Young Adult Worship Service at Mission of Hope

I got the following email. Thought it might interest some of you! The speaker has given the message at Watershed 3 different times in past years, and those of you who have not heard her would probably benefit the most. Plus, she's a personal friend of mine. :o)

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Mission of Hope is having a worship service designed especially for youth and young adults!

Saturday, May 10th
6:30 PM
Mission of Hope - 1537 1st Ave SE
Message - Karen McCaa
Music - "Happy-Go-Lovely"

Join us for a positive and uplifting message by well-known and loved Christian motivational speaker, Karen McCaa. A counselor at Kirkwood Community College and traveled speaker for Nike Co., Karen comes to us from Indiana, and her teachings are universally respected and cherished by all who hear her. Karen pours out her heart as she shares personal stories and Biblical teaching that will be sure to inspire and motivate us to lead lives that honor & follow our Lord Jesus Christ.

In addition, local young band "Happy-Go-Lovely" returns to Mission of Hope to lead us in worship! It's guaranteed to be a night of fun and revelation!

Please forward this invitation, invite your children, bring a friend. Hope to see you there!
Tina

Tina Herring
Worship Coordinator
MISSION OF HOPE
(319)362-5559

Knowing Your Neighbors

I just learned about a new tool called ZipSkinny.  If you want to "get the skinny" on your neighborhood, you simply enter your Zip Code, and ZipSkinny pulls all sorts of data from the Census Bureau website, and even compares it to other Zip Codes in your areas.

So for fun, I thought I'd enter 52402 since a majority of our Watershed audience lives and works within this zip code.  And I was surprised to see that while the Median age is 33, the largest age range (percentage-wise) was those in the 20-29 age range.  It's nice to know that Watershed is aiming for the right target audience...

Winning

In our staff meeting last Thursday, we talked about winning and Watershed. A win is any time a young adult goes deeper with Christ, be it coming to a Thursday night gathering for the first time, or coming to Christ, or getting involved in their church. We discussed ways that we've seen "wins" occur at Watershed, and some of the things we need to do to continue seeing wins in the future. Here are some of the things you brought up...

• Organized small groups/mentorship groups (possibly meet on Thursdays)
• Bring back the group that met after Thurs night gatherings to discuss the message
• Social events geared toward deepening relationships
• Once a month organized events that might be more comfortable for seekers
• Give people an outlet for their Spiritual Pathways
• Calendar on website for anyone to post events on
• White board in the entry-way to the gathering that lists upcoming activities
• Have someone available after each service for prayer
• Greeting team
• Everyone is a greeter!
• Identify the target audience? Are we trying to reach the churched or the unchurched?

Looking over that list, 3 areas stand out to me: welcoming new attenders (ankle deep), fellowship (knee deep), and small groups/iron-sharpens-iron activities (waist deep).

We also discussed some ways to get the word about Watershed out to the community...

• Letter to area churches
• Vision partner of 89.1 The Spirit
• Ads in the Gazette, Penny Saver, Christian Business Directory
• Contact Christian businesses
• Community service outreaches and events
• Laundromat bulletin boards
• Personal invites
• College campuses (beginning of the year fairs)
• Location (be where we want to minister)

Please discuss the ideas listed above. Are there any other things you believe we need to to do in order to see more wins? Can we focus on all these or are there certain ones that stand out as more urgent than others? We'd love to hear your thoughts.

Thursdays and Texting

I must admit, it felt a bit strange not having a Worship Gathering tonight. Instead, I was hanging out with John, Matt, Amber, and Bill working on the June 21 staff meeting, the June 28 Worship Gathering (we almost have a park secured!), and the new location (several good options, I must say!). While I missed worshipping and hanging with all of you, I am excited about this summer and gearing up for next fall.

The main reason I am posting is that I just read a blog about text messaging among young adults. You can read it here. I don't even own a cell phone, so I am obviously not contributing to any of these numbers, but I'm curious how many of you text someone daily? While in your car? And how is your life different because of text messaging? And would you say life is better because of texting?

Comments are open!

Passion coming to Chicago!

Passion is coming to Chicago! I (Amy) have been to the Passion Conferences the last 2 years and I am so excited to know they are coming so close and over a weekend! I will be organizing a group to go with me from Watershed. The only details I know is that it is the weekend of October 19 and 20th. It will be a Friday and Saturday. I do not know time information, or any other details. But stay tuned because I will be staying on top of it!

If you are interested in coming, let me know and I will definitely keep you in the loop!

Passion is a young adult conference that is an amazing experience and both years I have went, I have been amazed. Having so many young adults in the same room, worshipping Jesus is soooo amazing you will not want to miss out! You will not be disappointed!

If you want to read the Passion blog, you can find it at www.268blog.blogspot.com and if you want to know more about Passion Conferences, you can find that at www.268generation.com.

MORE TO COME!!!!

The Next Young Adult Generation

Erin here. I will try not to do this very often, but I thought some of you might be interested in some recent surveys that have been released in the past couple months that I posted about on my personal blog. The only reason I am linking is because it has to do with the next generation of young adults and I don't want to recreate the post over here. Some of the survey results were startling to me and might be to you as well.

As I said on my blog, these results concern me, but also motivate me. And I am glad that God has Watershed here in Cedar Rapids at this time to help address the issues raised in these reports. But it is going to take a group of people moving in step with the flow of the Holy Spirit to help reach the young adults of Eastern Iowa for Christ. Will you step into the flow with us?