If you are reading this and not fully aware of the challenges facing Jacksonville, they are big we rank first in the state in murders per capita, divorce rate per capita, unwed mothers, and more. Violence plagues our streets and Pastor Moses has been doing the leg work to change the future of the children in the area surrounding their facility.

We are excited and pleased to announce that this Thursday Evening Mayor John Peyton and Sherriff John Rutherford as well as many members of the Jacksonville City Council will be in attendance at 6pm on this Thursday Night at the Hyatt Regency Downtown. I would like to invite you to join us for this important event. for more information and details feel free to email me directly ejaffe@journeychurch.org

Help us turn the destiny of this city around!

They are now open and impacting lives.

Journey – thanks for giving!

From Fred Meiners, executive director of Seamark…

This is Vivian and Harlee representing all our children with the first fruits of the garden.  The children sowed the seeds, weeded the rows, and reaped the harvest.  (They even installed the irrigation system.)  Then we were able to share the first fruits with the Olde Farm, a local food distribution ministry.  We appreciate their help, and we are blessed to be able to share fresh produce with them. 

Come out and enjoy some time in God’s presence.

We will also be kicking off a new series called Jonah, so if you would like a little homework you have 4 days leading into the service starting tomorrow, read and meditate on a chapter a day of Jonah!

That being said, start praying and mark your calendars for May 10th as we will be joining with Pastor Moses Criswell from Triumph Ministries to help him with a Spring CLothing Outreach on Jacksonville’s North Side. Bring in your new or lightly used spring clothes between now and may 3rd bundled by size, with a particular emphasis on kids and plan to join us that day and be JEsus’ hands and feet in Jacksonville.

check out this article: http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/022608/pat_251015787.shtml

To learn more about social ministries and how you can engage, pick up the book below and also plan on being in attendance for our upcoming message series "THe Least of these" coming soon!

So Pray, and then boldly invite them to join you. In addition to that, hit up your address book with an email or some phone calls and encourage them to join you Saturday Night and/or Sunday morning for the sunrise service.

If you want a creative electronic invitation tool click here:

http://www.journeychurch.org/SimplyInvite/tabid/92/Default.aspx

But with everything in me, I just encourage you – do it, walk across the room. God will prevail!

Come make a difference in the lives of others through a simple act of christian kindness.

Join us this Saturday for a Gift Wrapping outreach in front of Walmart on Fleming Island (220 and 17). The outreach is from 10am-2pm so show up any time between 9:30am-12:00pm and stay as long as you like.

Where your red serve the world shirt. If you don’t have one we will give one to you!

I hope to see you there as Journey continues to serve the world around us with the hope that many people will come to know Jesus as their savior!

This weekend we targeted the Eagle Harbor area with what I beliee was some of our best Simple Act of Christian Kindness Outreaches to date. THe plan actually started a number of weeks ago as we prayed and dreamed about what would draw people out of their homes to a place where we might be able to connect with them as a church and how can we let this neighborhood know we even exist as a church.

We brainstorme and decided to use the movie the GRINCH as a way to invite people to a christmas party more specifically – Free Pictures with the Grinch. So we had some incredible flyers made up.

We had people pray over them and manually distribute close to 3000 to the neighboorhood. We also encouraged congregants to invite their friends. It turned out to be an awesome evening with hundreds in attendance and well over 50 percent of the people were people from the community that we had never met before.

THere was a bonfire, christmas Caroling, even the grinch movie playing on a screen. A good time was had by all and we gave out over 30 1st time visitors gifts to folks as a way of saying thank you for coming out and hanging out with us. A few of them showed up at church on Saturday night. What a win.

To cap things of we had about 30 folks from the church participate by having 2 floats in the Eagle Harbor CHristmas Parade.

Bring your favorite dessert and enjoy a night of caroling, bon fire, the Grinch Movie on the side of the wall, and free pictures with the Grinch!

Invite a friend using the churches new eVite feature.  Click Here to send an eVite to a friend.

For directions to lick skillet: http://www.eagleharboronline.com/files/pages/community/howtofindeagleharbor/eagleharbormap/EH_Spring_2006.jpg

View full sized invite: http://journeychurch.org/portals/0/evite/ChristmasPartyPreview.html

The dream that I and many others had of hosting a massive Christian alternative to halloween became a reality this past Tuesday Night as some 5000-6000+ people came to the event that we held at the Orange Park Town Hall park.

Full pictures are in the photo album on the right side of my blog and I will upload a cool video later.

The event was even more awesome because 6 churches came together to pull it off in conjunction with a number of area businesses. To check out the web site visit www.familyfunfest.info .

In essence, I once again stand in awe of God and his goodness. The night was awesome everyone had fun volunteers and participants alike. We featured the new Overflow band and they did a great job by adding a continuous flow of worship throughout the night.

I won’t start thanking people because I would never be able to finish, but we love everyone who helped make the event possible.

I am off to Dallas to learn more about multi-site. More posts to follow.