EGG the Homeless

EGG the Homeless - April 22-24th

Yes... you read that right!

This is a movement of the church to change the face of homelessness in New Orleans over the Easter weekend. Our partnership is with the New Orleans Mission. We are working hard to bring all the final details together for what is going to be an awesome weekend. I hope you are excited to see God work and move as we serve our city and worship Jesus.

Weekend Schedule

• Elevate [April 22]: we will unite as the church to pray for the Homeless - location Vintage Campuses @ 7pm

• Give [April 23]: we will unite with others in our city to provide for the Homeless - location Tipitina’s Uptown @ 7:30pm [Benefit Concert Information]

• Gather [April 24]: we will unite as the church to celebrate Jesus’ resurrection and life change available to the Homeless - location Dixon Hall on Tulane Campus @ 10am

What can you do?

Pray: Join us in asking God to move in such a way that He gets the glory over these three days. To journey along with us over the next 2 weeks check out Our Prayer Guide

Invite: Come to one of our gatherings [Campus times] for postcards and flyers to pass out in the city. We also give everyone permission to Tweet and Facebook status the heck out of this. The EGG the Homeless site

Serve: We have volunteering opportunities on Saturday and Sunday, talk with your community group leader [connect to with a group] or email info@vintagenola.org

Give: Tickets for Tipitina's Uptown are available here. You can also can make a contribution to help cover the cost for the weekend.

Donate: Bring toilet paper, paper plates and paper towels to our Easter Sunday Gathering for the New Orleans Mission.

Live the Gospel, Love the City, BE the Church

Moses: a faithful servant of God

I had the opportunity to preach at the Vintage Uptown Campus worship gatherings this weekend. Our theme was faithfulness and we looked at Moses in Numbers 27:12-20. This is the end of his life and from this passage we see 3 statements about faithfulness.....

• Faithfulness isn't solely based upon our actions for God (v.12-14)
• Faithfulness involves a trust in God & His purpose (v.15-17)
• Faithfulness passes the baton to someone else after our race is finished (v.18-20)

Click here to listen

Click here for our Discussion Guide [Awesome how God led our disci

pleship team and my heart in the same direction]

Click here to connect with a Vintage Community Group

I had an intense week preparing and wanted to share a reflection that I wrote in my journal.

My Journal (3/15/11)

[READ Deuteronomy 34]

We’re here at the ending of Deuteronomy, the next page is Joshua which accounts God’s purpose advancing as the people occupy the land. Israel did become a nation and remained in this land. At times these people follow the Lord wholeheartedly.

While other times these people disobeyed His commandments. Through those times God both punished, as with Moses in Numbers 20, and He also restored. Ultimately his salvific purpose for all people in the world continued through this nation. In fact for 1,000+ years through many kings, battles, seasons, God’s purpose continues.

Then one day a young teenage girl receives a house call from an angel of the Lord. A baby is born who name is Jesus. Who as the Son of God was the ultimate example of a faithful servant, even to the point of death on a cross for my sins. [Philippians 2:6-8] One of Jesus’ disciples, Matthew, works through his Gospel letter to Israel to show that Jesus is the greater Moses. Like Moses, Jesus not only serve God and furthered God’s purpose while here on earth; but before His departure He entrusted God’s purpose into the

hands of His disciples in such a way that the advancement, like the transition between Moses and Joshua, did not miss a beat. The church was birthed and God’s salvation which had been promised long ago was now realized and communicated through men and women throughout the world.

Now we, Vintage Church, are a small part of this body carrying the same mission to see God’s purpose advance in New Orleans and around the world. So in response:

• The desperation with which both Moses & Jesus interceded for people must be characteristic in our faith in God. [Exodus 32:7-14; 33:12-18, Numbers 14:11-20, Matthew 26:36-44, Luke 13:33-35]
• The sacrifice with which both Moses & Jesus faithfully served God must be characteristic of our faith in God.
• The priority for advancing God’s purpose above their individual lives within which both Moses & Jesus faithfully lived out, encourages us that with God’s Spirit guiding us, we too can be a faithful servant of God.

