Children’s Choice Christmas Party
This year CityLife Church has the privilege of sponsoring the annual Christmas party for Philadelphia’s Children’s Choice foster care agency. Children’s Choice has an office in South Philly, and it’s been great to get to know their story and their passion for some awesome kids in our city.
The Christmas party is an opportunity each year to honor the foster care families that they work with. By sponsoring the party, CityLife gets to do a few specific things.
- We’re purchasing the Christmas gifts for each of the foster care kids.
- We’re purchasing the Christmas gifts for the foster family’s biological kids as well.
- We’ll be giving small gift bags to the foster parents.
- We’ll have a presence at the party to make it as memorable and fun as possible!
The party is next Thursday night, at a hotel downtown. Most of the gifts have been claimed by people in our church, but we still have a handful that need to be purchased. If you’re able to participate, please let me know.
One of our values at CityLife is to be compassionate. We want to serve our city in real, meaningful, and transformational ways.
If you have already adopted a child and purchased a gift, THANK YOU! Thanks for being a part of making this party such a highlight for these precious kids and their heroic families.
We’re reaching THE ONE!
Worship With Your Whole Life
We’re in a teaching series at CityLife Church called Worth-Ship. We’re looking at practical expressions of worship. Yesterday I taught from The Great Commandment, which Jesus unpacked in Mark 12.29.
You shall love the Lord your God will all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.
In other words, Jesus inspires me to love God with my whole life. Worship isn’t something I do once a week, or even once a day. Worship is my approach to life everyday, all of the time, no matter what I’m doing. Even my work becomes worship when I simply change who I’m working for.
To illustrate the message, Matt Lee, our Guest Services team leader, painted this picture during the service. Matt’s a unique guy. He’s a C on the DISC personality profile–competent, detailed, organized, analytical and task oriented, so it’s not a surprise that he’s a Civil Engineer by day.
But Matt is also a gifted artist and creative thinker. He’s a great example of loving God with your whole mind–with the creative right half and the logical left half.
It’s been rewarding to watch our church take steps forward in our understanding of worship this month. This coming Sunday we’ll be wrapping up the series. Don’t miss it!
1 Down, 99 To Go
Our dream at CityLife Church is to build something that is reproducible. At a micro level that means we want to see disciples reproducing disciples, leaders reproducing leaders, and small groups reproducing small groups. At a macro level, and when the time is right, we also dream of seeing new campuses and churches started out of CityLife.
This vision of leading a reproducing church is one that has grown in my heart in large part because of Jeff Leake’s influence in my life. Pastor Jeff leads Allison Park Church in Pittsburgh. In addition to being CityLife’s parent church, APC has started several churches in Pittsburgh.
Recently God put a dream in Pastor Jeff’s heart to see 100 new churches started over the next 10 years through APC and her daughter churches. Here are just a few ways this exciting dream connects to CityLife.
CityLife is the first church plant in this dream of 100 church plants! I believe that in 10 years we’ll be able to look back and celebrate being the first new church in a movement that has resulted in thousands of changed lives all over the country.
Every new church that CityLife eventually starts will be a part of fulfilling this God-sized dream! Not only will we be impacting Philadelphia for Christ. We’ll also be contributing to a church planting movement in cities throughout the Northeast!
You can follow the progress of this dream at 100churches.net. Let’s start some churches!
CityLife Update
It’s hard to believe we’re already 9 weeks into the launch of CityLife Church! We’ve been having a blast since the church officially started on September 11. Here’s a little recap of what God’s been doing.
- 60 people have responded in our weekend gatherings to commit or recommit their lives to Jesus. Go God!
- We celebrated launch day with 210 people and have been averaging about 150 in attendance over the 9 weeks. You can see our Launch Day photo album on our Facebook page.
- In October we kicked off our first Starting Point discipleship process with 58 new people participating.
- In the past few weeks more than 20 people have started serving on the CityLife Dream Team!
We’re pumped about each of these numbers because they represent ONE person: one life that was changed by Jesus, one child who’s experienced church for the first time, one eternity that’s been changed forever. Here are just a few stories of THE ONE.
- ONE family who had only been to church a few times in their lives came to CityLife on launch day. They have since made commitments for Jesus and the kids can’t wait to come back each week.
- ONE woman visited and shared that she had been praying for a church like CityLife in her neighborhood for over 20 years.
- ONE man struggling with a life-controlling drug addiction has recommitted his life to Jesus and begun the discipleship process.
