That is how many people left their contact information at one of our booths during the ministry fair last weekend.  That is a lot of work for us!  But we are prepared.  If you were one of the 400 you can expect a call or email from us this week or next.  We are very serious about not letting any of you “slip through the cracks.”  This is an incredibly exciting for us. To think of 400 new opportunities to serve.  Imagine how many people can be changed and helped through this.  

Thanks for being obedient.

This will be the last week for our Community Group Series on serving God.  Josh Conn will be bringing the message from Romans concerning the privilege it is to bring others to Christ.  

And don’t forget some critical classes coming.  Baptism classes will be held this Sunday, choose from 9:15am, 10:45am or 12:15pm.  We have some ready to be baptized in just a couple of weeks.  If you haven’t taken our membership class, I will be teaching it this Sunday at 2 p.m.  Come find out all you want about PAC and why we think our community is special.

And next week starts our missions month which we are calling “Passionate Hope.”  (I am just a little excited about that…)  Can we actually reach a goal of $500,000 for missions in the 2009 year?  Why not?  If 1000 of us gave $10 every week we will get there before the end of the year.  

Think about it.  Better yet, pray about it.

See you this weekend.

What they actually do is take kids off the street, where millions of Brazilian children live in the cities throughout the country.  These kids suffer every imaginable form of abuse, neglect, violence and exploitation. The ministry provides these children with parents, schooling, health, special training, graduate opportunities, and Jesus.  

It was an incredible four days.  Hundreds of children are saved and over 50% of the support needed for this ministry comes in through Brazilian donations.  They are so aligned with what we are about - knowing God, developing community, bringing hope - that it is a natural connection for us.  

In the next weekend series, starting Thanksgiving weekend, we will be talking about this City of Youth as well as ministries in Mexico and Thailand with whom we want to partner.  Because God wants us to have a world-wide impact and we have the resources to do this.  Surely we can expand our vision to areas like South America, Central America, and Asia.  Surely we can spare a bit of what we have to see young children delivered and transformed.

Surely.

Our own students will do all the work – we only need to supply the goods.  Here is a list of the items we are still looking for:

Please bring 1 or 100 of any among these with you this weekend, October 25th and 26th.  You will see boxes throughout the church where the items can be dropped off.

I will be visiting the City of Youth in Brazil for the next few days, but I look forward to seeing your generosity when I get back!  In the meantime, Nate Karcesky, our Youth Ministry Pastor, will bring the message this weekend.  I pray that you will experience the presence of God again as you gather in his name.

So how many people do you know in your township?

Many parents have had “back-to-school” nights during the past few weeks.  I had some fun meetings with my son Eric’s teachers, but what struck me more as I walked through Hillsborough High School was that even in a school as large as this, I knew some parents in every of my son’s classes.  See, most of these connections came through baseball or soccer, and had it not been for these areas of involvement, I would have recognized almost nobody.  Your area of involvement may not be sports, but every community has multiple entry points.  Even Plainsboro township has a 17-page document that details many opportunities for you to connect.

We have an even easier entry point for you: are you in a community group?  This weekend we start a six-week drive to open up new and existing groups that would give everyone a chance to grow in their local communities.  We will even coordinate the studies done in these groups with our weekend messages, so that over the coming six weeks you would grow more deeply in your relationships using some very practical topics.  Don’t worry if you’re not connected yet - we will tell you more in the weeks to come…

… starting this weekend.  See you then!

It just feels good to help, especially when it takes some extra effort.  That is what I feel like all the time at PAC.  We don’t live for soccer.  We live for Jesus.  And I want us all to know what it feels like to help others for Jesus, especially when it takes some extra effort.  Imagine if we all were passionate about this.  Even if you don’t get paid.

That’s what I will be talking about this weekend.  Hope you can make it.

Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, and we shall walk in His paths.”

For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and rebuke many people; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.

O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the LORD.

In my own time with the Lord each morning I just completed my walk through the Proverbs.  (All of you got the jump on me with that book this summer while I was writing.)  I decided to spend some time in the book of Isaiah and what is given above comes from Isaiah 2:3-5.  It is difficult to read those words, reflect on today’s situations, and not just yearn for a perfectly just God to take over.  Maybe even send him to Wall Street.

