A Poem for Anchor

A is for our amazing grace,
N is for never alone,
Cis for caring people,
H is for our second home.
O is for our Savior that we worship together each week,
R is for the respect we have for our pastor we love to hear speak.

If you are feeling lost or all alone,
if you have a problem you just can' seem to fix,
they understand at Anchor, so come jump on our ship.

We have a worship team who sings like angels,
worshipping the Lord,
a laid back place to give thanks to Christ,
through every note and chord.

Our pastor is a big fan of Starbucks,
so if not here you may find him there;
he's even brought back to Anchor
their tables and their chairs!

He has helped so many people
in so many different ways,
well to thank him,
I just don't know what to say.

Tim and his family are an inspiration to us all,
here at Anchor we love you
and will always be here
to catch you if you fall.

So thank you all for everything,
I just thought I would try to express my thanks with this little rhyme;
I fell I owe you all so much,
so when in need, just ask me anytime!

~ Tracy Fink, Sunday June 10th, 2012

Doing Good in the Neighborhood

Today members of our church walked through the neighborhood picking up the litter alongside the edges of the alleys, sidewalks and streets. 25 of us - age range being 19mos to 75 years old! - took along our trash bags, gloves, poker sticks and wheeled carts for an hour to bless the neighborhood. Albeit our impact was small, but the intent behind it was big - acts of kindness done on purpose are always good.

Anchor used to do this event every year when we first started. One thing led to another and we quit doing it. As a way to celebrate our ten year anniversary this month, we thought it'd be a great idea to bring back one of our original ways of serving our neighbors. Anchor's found plenty of good ways to serve the neighborhood in the past ten years, but what's neat about this task is that it's one for the whole family, and you get to hang out with a bunch of different folks as you walk through the neighborhood.

The neighborhood has changed a little in ten years, some houses and properties look better, others not so much. Still lots of kids in the neighborhood, young families, and plenty of barking dogs! What's important for Anchor to do is keep finding ways to bless our neighbors - in big and small ways - in lots of creative ways, in order to open doors of opportunity.

Here's how it works: God blesses Anchor, and then He makes Anchor a blessing, so that the whole neighborhood/city may be blessed by God through us. Today was one more example of how that worked.

What's Supposed to Happen on Sundays?

There is a lot of expectation for what is supposed to happen on Sundays.

What results are we to look for?

How do you measure hearts that endure in loyalty to God because of what happens on Sundays?

How do you calculate fruitfulness?

How do you grasp the renewal of someone's mind?

Works. Action. Deeds.

The expectation is that, whatever actually happens, the end results in more people doing works of love more often. Works of love done in someway because of their response to God's work of love in them.

How do you know if someone is doing works of love?

At some point we need to mark down what are the works of love Jesus calls us to continue doing, and then mark up how each of us is going to do them week to week.

So then we need to backtrack: what is it that we do on Sundays that contributes to doing works of love week in and week out?

What is it about the songs we sing, and the singing of those songs? What is it about the Scripture that is preached, and the preaching of the Scripture? What is it of the prayers and the praying, of the the koinonia, of the serving, of the listening? What are ways of doing those things that contribute to more people being enabled to live out the Great Commandment and Commission?

I suppose at one level, it has to do with the hearts and heads of the leaders: they set the example. At another level, there needs to be a consistency in the overall message: setting a standard for understanding why we do what we do. There could be many more, but the third thing I think of is connectability: how to help each person connect with the example they see, the message they hear with their own living from week to week.

For Anchor, I think we need to up the intensity of our example-setting of our leaders, be more consistent in sharing our standard message, and then keep being creative in our connectability.

It is not rocket-science, just glad endurance.