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Our summer Renew series starts this Sunday, 7/10. So we thought we would take a minute to pause and reflect on why we've been providing this summer teaching series for several years now.

If you're newer to the church and haven't been to a Renew Sunday night before, we meet Sunday mornings in the month of July (give or take), and have 5 weeks of worship gatherings on Sunday nights. The church provides dinner at 5pm, and we provide teaching for adults, and a VBS program for kids from 6-7:30pm. For the adults, we invite outside speakers in to preach and teach. It's a great time. We look forward to Renew every July, and we hope you are too as it's fast-approaching.

So here's why we do it:

1. We recognize our tendency to so easily get into spiritual ruts. Romans 12:2 says, "Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect." We began the Renew series with this in mind - a passion to have our minds and hearts continuously renewed and refreshed in the Word of God. We don't want to just come to church week after week, without doing it in love for Christ, and joyful obedience to nor forsake our gathering together (Hebrews 10:25). And we recognize the need to change up our routines to avoid these spiritual ruts.
2. Summer schedules create a need for something different. So many families take their vacations, and have weddings to attend, and other unique plans throughout the summer that the church gathering Sunday morning can feel pretty different from week to week. So we've tried to capitalize on the uniqueness of summer and provide a more relaxed, and creative structure for our church gatherings. It's nothing crazy, but it leaves a little more room both to invite new speakers in to preach, to learn new songs together and sing them both morning and night on the Renew weeks, etc. It's also our hope that because of the relaxed schedule, it might be easier for some of our faithful folks to invite guests too, since there's a change in the workload for our volunteers.
3. Renew creates opportunities to serve. While freeing many of our people up a little more than normal, the Renew schedule creates new and different opportunities to serve. This could mean being freed up with some time to grab brunch with someone after the one service Sunday morning, or it could mean volunteers helping cook for Renew dinners (our cooks love what they do), or it could mean new opportunities for musicians to serve in a different setting at night. But we've found that a change in our summer schedule creates creativity in how we get to use our gifts to serve one another in the body of Christ.

So come to Renew, and bring a friend. We'll see you this Sunday, at 5pm for dinner!