But that is actually possible and we have been talking about that for three weeks from Romans 12.  Imagining life the way it’s supposed to be is the first step to getting there.  This awesome God can speak directly to you.  He can work with you.  You can choose to allow him to.  And as we do that together, I begin to imagine where he will take us this year.

This weekend I will share God’s direction for our church with you. Imagine life at PAC in 2009… the way it’s supposed to be.  As I share this, it is so incredibly important to remember that the focus is not on what we do, but for whom we do it.  It is this incredible God of Isaiah 2 that we serve.

I hope you come to worship this weekend.  I will see you there.

This is why we exist.  And God is clear on how to do it.

We desire everyone to live life to the fullest by knowing God, developing community, and bringing hope to the world.

We believe we are not alone in this pursuit.

We desire everyone to live life to the fullest by knowing God, developing community, and bringing hope to the world; and we seek to partner with like-minded people in order to maximize results.

We know the core values God has instilled within us to equip us to accomplish the task.

We desire everyone to live life to the fullest by knowing God, developing community, and bringing hope to the world; and we seek to partner with like-minded people in order to maximize results.  In all we do, we promise to do it with authenticity, creativity, excellence, expectancy, and generosity.

One of the most exciting things that God has done is to bring the world through our doors – we have become a diverse congregation with a strong heart of compassion for our neighbors.

We are a multi-cultural, multi-generational community that believes in making a positive contribution in our neighborhoods, our country, and the world.  We desire everyone to live life to the fullest by knowing God, developing community, and bringing hope to the world; and we seek to partner with like-minded people in order to maximize results.  In all we do, we promise to do it with authenticity, creativity, excellence, expectancy, and generosity.

This is it. This is who we are.  See you twice this weekend – at the picnic and at the services.

Just as life in our communities kicks into high gear again, so we are kicking off a new season of ministry.  This weekend we start a new series, “Imagine – Life the way it’s supposed to be.” I will be taking five weeks to lay out the vision that God has for us during 2008 and 2009.  We will start with the foundation of who we are, and build upon this by looking where I believe God wants to take us.

We look forward to welcoming everyone back.  All the weekly youth programs resume this week, with new times for Pioneer Clubs and Revolution.  There are also four weekend services for you to choose between (but remember that 10:30am tends to be the most crowded).

This year, I know we will begin to see beyond ourselves more than we ever have.  We are part of a huge world that we can impact, and over the coming months I will be speaking more specifically about this.  From Trenton to Waveland, to Mexico and beyond, God has a plan for us to be part of.  What a privilege!

See you this weekend.

This is what Steve shared during the last weekend service.  It’s the confidence we have when the path we are on is actually the one God chose for use, rather than the one we decided upon and asked Him to bless.  I hope you spent some time this week practicing this process.

This weekend will be our last in the book of Proverbs.  The topic will be laziness.  As you study Proverbs this week, look at how many verses speak to this issue.  So, how do we recognize and overcome it?  Find out this weekend.

I had a great first week back from my sabbatical.  One of many pleasant surprises was a visit by the president of our denomination, Dr. Gary Benedict, who spent Wednesday morning with our staff.  Dr. Benedict was excited to see the great ethnic diversity in our state, and very glad to hear that so many different backgrounds are represented in our church today.

But this diversity extends well beyond our building.  Did you know that as part of the Christian and Missionary Alliance we are among 2 000 diverse churches in the United States, and an even greater number in 51 countries?  I bet you didn’t know that our denomination supports more than 1 500 people working in various overseas missionary enterprises.  And I bet you didn’t realize that our denomination is the only Christian organization that continues to plant overseas churches who send their own missionaries to share God’s grace in other countries.  We are part of a pretty cool family…

This weekend we have the honor of welcoming Richard Herring to our services.  Richard oversees missionary work by the C&MA in several Asian countries, and he will tell you a little more about our work there during each of the worship services.  Steve Mayer will then continue our current series as he speaks from Proverbs 3.

See you this weekend!