Moses prayed: Psalm 90:16-17

16 “Let your work be shown to your servants,
and your glorious power to their children.

17 Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us,
and establish the work of our hands upon us;
yes, establish the work of our hands!”

Conclusion: Faithfulness is a life I live as a result of what God has done for me which furthers His purpose and rightly trains someone else to continue God’s work.

I appreciate the opportunity to serve Christ alongside my staff and church family in our city. And after talking with Pastor Rob Sunday night and Monday, I'm stinkin' stoked for the next couple months. One area of prayer is our Easter Weekend - "EGG the Homeless"

Planning to blog and update everyone a little more over the coming weeks, until then I'm reading and writing.......53 days until May 14th aka Graduation from Graduate School.

-Brick

August 15th - A Day of Prayer and Fasting

This Sunday (August 15th) the Vintage worship gatherings are going to be a little different than normal. We are going to spend our hour in prayer and singing. This coming Sunday is going to be devoted to uniting in prayer as we listen to Jesus and do what He says.


“The true church lives and moves and has its being in prayer.” --Leonard Ravenhill


Our lives are so busy with constraints and obligations for work, family, school, etc. When you think about your daily “To Do” List, what is #1? If you are honest with yourself I think you would agree that your prayer life and communion with God commonly falls dead last on the list. It’s just what happens when life gets crazy. However, as Christians our availability to God should be the highest priority. Sometimes in order for us to spend time in prayer, we must cut something else out in order to make ourselves available. Our Vintage family has been extremely busy over the last year and we believe that God has even greater things in store for us in the coming months. If we aren’t careful we could become so busy for Jesus that we actually forget about Jesus. So this Sunday, as we gather we are going to pause, breathe, reflect, sit…pray. Our desire to be with God is like David’s in Psalm 65:4 and Psalm 27:4

As part of this day of prayer we are also encouraging everyone to fast on Sunday. Fasting is the spiritual discipline of abstaining from some activity in order to devote oneself wholly to prayer and seeking God. The abstinence can be from food, TV, video games, etc. During a fast a person makes himself or herself more available to God, which means that the time that would be spent partaking in a certain activity is instead spent with God. Biblical fasting must be partnered with prayer, because without prayer there is no spiritual value; you would just be starving yourself. This is probably a great dieting plan but not a good spiritual plan.


“In experiences of fasting we are not so much abstaining from food as we are feasting on the word of God. Fasting is feasting!” --Richard Foster


As a family we are going to participate in a normal fast from food for the entire Sunday. The first few hours will be fascinating physically, but more importantly our focus is going to be on the inner attitude of the heart. Continue to perform regular duties of the day while inwardly you will be in prayer, confession, intercession, adoration and worship.

A Message from David Platt on Prayer and Fasting - Give it a listen if you have a couple of minutes.

“The theology of fasting, then, is a theology of priorities in which believers are given the opportunity to express themselves in an undivided and intensive devotion to the Lord and to the concerns of the spiritual life.” --Eugene Merrill


See you on Sunday!

Live the Gospel, Love the City, BE the Church.....

LIVE Sent Opportunity - Grand Isle

This spring the Gulf Coast Oil Spill has had a devastating impact on many cities along the coast. Grand Isle, a town located on the southern tip of Louisiana, is home to many people who earn their living by fishing and shrimping. Although BP was able to cap the leak last week; the massive amount of oil that has been put into the Gulf will effect this region and families for several years. As a Vintage church family, God has given us a perfect opportunity to LIVE Sent in our region of the US as we help those effected in Grand Isle out by meeting a practical need. The Grand Isle School has 150 kids in grades K-12 who need school supplies to start off the new year.

