3/15/2009

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



It started Sunday with Morning Worship. During the service, Crystal and Damon shared with the congregation about some of their experiences at the Hunger Challenge. For the message, we continued our way through the Beatitudes.



Immediately after the service the nurses arrived. They spent a couple of hours organizing themselves and setting up the church for the Health Fair. They were joined by people from the Village Center, Morgan State University, and some city health services who also had booths. We set up the Wii in the front room along with a face painting station for the kids.



By 2:00 p.m. a group of people had gathered in front of the church ready for the Health Fair. Shortly after we opened, the fire department arrived with its fire truck. The kids went outside with them to learn about fire safety.



Over the next 3 hours, over 90 people came to the church to participate in the health fair. People commented as they left about how much they learned and how glad they were that they had come. The nursing school described it as “very good, with lots of things leaned to make it ‘terrific’ next time.”



Perhaps our highest compliment came from the woman from the city who ran the booth the provided STD testing and provided information about preventing the spreading of disease. She had been here for the Night Clinic last fall, too. As things were winding down, she came up and said, “I feel so safe here. I do a lot of public health events around the city but the environment here at this church provides a place where people feel safe to come to me to get the help they need and I feel completely safe in getting help to them. Please include me in any event you have where our services would be appropriate.”



Don Chesworth was back in town and participated in Evening Worship. Afterward, he, Jenn, Tamara, and I went out to eat together.



On Monday and Tuesday I spent a bit of time working on getting our car repaired after last Saturday night’s incident when the police body-slammed and Tazered a man on the car’s hood. The insurance company had me gathering information from witnesses so that it could recoup their losses and my deductible. They later called back realizing that the small likelihood of getting money from the city didn’t make it worth the pursuit.



The Citizens of Pigtown met on Tuesday night at the church. Among the items on the agenda were the plans for a walkability map of the neighborhood. Gloria was responsible for presenting that information.



When Patricia opened the doors for SonRisers on Wednesday morning the burglar alarm malfunctioned. As a result, the alarm blared and the strobe lights flashed for over an hour until the alarm company could get someone out there to try to fix it. Since we couldn’t be inside and the donuts were already here we had SonRisers on the front steps of the church.



With our being outside, kids not seeing lights at the back of the church, and not having our sign out, we had only a handful of kids come for donuts. We only went through about 6 dozen. I took 4 dozen to the middle school to give to the teachers (the secretaries started dancing when they saw me coming in with them), we saved 2 dozen for the NA meeting, we kept 1 dozen for Adult Disciples, and Patricia took a dozen home with her.



When the repairman finished up, we learned that the motherboard of the alarm was fried. In order to afford the alarm upgrade when we added onto the building 3 years ago we used the same components as we had used in the original building 9 years ago. Since it was not a part from the “new” system, its replacement is not covered in our service plan. After some negotiation, we got the price down to $550 with our monthly monitoring and service fees rising from $180 to $198. This system and its monitoring are required by city fire code.



When I got home I received a phone call that a Charles, a member of the congregation who lives on my block, was in a hospice center. He died a few hours later. His funeral is next Sunday at 8:00 p.m.



One of the things I learned in last Saturday’s training was how churches could use Google to help attract visitors to the congregation. I set up an account on Wednesday to see if it would be effective for us, especially for Easter activities. We’ve had a series of technical difficulties so it’s not up and running yet. Hopefully, things will be in order sometime on Monday.



That afternoon I ran into a young woman who was very active in church activities when a teenager. She had just gotten back in the neighborhood having completed a jobs training program. She said they were helping her look for a job and do follow-up with her for the next six months. Right then she was walking home from a visit to the doctor’s office. She had just found out that she is six weeks pregnant.



That night after the NA meeting, the Adult Disciples started their study of 1 Corinthians.



Thursday was full of meetings. That morning I met with Dave to set up my job performance goals for the year. After that, the Smitty joined us to talk about some ministry opportunities. That night was our monthly priesthood meeting. In between the meetings I had several phone calls from Charles’ family regarding Sunday’s funeral and a series of calls from the alarm company about repairing our system.



Marjorie stopped by on Friday with pictures from health fair. That night brought Pizza Church. Clearly, spring is in the air based on the additional restlessness of the middle school group.



We were having some technical difficulties with pigtownchurch.org. Fortunately on Saturday I was on line the same time as Don was. He was able to fix a couple of things and walk me through some things I’d forgotten how to do to get things updated.



That afternoon I went out to the funeral home to visit with Charles’ family. One of his sons, Chris, had been active in church as a teenager and had attended camp a couple of times. In visiting with him I learned that he’s currently in training at an Army base in Arizona and anticipates being stationed at Ft. Bragg once his training is complete.



We had a small group at Solid Rock Café on Saturday night. Tamara and Jenn were out of town so Sarah and I were the staff. For the most part, the kids behaved themselves so people seemed to have a good time.



Looking ahead to next week we have our regular schedule of activities. In addition, we have Charles Latham’s funeral on Sunday night at 8:00. I have a couple of different training events I’m participating in this week as well. One is through Church Leader Insights and the other is through Willow Creek. Thursday is our Family Bowling Night. Next Saturday afternoon we have the wedding of Billy Jo Mills and Charles Stacey.



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



The Bryant Family

The Wilson Family

The Williams Family

The Murdock Family

The Lancaster Family

The Boyce Family

The Pettis Family

The Smith Family



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