"... Love from a Pure Heart,..."

At the end of March, our staff took a field trip to visit Pure Heart Church in Phoenix. We left early in the morning on the 31st and arrived back home at midnight!
This was a church we learned of when we drove up for the February launch event for the Global Leadership Summit. I have found that churches who host GLS have a lot of good things in common. Tessa Galindo connected with their executive pastors and lead pastor ; together they set up our visit.

We took nine people , met several of their staff members for lunch, and went back to tour their campus followed by each of us having two one-on-one meetings with different people on their staff who do our jobs.

We gained a ton of ideas from those two events but then there was more!
Twice a year, they host a “church connect” event which they call “Better Together.” Several other churches came with staff and key volunteers and we were assigned tables with people of similar roles. They served all of us dinner followed by a time of worship, inspiration, and collaboration that was really exciting!
The timing was great for us in that we are in the middle of our own Ministry Plan and Budget process (see last week’s blog for more details)!
This is the second trip like this which Tessa has set up. A few years ago, we did something similar with Christ’s Church of the Valley and it’s a great low cost “conference” with churches with large staffs who do our “jobs” on a much larger scale!
We are in the process of implementing many of the ideas gained. Would you please pray about us doing a “Church Connect” down here in Sierra Vista?  I believe that God has given us a responsibility to encourage others in our community that we haven’t fully stepped into but steps are being taken now to seek the Lord and ask Him what role He has for us.
There are many things I look forward to sharing with you over the next couple of months that will shape the future of our church for years to come!