March 2013

www.edmondcc.org 2800 NE Danforth Road 348-1252

Mar. 8 Kids & Element Movie Night

6:00 - 9:00 pm

Mar. 15-24 Mexico Mission Trip

Mar. 20 No Wednesday Night activities

Mar. 24 Palm Sunday

(Kids Choir Shares)

Upcoming Events

the Encourager

Palm Sunday - Sunday, March 24th at 10:30 am in the FLC (Kids Choir Shares)

Easter Morning Activities

9:00 - 10:00 am: Easter Breakfast - Invite all your family, friends & neighbors to FREE breakfast in the tent. Please RSVP by noting the total number of those attending on your Attendance Card. Final count for breakfast must be in by Sunday, March 24th.

9:30 - 10:15 am: Egg Hunt & Kid’s Activities - Kids ages Birth - 5th Grade are welcome to participate.

10:30 am: Easter Celebration Service - Come worship with us as a family (no Jr. Church).

Charlie, alias, “Mr. Electric” and Sharon Burgett grew up in Oklahoma, a city boy from Tulsa and a country girl from Inola. After Charlie’s graduation in Electrical Engineering from OU, he began his career out of state, but returned to marry Sharon in 1968 and then carry her away. For 25 years they lived in Pennsylvania, Iowa, New Jersey, and Georgia, while raising 2 sons before moving back to Oklahoma in 1992 after the boys were out of high school. The last 17 of those years were in the Atlanta area, where the family was very involved in the local Christian Church with leadership, visitation, and youth group activities. Both sons also moved to Oklahoma and are located in central Oklahoma, with one married to an Oklahoma girl providing us with a wonderful daughter-in-law. We know God’s hand was working to bring us to Edmond because we have experienced so many personal blessings and friendships here. For example, Sharon experienced difficult losses of a young nephew, both parents, and her sister that would have been almost impossible to bear if we had still lived out of state away from family. And Charlie was able to complete his electric utility career in this vibrant, growing community. Sharon is now retired from her position as a school bus driver for special needs students, and Charlie is retired from Edmond Electric. We both appreciate the kingdom work that our church is accomplishing in our community and around the world. Of course, the greatest personal reward is the friendship we have with other members including those in our Small Group (which they lead), Sunday School Class, nursery work, and mission trips, to mention a few.

FAMILY NEWS

www.edmondcc.org 2800 NE Danforth Road 348-1252

You’re invited to a Baby Shower for Mike & Valerie Hanson on Sun., Apr. 7 @ 3 pm in the FLC. They are having a boy and have requested clothes & diapers of all sizes. The shower is hosted by the Shower Ministry.

Baby Shower On Thursday nights at 7pm, the college age young

adults get together to enjoy a meal of non-cafeteria food, an evening off campus, and a good movie.

We're watching films that tackle religious, spiritual, or philosophical themes and discussing them from a

Biblical perspective, films like The Ma-trix (predestination vs. free will), Kingdom of

Heaven (religion vs. true righteousness) and Saved! (how the world perceives suburban American Chris-

tianity). These themes and messages run through many big-budget Hollywood blockbusters, and while the movies rarely come to

Christlike conclusions, they do provide a great starting point for dis-cussions that explore what God says in His Word about each

subject. See Nathan, if you’re interested.