- ONE homeless couple has found a home with the CityLife Church family.
New Series Starts Sunday
You know your church is getting old when you start your second sermon series!
It’s easy for me to track the age of our church right now because we’re in sync with the NFL season. So this Sunday is week 5!
I’m looking forward to starting a new teaching series straight from the New Testament Book of James. This letter, written by Jesus’ brother, has a lot to say to us about persevering through trials, the power of our words, the value of waiting, and the potential of prayer.
This Sunday we’ll kick things by studying a surprising command. Count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds. What you’ll discover may surprise you–and encourage you!
See you Sunday!
Win Eagles Tickets This Sunday!
CityLife Church launched the same day that the Philadelphia Eagles started the NFL season. To celebrate our Kickoff series, we’ve been giving away Eagles stuff all month long. So far, we’ve given away two jerseys and a fun tailgating cooler with a $50.00 Acme gift card inside.
The time for the big prize has finally come and I am pumped about giving away two Eagles tickets during the final week of our Kickoff series this Sunday! Everyone in attendance will be eligible.
Most of all, Sunday is going to be a fun God-party–a worship experience packed with hope, love, and LIFE! See you then!
Starting Point
I spent this morning planning for our first Starting Point class at CityLife Church. This one hour class will take place this Sunday, immediately after the worship experience, in the school’s cafeteria. If you want to connect at CityLife, this class is where you want to start.
If you’ve started to attend CityLife, or are thinking of attending, here are some reasons why you should be a part of Starting Point.
- Free lunch!
- You’ll hear how God called my family to move to Philadelphia.
- You have to eat lunch anyway.
- You’ll hear exactly how to connect to the Dream Team at CityLife.
- We’ll watch your kids for you.
- You’ll find out how to get one of those stylish blue and green CityLife t-shirts you’ve seen everybody wearing.
- You’ll learn the vision, values, and ministry strategy of our church.
- Did I mention lunch is free!
A New Teacher’s Lounge, Water Bottles, and Week 3 At CityLife!
Today I am celebrating an amazing weekend of ministry at CityLife Church! Here are a few of the highlights.
- About 35 friends from the choir at Allison Park Church joined us for the weekend. They had awesome attitudes as they served South Philly.
- On Friday night we outfitted the teacher’s lounge at The Academy at Palumbo. You can see the before and after photos above. So thankful for our relationship with this great school and happy to invest in their teachers!
- On Saturday we gave away hundreds of bottles of water and distributed thousands of door hangers. During the day one of our church’s 94 year old neighbors committed his life to Christ!
- Yesterday we had our 3rd service. There was so much energy and excitement that filled the school!
- Counting the choir, we had 196 people in attendance, and at the end of the service 19 people responded to plead guilty and surrender their lives to Jesus!
Kickoff Giveaways!
The launch of CityLifeis complete, but the fun has just begun! We’ll be back at The Academy at Palumbo this Sunday for week 2 of our Kickoff series.
To celebrate, we’re giving away fun Eagles stuff throughout the series. This week one lucky winner will get a tailgating cooler, complete with a $50.00 Acme gift card. We’re building toward the grand prize of two Eagle’s tickets on October 2!
If you’re visiting for the first time, be sure to check out the “Visit Us” section of our website and download the VIP Guest Guide.
I hope you can be with us for our second service on Sunday. It’s going to be a God-party!
Launch Recap
Wow! Yesterday was such a fun day for CityLife Church! For months we have been preparing for September 11 with the goal of throwing the finest God party we could. And yesterday it happened. The Academy at Palumbo was packed with people, energy, and LIFE!
Yesterday was my 33rd birthday. In the morning, one friend who forgot CityLife was launching, posted a message to my Facebook wall that said, “Happy birthday. I hope it’s a blast and that you do something you love.” Honestly, I can’t imagine anything I’d rather do on my birthday than start a church, and can’t remember ever having a birthday that was as much fun as this one.
We weren’t quite sure what to expect but were thrilled with what God did. 210 people attended the service, and 12 made a commitment to cross the line of faith and surrender to Christ.
I was so proud of our team. I can’t begin to calculate the number of hours and cumulative sacrifice they’ve invested in the birth of CityLife Church. There’s no way yesterday would have happened without you. I love you guys and feel honored to share in this dream with you.
If you’d like to get a taste of the fun, check out the CityLife Launch photo album on our Facebook page!
