Sparks Fly!

Last night with our small group, we shared some of the ideas that are being birthed in our group regarding moving forward after last week's experience at Catalyst West. These aren't fully formed yet and some may take a while to become functional ideas, but here's a quick list of what may be...

-Writer's Group - Many students believe the wrong story about who they are. This could be a way to help some of them understand the meaning of their story and more effectively share those stories. When I started talking about this as a thing for high school students, the group quickly pointed out it could be a great thing community wide for adults as well. So true!

-Mission Trip to Arizona - Hi Tory! What could we do at Christmas?

-Pastor's Wives Group - What can we do to connect the wives of local pastors? Pastor's wives are incredible (especially that WestWay youth minister's wife!); what awesome things could God be doing in our area if this group could be drawn together for support and inspiration?! Hosting ladies for Lori Wilhite's web conference later this year can be a good starting point.

-Housing - We'd like to help with the local Habitat for Humanity again, and also interested in the possibility of working with something like Casas por Cristo in Mexico.

-Foster Care/Adoption - How many kids are in foster care in our community? What agencies handle foster care? How can we help them - not only housing kids, but offering respite for foster parents... "Does God want our family to adopt a child?" Don't forget to ask that question.

-Denver Rescue Mission - What could we be doing to help there (the largest city close to us)?

-People of the Second Chance - What are we doing to offer grace, hope, and help to people needing to be restored to wholeness? Recovery Groups/Redemption Groups

-Lots of us Blog and others are considering it - How can we leverage our blogs to best serve the kingdom and help people in our community see God at work around them, especially those who haven't noticed Him before? Maybe a Scottsbluff area aggregate blog or something similar? Tie-in with a new church website?

-Hospitality for visitors - Lots of little touches could be done in our facilities to help people feel more at ease/at home when they come to our building. i.e. shelves in restrooms, less empty wall space, signs within the building to help people find their way, signs in town to compensate for unfortunate building location (outside of most of the community's flow) - but also remembering a sign or wall hanging will never take the place of the personal care we provide as individuals who collectively are the church.
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Those are some of the ideas that were sparked by last week's conference. We're still kicking them around and obviously we can't tackle them all at once. But God is at work in our hearts and stirring some incredible thought. If you're a part of WestWay and have some thoughts about how these ideas can be fleshed out, give me a call or comment below and let's see which of these sparks we can "fan into flame" together!