Community 4:12

2009 Highlights

 
So many C412 memories from 2009.  Here are the first 10 that come to mind (in no particular order) . . .

1. Obe Arellano officially joined the staff at Community Christian Church as the LONG awaited East Aurora Campus Pastor.  Bilingual campus launches on January 10th!
2. Rick Guzman joined the Community 4:12 staff as the director of the new not-for-profit we will be starting to help take our community development work in East Aurora to a whole new level.
3. Maria Lopez joined the Community 4:12 staff after serving as a Parent Mentor for 3 years as my apprentice and as our assistant extraordinaire at the Lighthouse in East Aurora.  We could not run that place or our events without her!!
4. The Parent Mentor program expanded from 4 schools to 6 schools and from 25 Mentors to 40 Mentors.
5. Obe and his wife (and East Aurora Campus Kids City Director), Jack, launched Kids City Tuesdays and StuCo at the Lighthouse, serving 50 - 70 kids each week.
6. Through the kids at Kids City and StuCo, we began to meet parents and families and had 180 people at our Community Thanksgiving Dinner and 220 at our Christmas Las Posadas party---all preparing for the campus launch . . . on January 10th if I didn't mention it.
7. We held the 2nd annual Celebration Generosity offering at Community Christian Church, raising $125,000 for Community 4:12.
8. In partnership with 3 other churches, we sponsored a Feed My Starving Children mobile food-packing event at East Aurora High School.  This allowed over 200 students, who are often the recipients of service, to be the servers . . . providing meals for thousands of meals for children in impoverished countries.
9. In partnership with over 100 churches, schools, businesses, and organizations, we sponsored 3 Christmas Gift Marts (2 in Aurora, 1 in Joliet), collecting 14,000 toys, serving over 3,000 people, mobilizing 1,500 volunteers, and raising over $20,000 for 6 elementary schools.  
10. We truly began to embrace and practice the key principal that will help make community restoration possible . . . partnership.  Only when all segments of society . . . churches, schools, government, businesses, not-for-profits . .  come together will significant impact be made.

And that is my biggest prayer for 2010 . . . that together with many others, we will be part of making a tremendous IMPACT in the lives of under-resourced people and communities locally and globally.

Christmas Hand-up

 The past few weeks have been a bustle of activity as we prepared for 3 Christmas Gift Marts this year . . . one in Joliet and two in East Aurora.  Here's a summary of how things went:

• Over 14,000 toys: 3,600 toys for the Joliet Gift Mart + 10,500 toys for the Aurora Gift Marts = Christmas for thousands of children!
• 1,500 Volunteers:  300 volunteers in Joliet; 1,200 volunteers in Aurora. It took every one of you to pull off these events!
• Over 3,000 People Attended Marts:  750 people attended the Joliet Mart; 1,750 people attended the Aurora Mart at Bardwell and 1,000 at the Aurora Mart at Brady.  Thousands of happy people who experienced the love of Christ this Christmas!
• Over 120 Partnering Organizations:  Churches--Orchard Valley Community Church, Good Shepherd Lutheran, Wheatland Salem United Methodist, Hope Tabernacle, Warehouse and others.  Schools--countless elementary, middle, and high schools sponsored toy drives.  Businesses--Walmart, Starbucks, Caribbou, Crate and Barrell, Coke, Hub Group, and many, many others.  It is this kind of unity that makes God smile!
• $20,074 Raised for Schools:  $4,349 for AO Marshall and Park Elementary Schools in Joliet.  $15,725 for Bardwell, Brady, Rollins, and Beaupre Elementary Schools in East Aurora.  All to support school improvement initiatives that limited school budgets won't support!

My pre-event challenge to the volunteers this year was to use the event as a chance to look for the richness, beauty, and blessing in the people attending the Gift Marts, rather than looking at their physical poverty, which is what we so often focus on.  I really want us all to embrace an idea I heard recently that everyone is rich, and everyone is poor.  We just need to retrain ourselves to look for the wealth, not the poverty. 

My son reminded me of that this year when we were collecting toys for the Gift Marts.  He didn't like how we referred to the children in East Aurora as poor.  These are his friends we were talking about, and he does not see their poverty.  To him they are kids that share life with him, that he has fun with, and that endure the same pre-adolescent challenges that he does.  He knows that many of them do have financial challenges, but that is not how he identifies them or thinks about them.  I am thinking that God probably looks at them more like Erik does, and that's how I want to look at them, too. 