Missions Page

Mexico 2013 Spring Break Service Trip Our 23 member mission team leaves for Puerto Penasco, Mexico on March 15th. We do this so that we can work with Amor.org to build a house for a family in Mexico. The home is made of a cement floor, stud walls covered in stucco and a rolled/shingled roof. The trip takes almost the entire spring break, March 15th - March 24th, with the travel time booked in, but it is an amazing trip. This year we will be building a house for the Acedo Castillo family. They live in a community called 'Nueva Esperanza' (New Hope), in Puerto Peñasco. The family is originally from Puerto Penasco. They are still paying for the land. The family together makes about $80 a week. Jesus Acedo Murillo works in a scrap yard. Sugey Margarita Castillo works in the home. Josue attends Pri-mary in the afternoon and so does his sister Berenice. The family believes in God, and volunteers at the church. The name of their church is Iglesia Apostolica del Dios Viviente (Apostolic Church of the Living God). They have limited resources and their one year old daughter has health problems. They currently live in 2 rooms, which were built for them by another ministry. The roof is inade-quate. The floor is made of cement and in good condition. The walls are made of tarpaper and plywood. They have an outhouse of their own. A message from the family: "Thank you for the effort you are putting into our house." We go to Mexico to be the hands and feet of Jesus; and to be a blessing, but return being blessed ourselves. Please be praying first and foremost for the Acedo Castillo family and then for our team. Gracias from your ECC Mexico team: Vernon Brake, Charlie Burgett, Tyler Conrad, Becca Cusher, Aaron and Joe Fine, Ivy Hill, Marcy Hynd, Tyrel Hynd, Collin Kasch, Steve and Trudi Logan, Ezequiel Madrigal, Gonzalo Morillas, Chris, Heather, Madi, and Emily Stuart, Cole Taylor, Alex and Jesse Turpin, Cole and Steve Wayant.

Costa Rica For Christ

Costa Rica for Christ, a project of Joshua One Ministries, is a ministry of evangelism and church-planting in Costa Rica led by native Costa Rican evangelists. Rodrigo Rojas, in the capital city of San José, is senior evangelist of CR4C.

Joshua One Ministries provides various kinds of support to Rodrigo, his team of evangelist-church planters, and their network of more than a dozen churches. In addition to funds, we provide leader-ship training, discipleship training, Bibles, books — as well as friendship and encouragement — to Rodrigo and his team.

Rodrigo Rojas Romero lives and ministers in San José, the capital city of Costa Rica, a metropolitan area of more than 1 million people. Rodrigo, and his wife, Nelly, have been married 35 years. They have seven children and five grandchildren, many of whom are active ministers and church leaders themselves.

In 1971, when Rodrigo was 24 years old, he became a Christian and was baptized. Three years later, Rodrigo entered the ministry. “I never decided to become a minister,” Rodrigo says. “God called me to be a minister.”

From the start, Rodrigo has always been a church planter. The first church he launched is in San Mi-guel de Desamparados, a district of San José. Rodrigo continues to pastor that church, Iglesia del Evangelio de Jesucristo (“Church of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”), where about 100 people attend each Sunday. Iglesia del Evangelio is a nondenominational, Bible-believing church, an independent Christian church of the Restoration Movement.

www.edmondcc.org 2800 NE Danforth Road 348-1252

Outside the Walls

What an amazing time we had at Super Start this year! Super Start is a high‐energy weekend event specifically targeting preteens to help them learn and grow in relation‐ships with friends, leaders and most importantly, God. This year’s theme was "Decoding Love". Did you know that the word love is mentioned in the Bible over 600 times? The idea of loving one another is mentioned 11 times with 3 of those being commanded by 

Jesus. The kids heard John 15:12 "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you" throughout the time that we were there. They learned that in order to love others, first you have to see Jesus and then be Jesus because everybody needs Jesus. The kids were also introduced to two remarkable young ladies who are exhibiting Christ's love to children in hospitals. Jaida Collins and Madison Timken are 11 years old and from Olathe, KS. A family friend's 2 year old had an extended hospital stay and the two put their heads together and came up with a way to bring a smile to that child's face and Bear Hugs was born. The kids raise money and head to the Build a Bear Workshop  in their community and make stuffed animals for many other children now. Our kiddos were moved and inspired by their story and we had a great con‐versation on the way home. The girls came up with the idea to make fleece blankets and de‐liver them to residents at a local nursing home. I am very excited to help make this happen for these girls. We will be working out details and arranging for bake sales and other ways to raise money for their mission. How exciting to witness these young people catch a vision and run with it! I look forward to seeing that vision come to fruition and seeing what God does with it! I also want to give a huge shout out to my husband John Smith and homie Shauna Poling for braving the trip with me! There is a special place in Heaven for those who brave a weekend with 2000 10‐12 year olds! You guys rock!  ‐ Crissy Smith 

