PLANS
What have we got cooking up over the next few months? Well, for a start, we are moving toward becoming an independent church again within six months, thanks to the help we received from our friends at MCC Baton Rouge and the extraordinary response of the folks at The Big Easy MCC health has returned!! We are also putting together a package of Christian education to help support and encourage people's individual walks with God. We are looking for ways to make church a practical help to our members and the wider community; we are exploring financial classes, relationship groups and the possibility of forming island groups to encourage ministry input and fellowship amongst people like our Transgender and African American attendees, as well as our women's community. We are also actively exploring future opportunities to acquire our own building, and looking into setting up an CDC (Community Development Corporation) to pursue and enable our ministry objectives and social justice outreach. We are beginning formal membership classes in February, and have an enthusiastic group signed up ready to join, and we are beginning a ministry relationship with Belle Rive so we may better represent the body of Christ here in New Orleans. We are making plans for a 'invite a friend to church' day in February and are keen to find more ways to get our message out and about. We are building up our music ministry and seeking more members for the choir, and people willing to help with rpaise and worship leading and playing other musial instruments.
In the longer term we have ideas for church planting, maybe in collaboration with MCC Baton Rouge, and are seeking to take on extra staff and other full time ministers as funds allow. In short, we are BUSY!!!
In order to do a fraction of this we need every person who is a friend of this church in any way to help us by spreading the word, and for members and attendees to keep faithfully attending and financially supporting us - and giving talents, advice, feedback and criticism where appropriate. We don't want to build a low maintenance church, we want to build a successful church! Come on board and help us in 2009........ remember, our job is to meet people where they are, to build them up, and send them out as missionaries of the FULL Good News, not that old bad news about hatred and exclusion, but Jesus's Good News, the new world of compassion, salvation and lovingkindness to which we are heirs. It is an exciting future in an exciting city, and my future is firmly in New Orleans!
Rev Clinton, Islington, London.