Pre-launch Strategy

We have been working in East Aurora for 6 years now.  We are about to host our 7th annual Christmas Gift Mart.  We are working in some capacity with 8 schools in District 131--doing tutoring, youth mentoring, parent mentoring, art clubs, and community events. We have had office space in the community for over a year where we run Tae Kwon Do two nights/week, Kids City for 1st - 15th graders one night/week, and StuCo for 6th - 12th graders one night/week.  All of this has been laying the groundwork for bringing a bilingual, multi-cultural Community Christian Church campus to the community.  That campus will finally open on January 10, 2010. 

Typically when we launch a campus, we send thousands of postcards to the community, and that has proven to be pretty effective.  We aren't sure that strategy will work as well in this community.  So, we will be sending some postcards to a limited geographic area, but the primary promotional strategy is to sponsor community events in the space where we will hold church.  We have over 100 kids that are part of our Kids City and StuCo programs, but we had not met most of their parents.  So, we invited them all to a Thanksgiving Dinner in November.  We had 180 people that joined us for dinner!  Last night, we hosted a Las Posadas, a Mexican Christmas party.  We had over 200 people that joined us for food, mariachis, pinatas, and fun.  And then on New Year's Eve, we will host two Hispanic bands--one from Texas, one from Chicago--for a big concert to ring in the New Year.  A week later we will launch our campus. 

We have met so many wonderful people through these events and many have inquired about the church we will launch.  It will be very different from anything most of them have experienced.  Will they come?  We'll find out on January 10th or 17th or 24th or maybe not until March or July.  But, I am convinced that this relational approach to preparing for the launch is a perfect strategy for this community.  And it sure is a lot of fun!

"The Poor" Serving the Poor

I spent the past two days at East Aurora High School at a mobile Feed My Starving Children food-packing event.  Great organization that provides meals for starving children around the world.  East Aurora HS implemented a brand-new service graduation requirement this year for incoming freshmen, and they wanted to kick it off with a huge service event.  Unfortunately, it costs about $17,000 to bring an event like this to a school/church . . . not a price an under-resourced school district can support.  So often the kids in this community are the recipients of service, so a few of us thought it would be great to help give them an opportunity to serve the "poorest of the poor."  So, four Naperville churches pooled resources to sponsor this two day event.  It was a fantastic experience.  658 volunteers (mostly high school students) packed 102,600 meals that will feed 281 children a nutritious meal a day for one year.  I thought the Beacon news did a great job of capturing the event.  Click here to read it.  

Kids Hope USA

I spent the past 2 days with our new Kids Hope Director, Carolynn Fulford, being inspired and empowered to run a Kids Hope USA mentoring program.  Started in 1995, this faith-based, school-based mentoring program now operates in 27 states with over 470 programs.  Their philosophy?  One church partners with one school and each mentor works with one child for one hour/week during the school year.  We heard story after story of life change and impact that results from this program.  Here's my favorite . . .

Noami seemed strangely lethargic during the entire hour. Normally talkative and eager to interact with her mentor, this first grader said fewer than five words today. "It's time for you to go back to class, Naomi," said her mentor as the hour came to an end. "I hope you enjoyed our time together." Noami's response was surprising. "May I go vomit?" she asked. "What?! Have you had to throw up this entire hour" Why didn't you tell me that you had to use the bathroom?"  "Because," said Naomi, "I don't want to miss even one minute of my time with you."

CCC has been working with Brady Elementary in East Aurora for six years, but this will be the first time we have done this kind of 1-1 mentoring.  I'm excited for the life change that is going to happen this year . . . in Brady kids and in CCC volunteers who serve as mentors.  If you'd like to learn more about how to become one of those mentors, let me know! 

VBS Highlights

We sponsored our first VBS in East Aurora this week at the Lighthouse.  Terrific week all the way around, but here were some particular highlights for me . . .

• Watching Josie take an idea/vision and make it happen.  She came to me last spring and asked if she could do this, and with her right-hand arm, Betty, created the entire VBS experience. They did a phenomenal job.
• Seeing so many new volunteers---especially the junior high and high school students who got up early every morning to come love on these kids.
• Seeing such a multi-racial group of kids from Aurora, Naperville, and Oswego making friends and playing together.
• Hearing Kristen, Lisa, and Kathy make Jesus come alive for these kids.
• Meeting parents of kids we've been driving to church for months for the very first time, and seeing them smile as their kids sang about Jesus' love.  