Outside the WallsMinistry doesn’t always take place inside the walls of the church or through our church’s program. You also don’t have to go overseas to live on mission for God as Ashley Engle demonstrates. This is her story of ministry Outside the Walls. Like many of you, my heart was broken by the hundreds of news stories about child abuse in our state. Though I was angry and saddened, I felt paralyzed by my inability to change the situation. Last fall, my mother inspired me to become a part of an organization called “CASA of Oklahoma County”. “CASA” stands for “Court Appointed Special Advocates”. CASA volunteers are assigned to an abused or neglected child or sibling group in DHS custody to advocate for their best interests. Unlike DHS case workers who handle 30-40 cases, a CASA volunteer is only assigned one or just a few cases. This means that children with CASAs get the individualized attention they deserve, and that the judges in the juvenile justice system have one more set of eyes and ears to rely on when making

judgments. Being a CASA is definitely challenging. It can be emotionally taxing, as CASAs only see cases classified as “shocking and heinous”. I cannot believe some of the things that I see and hear, and as a parent of two small children, I find it especially difficult. My fear of not being able to handle some of these issues kept me from volunteering in this capacity for years. But God was persistent. He has given me the strength to do this work, and I am so thankful He did. It is one of my life’s greatest privileges to show God’s love to the children I meet through CASA. They desperately need Him because most of the people in their lives have let them down and abused them in uni-maginable ways. They need to know that love does exist in the world, and that there is a heavenly parent who would never hurt them. This organization makes a difference, but there are still over 1400 kids in need of CASA representation. If you are interested, I’d love to speak with you!

Ashley Engle

way, Bible study of other books outside the Gospels is encour-aged) So that is B.E.L.L.S. in a nut shell, but I would like to quickly share what we have been doing in the High School group as we have been doing B.E.L.L.S. for 7 weeks now. In our High School group, the change at first was not drastic, but a little different for some so it took several weeks to get into a routine of doing B.E.L.L.S. Each week I text out daily reminders to do the reading for the week (two chapters a day); I encourage our students and

leaders to eat with people, pray for friends and to be a blessing to each other and those around them in life. Each week at our Wednesday night gathering we take communion together as a group; as we are a church within the church or a small group if you will. We also pray for each other, and then we discuss and study the Gospel chapters that we have read that week. The kids bring their questions and their insights to the discussion each week. It has been really cool to see the students plug into not B.E.L.L.S., but living more and more like Jesus; which is the point. Aaron Fine recently shared with us that some of the other paintballers that he is on a team with asked him, “why do you go to church,” and Aaron has had several opportunities to tell them about his faith, not just church. Amy Allsbury and Nick Martin recently told of us about a lunch period when they sat down with another student, a girl who is kind of a “loner.” They had lunch with her and are trying to start a deeper relationship with her. Just like adults, we have students at many different levels of knowing Jesus and the Bible, but we are seeing stu-dents read the Gospels, some for the first time and that is good news indeed. Our students are also realizing that making disci-ples is not some huge, monumental task that requires a lot of training and moving oversees. The students are seeing that in their normal, daily lives there are multitudes of “lost” people that they have contact and relationships with already. They are starting to learn as I also am, that being a disciple maker is a process that starts right in front of us all, in our homes, neighborhoods, schools, work places, ball fields, etc…..we just have to have our spiritual eyes open to see people as Jesus sees them; as potential new friends. -peace and love, Cole Taylor Student Pastor @ ECC

