we would love to have your support. Here’s how you can be involved:
So you see we’re growing. We’re not a tree yet, but our roots are growing deep in a foundation of prayer, and little signs of life can definitely be seen in RiverChurch, and I gotta tell you its EXCITING!!!!
I cannot begin to tell you how significant our weekly times of prayer have already proven to be for the future of RiverChurch. For nearly four weeks now we’ve been meeting together gaining a clearer understanding of prayer and its purpose and then putting what we’ve learned to practice. In the time we’ve met we’ve already seen and heard of answers to prayer. We’ve not been praying mamby pamby prayers either, but prayers for healing, for unsaved family members, for miraculous provision. And I have to tell you that my personal faith is reinforced everytime we come together.
Prayer is the foundation of this church and will remain a constant no matter where we go and what we do.
Last night we met at a facility that we’re really praying God will open up to RiverChurch. I gotta tell you that it will be an absolute miracle if we are able to meet in this particular location. I mean parting the waters kind of miracles. But I can tell you that God is already answering prayers about this particular situation. Now I don’t know what the final outcome will be but I can tell you that I believe God is going to do some amazing stuff in this situation, and I think it will have everything to do with the foundation of prayer that we are laying.
We’ve officially be on the ground for a little over a month in Chattanooga. Since we’ve been here, we’ve had our second vision meeting, started our first small group/prayer meeting, and started a lot of new relationships with people here in the community.
While things have been challenging on the personal front for us; things seem to be moving full steam ahead for RiverChurch Chattanooga.
With these positive signs of moving forward we are met with new challenges and questions to be answered. The biggest one I’m praying about right now, is when to start meeting on the weekends, and when on the weekends should we meet. We have had a significant number of people express genuine interest in being part of RiverChurch but there Monday through Friday work schedules make it difficult for them to meet with us during the week. If we could meet on the weekend, we potentially have over 60 people who have said “We’d definitely be interested in being part of your church.” That’s a pretty good sized launch team. I really think God is giving me some direction about the when to meet issue. It could possibly be how we meet for a long time. It would be a significant deviation from what’s typical in this particular area, but I have a strong sense it may work. I also believe meeting at the time I’m feeling like we’re supposed to meet will significantly contribute to our ability to fulfill the vision God has given us as a church to make a lasting impact in our community.
Meeting time is a big issue, but meeting location is even bigger. There is a place that I’ve been looking at since we’ve been in town. I’ve driven through the parking lot almost weekly, praying that if this is the place God wants us to meet to please open the door for us to meet there. It has extremely long term potential for us, as it sits right in the middle of our target area of Chattanooga. I called the guy who owns it yesterday, and he’s only interested in selling it. But he agreed to meet with me and a couple of our board members tomorrow, yeah tomorrow (Friday June26). So I’m a little jittery about that. We can’t buy it, but like I said I really feel a connection to this place and believe this could be where God wants us. If it is, He’ll work something out.
One big piece that I feel like we need to be developing is our worship time. Especially when we begin to meet on the weekends. So, I’m praying that God will direct us as it relates to a worship leader. I’ve talked to a couple people and we’re waiting to see what God will do now.
So that’s an update on where we are. If you’re interested in knowing more about RiverChurch please shoot us an email at riverchurchchatt@gmail.com.
Last week we started looking at what the Bible says about Prayer. In our discussion we gained a better understanding that prayer is our way of having conversation with God. Conversation, not a monologue.
We’re continuing the “Prayer Is. . . ” study, this week as we look at the fact that prayer is an act of faith. As I’ve been studying this thought today I’ve reflected over some of the prayers I’ve prayed that I distinctly remember God answering. Prayers of provision. Prayers of healing. Prayers of wisdom, guidance, peace.
Do you remember a specific prayer that you have prayed that God has answered? Tell me about it:
I read earlier today that a church that is not a praying church is a dying church. Prayer is the life source of the church, its our way of constantly communicating our absolute dependence on God. That’s why we’re taking our first few weeks of meeting together, and laying a foundation of prayer for RiverChurch. We’re taking time to pray together, but more importantly we are gaining a better understanding of what “prayer is” from the perspective of Scripture. If we’re gonna do it, we gotta undertand it.
Tonight was a great night as we read through Scripture looking at prayer as our way of conversing with God, not just giving him our laundry list of things to do for us. But actually engaging in dialogue with the Creator of the Universe. It was so refreshing to share insights with one another as we read Scripture together. Afterwards we took some time to pray on our own, then together as a group.
Its awesome watching our young community grow together, learning more about each other and growing together in our faith. We actually took our first offering tonight as well. Our expenses are already growing but we decided to designate our first offerings for a ministry project in the city this summer, helping purchase backpacks for kids in lower income schools. It was beautiful watching people’s faces light up last night as we talked about ministry opportunities and the ways that we will be involved in those opportunities.
Things are actually moving at a very good rate for RiverChurch. In some cases faster than I anticipated. So we’ll see where God takes us from here. One thing is for sure, its gonna be a fun ride.
Hope you can be with us next week for another look at what “prayer is. . . . “
Just wanted to send a BiG THANK YOU, to everyone who came last night to our VisionMeeting, and to the folks who brought food and helped with the setup. Out of our two VisionMeetings so far we have 21 people who have made committments to be part of our launch team, and others who have agreed to pray, or give financially. Still others are praying about what they should do as it relates to their involvement.
I gotta tell you 21 people is a GREAT start for a launch team, and already GREAT ideas are surfacing as we prepare to move toward our January 2010 launch.
Let me remind you that we will be meeting Monday Nights, starting back up this Monday Night at 7p. We’ll be focusing on Prayer for the next several weeks; looking at what Scripture says about it, actually praying together not just talking about it, and most importantly laying a foundation for RiverChurch in prayer that will promise to be solid as we move forward.
If you didn’t make it to our VisionMeeting, you are still invited to drop in on one of our Monday Night meetings. If you need directions, just email us and we’ll get you there.
Can’t wait to see you there.
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