3/22/2008

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



It started out with our Palm Sunday service during Morning Worship. A woman who had come to a couple of other holiday events (Christmas, Thanksgiving, etc.) came and brought her husband and son with her this time. Afterward we were able to help a family with food.



Tamara and Jenn were out of town so Shirley came to Kids’ Church to help staff it. I had craft supplies for 23 kids. 21 kids came. 3 more came after the crafts were started so we didn’t let them in (our normal practice). To try to disrupt things the kids who were outside performed a variety of antics at the back door, including slobbering all over the glass.



As a part of Evening Worship, Bryce shared about his experience at North Bay. North Bay is an environmental camp that his class had gone to for the week.



We started out a couple of weeks ago with 2000 postcards inviting people to participate in our Easter Sunday activities. We had passed them out to people in the congregation to give to friends and had done a mailing. By Monday we had around 1700 left. We took them throughout the neighborhood, sliding them under doors at every house on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday mornings until all were gone.



I got a call from Gloria on Tuesday warning me that one of our overhead light bulbs had burned out. This may not seem like a big enough deal to warrant a phone call. However, this was a day we’d been dreading. The light fixtures are over 20 feet in the air and this is the first bulb that’s burned out since we opened the building over 2 years ago. We don’t have a ladder that tall and had been delaying the inevitable.



70 kids participated in Wednesday’s SonRisers activities. That evening the Adult Disciples group read through and discussed some of the stories Jesus told the last week of his life on earth.



Thursday night brought our Last Supper service. We gathered around the candlelit table to read through the scriptures from the Last Supper, sing some songs, pray, and share in communion together. Afterward, Bryce and I set up the church for Good Friday.



We opened the doors for Good Friday at noon. We had a worship center set up and the Bibles marked with that day’s scriptural accounts in each of the Gospels. Between noon and 3:00 p.m. people came in to read, pray, meditate, and reflect on the events of the day.



We left the worship center up for the three Pizza Church sessions that night. We walked each group through the symbols in the center, including bread and empty glasses, a pitcher, basin, and towel, the cross, palm plants, and the like.



Since Baltimore City Schools had started Spring Break early by having Thursday off, we had just a few kids at each Pizza Church session. A few kids who had gotten their days mixed up showed up just as I was ready to leave around 9:00. They came in and we visited for a few minutes. They were all interested in the worship center so they ended up getting the lesson, too. It opened the discussion about baptism with one of the kids.



I got an email from Don this week saying that he’d been working on a redesign of our web page. It’s not ready to launch yet but it is showing promise for being a big improvement over what we have now. I emailed him hundreds of more current pictures Friday night so he would have more timely material to work with.



While out delivering postcards this week I was able to visit with a lot of people. Among them were some of our older teens and young adults who we haven’t seen much this year. We were able to reconnect a bit and catch up on each others lives.



Saturday evening brought Sundae Church. Our core high school kids right now are some of the most fun kids we’ve had in the years I’ve been here. We had a good time laughing, eating, and playing table hockey with the lid off of one of the ice cream containers.



Danny stopped by the church just as that group was leaving. There were some things regarding setup of the building for Easter that I needed to let him know.



Looking ahead to next week we’ll have most of our regular schedule of activities. Since schools are on Spring Break we will not have SonRisers on Wednesday morning. We have Easter activities planned for each of our services on Sunday. In addition, I’ll be meeting with Wade, the pastor of the Washington, DC, congregation on Thursday. Next weekend we’re hoping to take some kids out for attendance awards they’ve earned.



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



Forrest

Troy

Marquel

Amber

Michelle

Norman

Jordan

Carlo

Durrell



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