Hey ECC. So on Sunday, March 3rd during my sermon, I quickly mentioned that the High School students are do-ing a study called B.E.L.L.S. It is honestly not a study, or a lesson series, it’s a different approach to our meet-ing time. Before I jump in and explain what we are do-ing, I need to explain B.E.L.L.S. first. B.E.L.L.S. stands for: Bless- bless people in your life with simple words of en-couragement, via email, face to face, text; help people in your circle of influence in need, neighbors, co workers etc.; be a blessing to people in your life. Eat- try and eat with people other than your family at least 2 times a week, take a co-worker to lunch, a friend out to Starbucks for a drink and muffin, etc. Listen- pay attention to what God is showing you in your daily life, look for Him at work in your life, for Him speaking to you, or giving you opportunities to share Him with others. Listen to the Spirit move. Learn- study the Gospels over and over and over. Chris-tians are a people group who follow Jesus, so studying/reading the Gospels over and over saturates our minds and lives with Jesus. Discuss the 2 chapters each week at the weekly gathering. Send- as Jesus people we are sent into the world to make disciples. Matthew 28:18-20, the great commis-sion; we are a sent people. Each week we take time to pray for those we are “sent” to as everyday missionaries in our schools, jobs, homes, neighborhoods, etc. (by the

Refreshing Waters Matthew 28:6

“He is not here; he has risen, just as he said.

Come and see the place where he lay.”

You’ve heard me say it many times, “As Christ Followers our responsibility is to help people find their way back to God.” In order to do that we must find practical ways to say, “We care because Jesus cares.” Of course saying “we care” can manifest itself in many ways. Not only does that mean extending ourselves to meet some physical needs of the less fortunate. It also means meeting needs of people we cross paths with every day.

I’m not talking necessarily about the home-less who stand on the street corners, al-though they no doubt need our help. I am talking about the people that we rub shoul-ders with every day; our coworkers, neighbors, classmates, etc.. Since all of us have needs, including days when we could use some encouragement, everyone with whom we have contact has some sort of need. It may only mean a pat on the back, a smile or a hug, a listening ear.

Saying “I care because Jesus cares,” might be baby sitting for a neighbor or co-worker so they can go to the store or per-haps have a much needed date night. It might mean helping with a household pro-ject. It could manifest itself in the form of a friendship or an occasional meal together. And it could look like staying with them when a tragedy strikes or helping find their way through a crisis.

Easter is rapidly approaching. We have designed our services to tell people “we care because Jesus cares” and help them find their way back to God. It all starts with our FREE Breakfast. Invite your family, friends, neighbors and coworkers to join you for breakfast. Then take part in the kids activi-ties, topped off by our Easter Celebration. It’s going to be a great day. Easter is March 31,so you only have a couple weeks to start inviting. —just Dave

Sermon Series

Mar. 3 - Teenage Dreams Mar. 10 - Godly Families Mar. 17 - Raise Up a Child

PALM SUNDAY

March 24 Featuring: Kids Choir

SUNDAY

9:30 am - Sunday School

10:30 am - Worship WEDNESDAY

6:30 - 8:00 pm

WNL- Wednesday Night Live

Element Student Ministries

Adult Small Groups

SMALL GROUPS

Small Groups are designed to connect you into essential relationships with other Christ followers focusing on Bible study, fellowship, outreach, & prayer. Groups meet on various evenings throughout the week. Contact the church office for more information.

STAFF

Dianne LaGuardia, Children’s Minister Dave Lang, Lead Pastor

Nathan Ohmart, Worship Minister Cindy Strickland, Office Administrator

Cole Taylor, Youth Minister

Office Hours: M-F 8:30-4:30 405-348-1252

Those who wish to TITHE ONLINE may do so through your own Bill Pay. Send your gifts to Edmond Christian Church, 2800 E. Danforth Road, Edmond, OK 73034.

Gathering Times:

College-Age Sunday School A new college-age class has begun meeting during the Sunday School

hour in FLC 3 (the room on the right as you look at the back wall). If you're a college student or a college-age young adult, come join us as

we explore the unique challenges & opportunities students face as they move from their teens into their 20s and discover what it looks like to

follow Christ in life's ever-changing circumstances.

The Seekers

open to adults of all ages, meets at 9:30 a.m. FLC 2

current study: Minor Prophets

OPEN TO ALL ADULTS OF ALL AGES 9:00 AM IN FLC 1

CURRENT STUDY: BOOK OF 1ST PETER

Offering Report

February’s Offering: $32,278.64 February’s Budget: $33,384.15

2013 Decisions for Christ: 1