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Do you plan on building a permanent facility?
The short answer is, no. Here is some of the reasons:
In the Bible, it is clear that the church is a people (a community), not a building. Therefore, in an effort not to associate
our community with a building, we do not want to build. Second, a building takes a lot of time and energy to maintain. We
want to spend our time on people's lives, not on brick and mortar, so we chose to rent instead. Third, a building takes a
lot of money to maintain. We want to be good stewards of the resources God has given us, and spending so much money to merely
use the facility a few times a week is not a wise use of funds. Fourth, we want to be outward oriented in what we do, and
not become self-centered. By intentionally not having a place we can retreat to, we force ourselves to be people-oriented.
Finally, we desire to start other churches in neighboring communities, and so we choose to spend our time on multiplying churches
rather than building a large central meeting place. In sum, as long as we are able to meet together without building a facility,
we will rent instead.
What is a typical Sunday morning at Harvest Community Church like?
Probably the first thing that will come to your mind is "informal". You will notice that people are dressed pretty
casual. We wear nametags so we can learn everybody's name. We get started around 10am. We like to sing together; usually accompanied
by piano, guitar, and drums. The songs are a mixture of old and new. We always sing a children's song with actions; that way
the kids can be involved, too!
The most unique part of our time together is our fellowship time. After we sing several
songs, and before we look at Scripture together, we take about 20 minutes for refreshments and to talk with one another. We
call this fellowship oriented worship, because we structure our time around getting to know each other better. With great
food and good music, we love to meet new people and renew relationships.
After our fellowship time, the children leave
to work on a Bible project together. The rest of us spend time learning from the Bible. Pastor Tom's teaching style might
be different than what you have experienced before he teaches from the Bible and asks questions that he expects the congregation
to answer! So our time together is interactive.
At least once a month we celebrate the Lord's Supper together. We
invite anyone who is trusting in Christ for their salvation to partake of the Lord's Supper; you don't have to jump through
any hoops to celebrate this time with us.
We also regularly take time for prayer and sharing testimonies of what God
is doing in our lives.
What else do you do together?
One of our primary values is
relationships. We also value becoming more like Christ. So we have Growth Groups that gather weekly which combine these two
values. We look at the Bible together, and think about how it can help us live our lives differently.
We also like
to get to know people who might not know a lot about a relationship with Jesus. So we encourage the people in our church to
get to know people around town. We ask them to sponsor block parties, game nights, potlucks, dessert nights, and other things
that will foster community and relationships.
What do you have for the children?
As
we've mentioned, one of our values as a church is Relationships. This includes relationships with our youngest people! So
we try very hard to include them in what we do on Sunday Mornings. We desire that Sunday mornings be a time when families
are drawn together - not separated. So, we do things like sing children's songs together and have the children show us their
weekly projects at the end of our worship time.
Our children's church is designed so that kids know that getting together
with other followers of Jesus is fun! The children's projects are designed to teach the children about loving God and loving
people, and our teachers love to spend time being with the kids.
We believe that it is primarily the parent's responsibility to teach their children the ways of the Lord. As a church, we
want to help our parents do this with their children. One of the things we encourage is for parents to have a time of family
worship.
We also want to foster mentoring relationships - with older men teaching younger men and older women teaching younger
women. We believe that life change happens in the contest of intentional relationships rather than in classrooms.
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