Coming to School Ready to Learn

As we have for the past several years, we want to help low-income students in East Aurora start the year off ready to learn by helping them get all the school supplies they need.  This year we would like to sponsor all 500 students who receive free/reduced lunch.  Want to help?! Instead of getting a long list of supplies that you need to go out and buy and try to cram into a paper bag, all you have to do is tell us you would like to sponsor a child (or two or three) and we pre-order supply kits. We will still sell them for a fraction of the cost to Brady parents, so the school will earn money as they have in the past.

For $25 you can sponsor a child who will then get all the supplies they need to be prepared at school. For those of you who have purchased supplies in the past, you know that is a great bargain compared to the $40 - $50 some of the grade level kits cost if you buy all the items individually.

If you'd like to sponsor any children, just click HERE to make a donation online or email Ron Kelso at ronkelso@sbcglobal.net.  In the fall, you will receive the name(s) of the children you have sponsored so you can write them a back to school greeting.

East Aurora Art Camp

Thanks to CCC's School for the Arts, we are offering a week long Art Camp at the Lighthouse this week.  I really had no idea what kind of turn-out to expect.  We sent flyers home through the schools before school let out and advertised through our Tuesday night kids' program, but we charged $5/child and offered no transportation, so I knew that would limit attendance significantly.  I really thought we might be lucky to get 10 kids.  But, tonight, 30 showed up!  We had 4 different projects they could pick from, and they will spend the week working on their craft and then we will showcase them for the parents on Friday evening.  All of the teachers are volunteering their time and most of the supplies were donated, but the kids could choose between painting, beading, basket making, and making a bird house.  Cartooning and drawing are optional activities for later in the week.  Parents seemed very appreciative of this opportunity for their children, and the kids were all so engaged and excited.  I can't wait to see how proud the kids are to show off their completed projects on Friday!  

A John 17:23 Campus

For six years we have been praying for the right time, place, and person to launch a CCC campus in East Aurora.  And we finally feel like we are ready.  We've got the person . . . Obe and his wife Jack are nothing short of a gift from God.  We've set a date . . . the weekend of January 9.2010.  And we have a place (we think) . . .our new Lighthouse office space in downtown Aurora.   But now that it is becoming real,there are a whole list of new questions and uncertainties.  What day and time is best for a service in this community?  Will the heavily tradionally, yet non-practicing, Catholic community be interested and open to a new way of discovering God?  Will the Lighthouse, with it's modern and very non-traditional feel be a place that people will come for church?  Will a fully biingual service really be effective?  Will the 75 kids enrolled in our Kids' City program be able to get their parents to come and give our style of church a try?  What does it really mean to "contextualize" our CCC style, content, etc.?

There are so many questions and uncertainties, but there is one thing we know for sure.  We want this campus to be a John 17:23 church . . . "May they experience such perfect unity that the world will know that you sent me and that you love them as much as you love me."  Our vision is that this campus will be a truly multi-ethnic church.  That our Hispanic and Spanish speaking neighbors in East Aurora will be to worship with and alongside people like me . . .non-Hispanic and non-Spanish speaking.  We may not have a lot of answers or a proven strategy, but we will hold fast to John 17 and trust that Jesus' final prayer for unity in the body of Christ can actually happen.

East Aurora StuCo

Tonight we piloted our first East Aurora StuCo.  Thanks to some missional folks from the Yellow Box and Montgomery Campuses, we had a great team of people who came out to help us begin to reach the junior/senior high age group.  Since most of our work has been with Elementary Schools, we had no idea what to expect in terms of turn-out.  We had about 10 junior high students that came, but we also had a group of 5th graders that are part of our Kids' City Tuesday program show up.  These are kids who are so ready to be in junior high!  And they loved this new experience!  It was very hard to read the more hardened current junior high kids, but these emerging junior high students can't wait for our next event.  And that is really exciting to me.  We hooked these kids in elementary school, and if we can keep them hooked as they head into middle school, that feels like we have a huge opportunity.  We certainly have some things to keep working on to provide the best StuCo experience possible, but in these kids' eyes, we've got a great thing going, and that is what's important!