12/31/2005

It's been a busy week at the Power House in Baltimore, Maryland.

It started out Christmas Sunday with Morning Worship. We had 40 people in attendance, 20 of whom were not at the Christmas Eve service the night before. That brought our total to 100 different people who participated in the Christmas services.

As a part of Morning Worship we had two baby blessings. The grandmother of both of the babies is a member of the congregation. The father of one of the babies was Otts, one of the kids baptized in the first baptismal service after the Power House opened in 1995.

Just before the service was to begin it started to sprinkle. We have two members who get to church via electric scooters. One didn't want to risk shorting out the scooter and left before church started. The other stayed. By the time church was out it was pouring rain. I took her home in my van but had to leave the scooter at the church. It continued to rain until after sundown so we waited until Monday morning to take her back over to the church so she could drive it home.

With no school this week we didn't have SonRisers and with people's schedules a bit off for the holidays we cancelled Wednesday night's Adult Disciples group. The Narcotics Anonymous group held their meeting as scheduled.

On Thursday afternoon I was spending some time at the church catching up on bookwork and getting Sunday's messages ready when a couple of men pulled up in a car in front of the church, got out, and started studying the sign. After I invited them in they told me that they were a part of a collection of house churches in the area that were looking for a larger congregation with which to worship and work in the community. They had been scoping us out in the neighborhood, liked our reputation and the community's perception, found our programming to be consistent with their goals and mission, and were interested in knowing more. We've been in email dialog since then and are exploring opportunities.

I got our first power bill since the grand opening. We knew it would be high and had budgeted for it to be 5-7 times higher than previous months. We were shocked (no pun intended) to find it nearly 15 times greater. Miraculously, I received an unsolicited donation in the mail today that covered the cost of the bill.

On Friday I performed a wedding at the church. The couple had just had a baby three weeks ago. They are relatives of the families who had their babies blessed on Christmas day and had heard about the wonderful experience of that service. They asked when we'd be having baby blessings again and if they could be a part of it. We scheduled the blessing for a week from Sunday.

On Friday we had our regularly scheduled Pizza Church sessions. These marked the half way point in our youth ministry year. Thus far, 479 kids have participated in at least one activity at the church since the end of last summer's camp.

I spent much of the day Saturday in Springfield, Virginia, at a mission center youth ministries task force meeting. That evening, Danny, Gloria, and I met at the church to go over the logistics of serving communion in the new building and to touch base on a couple of other things. While that was going on, Woody began installing locks on some of our internal doors, Robert did some cleaning in the building and folded Sunday's bulletins, and Tamara and Jenn stopped by for a visit.

Looking ahead to next week we have our full schedule of activities. In addition, we'll be finalizing plans for our upcoming building consecration weekend. We'll also start distributing the materials for our 40 Days of Community campaign.

Along with the individuals and activities mentioned, please keep the following persons in the forefront of your prayers:

John
Jeffrey
Dave
Allan
Kirsty
Angelique
Catherine
Myrtle
Sue

Thank you for your continued prayer support.

Jeff and everyone at
The Power House
"Building the Kingdom of God Here and Now"
PowerHouseMD@Juno.com
www.pigtownchurch.org