Creating a “Pack” Mentality in Your Home In many ways we have abandoned a “we” mentality in the Western world for an “I” mentality. What are some ways that we can get our families back to a “we” mentality, and focus on the family instead of individuals?

a) Limit number of activities that individuals in the family do. Allow one child to play one sport per year and have to go and watch the other child’s sport in the next season.

b) Attend church as a family.c) Serve together as a family.

d) Do ministry together. (Even leading a community group can be a family activity. In my house house, everyone participates to prepare for the meeting, including the kids. This creates a real sense of common mission and teamwork.)

e) Go on a missions trip together as a family.

f) Protect vacation time. Make it sacred.

g) Have family devotions together, and family night.

h) Eat supper meals together at least 3 times per week.

i) Do chores around the house together at a set time of the week. These kinds of activities ensure that we’re all just not running in our own direction, but actually working together as a unit.

I’d love to hear other ideas that you have, as would a lot of people. Please post them here!

The Kid Whisperer is a teaching series currently being held at Grace Community Church.  Sunday mornings, April 11, 18 & 25, 9:30am and 11:00am.

From one of my favorite speaker/teachers Mark Beeson:

The Early Church from Granger Community on Vimeo.

Here’s the Q&A with Bartley and Sarah from the final week of J&K2L8.  Pardon the audio difficulties with Sarah’s mic.

Men’s Discipleship Book of the Month is Crazy Love by Francis Chan.

Buy the audio here:  CLICK IT!

Check out the Crazy Love website: www.crazylovebook.com

In addition to having the regular Sunday morning messages posted at Sermon.net (see www.sermon.net/grace-church), we will now be posting the Sunday afternoon services - Core, Leadership Central and Faith@Home - at the following address:

www.sermon.net/grace-inside

In case you missed our first Faith@Home meeting, here is the Powerpoint presentation that Pastor Cary used that outlines the goals and rationale for this new initiative. Of course, it does not include Pastor Bartley’s example of Family Night, but just about everything else is there. Click here to download the Powerpoint file.

In our ongoing efforts to make the weekly messages as accessible as possible, we have recently made a change to our forum for posting them online.Beginning immediately, our weekly services will be posted on Sermon.net.  Visit our home page and bookmark it for future reference: www.sermon.net/grace-church.In addition to the weekly mp3 being uploaded to this site, the weekly Community Group Discussion Questions will also be uploaded to the “Notes” section.For the time being, we will discontinue posting messages to iTunes. 

The highly anticipated “24 Hours of Sex” retreat has come and gone. January 30 and 31 more than 30 couples from Grace and The Village Church in Milton gathered in Niagara Falls to invest in their relationships and to gain a deeper understanding of how a strong sexual relationship can enhance all aspects of a marriage.

In case you happened to miss it, a few weekends ago (June 6 & 7) about 15 couples from Grace spent a weekend at the Cedar Glen YMCA for the 2008 Couples Encounter.

Here’s what some of those who attended had to say about the event:

“The sessions were very realistic and applicable to my marriage.  The games were fun!!!”

“We really enjoyed the opportunity to meet new couples and to be away from our kids!”

“After this encounter I feel that my life with God is enriched and we are closer and more connected to Him.”

“This experience has given me some additional tools and strategies to improve my marriage.  I know as I work on that, I honor God.”

Plans are already in the works for another Couples Encounter in the winter of 2009.  We hope you’ll make plans to join us!

On Monday, January 21, the 9:30 childrens staff will meet. One of the most interesting things we will be discussing is a curriculum change for children in the Toddlers, Tykes, Sparks, Flames, and Wildfires classes (ages 2-10). The new curriculum we’re looking at is from Discipleland. (Check it out at www.discipleland.com)

Perhaps the main reason why we are even considering a change in the curriculum is because the pastoral staff has noticed a lack in key areas of basic Biblical knowledge in the students who have been brought up under the curriculum we have been using (particularly our senior and junior high students.) This is not to criticize these students, we take responsibility for not having a well-rounded program that maximizes the short amount of time that we have with the children each week. Another reason to adopt this new curriculum is because it adds puppets to the lessons of those in the younger classes (Toddlers, Tykes and possibly, Sparks.) Adding puppets to our curriculum will dramatically increase the interest level for our children and encourage them to come back for more each week.  

Personally, I’ve been very impressed with the Discipleland materials. I’ve never used them myself, but I was involved in the selection process at another Grace Brethren church a while back and ended up moving just before the new curriculum was introduced there. They claimed that the Discipleland materials were excellent.Of course, the children’s ministry staff might have better ideas and we might go with something else, but I’m convinced that we are heading in a good direction with the curriculum at the very least.