As a church family we are going to be collecting “Back-2-School Backpacks” over the next 2 weeks, from now until Friday, August 6th. Nathan Stanford, the Student Pastor of FBC Grand Isle, will distribute the backpacks to the families in need. This is an opportunity to LIVE Sent to a hurting community. So let’s Live the Gospel, Love the City and Be the Church by buying all of the items on the school supply list and donating them in a backpack.

"Freely you have received, freely you give." -- Matthew 10:8

Student Backpack Supply List:

• 4 packs of wide rule paper
• 5 folders
• 2 notebooks
• 1 1-inch binder
• 3 packs of pens (red, blue & black)
• 1 pack of highlighters
• 1 box of crayons
• 1 box of markers
• 1 box of colored pencils
• 1 pack of pencils
• Glue
• Ruler
• Scissors
• Eraser
• Pencil box

Total: $20
*Please place these supplies in a backpack for a student between Kindergarten and 12th grade.
Collection locations:

• Vintage Sunday Gatherings 9am & 10:30am
• Vintage Kidz building Monday-Friday 9am-4pm

*Look for the box with the "Backpacks" label

Deadline: Friday August 6

LIVE Sent Opportunities - THIS Saturday

Are you wondering what to do this weekend....

Well here's two opportunities

• NOLA - Crescent City Cafe

Saturday, June 5, 2010

7am-10am

Purpose
We serve breakfast to the marginalized people of New Orleans with dignity. We run the cafe restaurant-style, so we greet our guests, show them to a seat and request their food and beverage order. To read more, visit: Crescent City Cafe
If anyone is able to help, they will need to confirm with our Volunteer Coordinator, Georgia McBride: georgia_mcbride@yahoo.com

• Oil Spill Response

Holly Beach Clean-Up in Cameron Parish

Saturday, June 5, 2010
8:30 am to 3:00 pm

During the Beach Clean-Up event on June 5th, GRIT and BP will provide:
- All required equipment, including gloves, trash bags, shovels, bug spray, sunscreen, etc.
- Food and refreshments to all volunteers
- Disposal for the trash collected
- First aid kits and a first responder on site
- A 30-minute safety lesson prior to the day's activities

Purpose
This project will include the removal of debris, both natural and anthropogenic, from the shoreline to make the removal of oil less difficult and reduce the amount of hazardous material we will have to dispose of once affected by the oil spill. This is a pre-landfall clean-up; there will be no handling of any oil contaminated material or wildlife.

Volunteers Register: Link

Live the Gospel, Love the City, Be the Church...

Fasting from Shoes....

April 8th was probably one of the most interesting and reflective personal days I've had in a long time. Today I fasted from wearing shoes. Sounds weird right?
Today TOMS, an innovative new shoe company, facilitated a campaign called "One Day without Shoes" to raise awareness of the fundamental role that shoes provide in protecting us against diseases. When I first heard about this event several months ago, I immediately checked my calendar to make sure that participating would be convenient for me and my “busy” schedule. This was an immediate sign that I needed to participate more than anybody else.

Over the past few weeks I have come up with several more reasons to join the cause.

• This “one day” intrigued me because I don't think I have ever thought about barefoot children, diseases or the blessings that my 10+ pairs of shoes are.
• One of my podcast mentors, David Platt has preached several times on the fact that everyday 26,000 children die of preventable diseases. (That means each 24 hour period)
• I can’t help but wonder if Podoconiosis, a 100% preventable disease that effects 1,000,000 Ethiopians, is one of the diseases that makes up this statistic.
• For 10 years now I have wanted to go on an international mission trip in order to see what true poverty looks like by working, serving and loving in a 3rd world country.
• I believed that this day would help me live in an Ethiopian, Rwandan or Nigerian’s “shoes” for a short 18 hour period.

• As a believer in Jesus Christ as the Savior and Lord of the world, I believe that world starvation and death from preventable diseases are ultimately issues that Christ’s church should eliminate. This is indeed our call as Christians and an especially prevalent issue that we must meet since America is one of the richest countries in the history of the world.

These reasons lead me to fast with a Christian mindset focused upon hearing from God. My purpose throughout the day was to ask God to rock my world to being barefoot for life. Since God is the faithful and the one true God, He did exactly that.

This morning I woke up excited to be barefoot because of what I would experience. This immediately changed when I stepped out of the Loft and onto a bunch of holly bush leaves....Holy CRAP! I’ve never noticed all the leaves, pebbles and jagged rocks around where I parked each day. Before I even started my daily commute, I was thankful for small amenities like shoes and pavement.

On campus as I walked from my car to class I caught myself drifting back to my American comfort and dodging the nastiness on the sidewalk, not to mention the fact that I stuffed flip-flops in my backpack just in case “I really needed them.” I also soon became thankful for the American amenities of carpet, linoleum and AC, even though my feet got cold.

Throughout my day of errands, studying, crossing Magazine Street and walking to Fuel Cafe to pick up the Bricks’ take-out, for the first time I noticed every little stick, rock, piece of glass and other particle along my way. I don’t think I’ve ever been more thankful for where I have been born or blessed to live by God’s grace. This evidence of His grace in my life then led me to begin to prayerfully consider how I should respond. The verse I meditated on for most of the day actually appears in Scripture twice, Isaiah 52:7 & Romans 10:15. I was overcome by the beauty of my bare feet because God impressed on my heart to more passionately and boldly proclaim the Good News of the Gospel in my community & world. The Gospel is that God loved the every person so much in their individual broken state that He responded by sending Jesus Christ to earth to die for their exact problem and sinfulness. (Romans 3:22-24)

If you missed “One Day without Shoes” I want to encourage you to simply walk barefoot around your block or subdivision for just a few minutes in hopes of becoming aware of the overwhelming need in this world.

If you are a Christian I want to encourage you to begin to ask God to convict you in areas that need it and response to needs which He desires you to meet personally. Let’s pursue Christ and His mission in this world no matter the cost of personal comfort, worldly pleasures or selfishness. Let’s lose it all in order to see Him glorified in every nation and tribe.

A part of my response will be what we encourage at Vintage Church:

• Pray for My feet and legs are hurting as I head to bed tonight from all the barefoot walking I did. Tonight I can identify in a very very small way with the nations that Operation World prays for.

• Give toward I’m thankful for the way in which TOMS is meeting physical needs in this world by providing shoes.

Other Options include:
-Compassion International
-Churches Helping Churches (Haiti)
-Samaritan's Purse
*These organization already have great organized efforts to meet both the physical and spiritual needs in the world.

• Go to My prayer tonight is God first help me see the nations which you have brought around me in Uptown and then God provide a way for me to travel to some of the barefoot places in the world in order to proclaim your good news....Your salvation.

Gratefully Live the Gospel, Love the City, BE the Church.

KaBoom! Build Day - Wisner Playground

An Uptown neighborhood is gathering to build a new playground in Wisner Playground, which is located at Laurel and Upperline. This is just a block away from the Bricks' Loft Apartment and about 5 from Vintage Church.

This is a historic Uptown park

These are pictures from 1941 when there was a pool. (Upperline Street pictured)

Wisner has always been known as a great place for families to bring their children and dogs. The recent addition of the baseball diamond and basketball court have created a place for neighborhood kids to gather for pick-up games. However after Hurricane Katrina, Winser was used for over two years as a FEMA trailer facility. FEMA is working on restoring the ball field but the playground area has totally been ignored.

The pavilion damaged from Katrina

The neighborhood and KaBoom! have joined together in order to restore the family playground area. KaBoom! received drawings from children from the community and have developed a design. So Friday April 30th, 100 volunteers are needed in order to build a new playground and make a community transformation happen.

• Build Day: Friday, April 30th - 8am-2pm

The KaBoom! Build Site (Upperline Street)

The pavilion has been removed

The corner of Upperline and Annunication Streets

If you're free, come out to love and serve the community.

To register email: matt@vintagenola.org