Upcoming Concert

Hello family,

I wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that we have another big event coming up at our church. On Saturday, November 14th, Kerri Crocker and Shelly Wilson will be in concert in our sanctuary. Many of you know Kerri from previous visits and Kerri and Shelly have been ministering together with their music for a number of years.

This concert is absolutely free (CD's will be available for purchase). The concert begins at 5:00 p.m. with the Encounters Worship Team doing a short opening set. Then Kerri and Shelly will take over until about 6:30 p.m.

One of the things that I have been most impressed with when these two have come to do an event is how they are able to connect to a variety of age groups. They will cover some golden oldies and will have some fresh stuff from their latest CDs. It will surely be a concert that you won't want to miss!

If you would like to find out more about Kerri and Shelly and to listen to some of their music before the concert, I invite you to visit their websites listed below:
www.kerricrocker.com
www.shellywilson.com

If you have any questions or would like more information, please feel free to contact me at acts242@hotmail.com.

Remember, the best is yet to come!

Russell

Trunk or Treat

Today was a big day at the United Methodist Temple. It was time for our annual Trunk or Treat event. It is estimated that we had more than 700 adults and children come through to share in the food and fun.

Here are a couple of the pictures from today's fun:





To see more photos from this event, check out the Encounters Facebook page at www.facebook.com/encounters and while you're there, become a fan!

Labor Day Celebration!

Are you looking for something to do on Monday, September 7th!?!

We have just the thing. You are invited to come join us as we open our doors to the community for a Labor Day Family Fun Day. Check out the flyer below for all the details:



In addition to the bounce house we will have a 20' high superslide and lots of fun and games for both adults and children. Don't forget to register to win discounts on manicures and pedicures or a $50.00 gift card or 1 gig Ipod Shuffle or much, much more!

Encounters Update

This past Saturday (July 11th), we launched our first Christian 12 step meeting called Came to Believe. The meeting was both well attended and well received. Finally, Port Arthur has a 12 step group where Christ is central to the recovery process.

This meeting is an ongoing meeting that takes place every Saturday evening at 7:00 p.m. and we want to encourage everyone to help spread the word about this fantastic ministry. If you know of someone that may be interested they can contact Russell in the church office for more information or to pick up flyers for the meeting.

This is just another step in our process toward launching a 3rd service and a larger recovery ministry here at the United Methodist Temple. The larger ministry, known as Encounters, is beginning to take on a life of its own. Much has been done in the past month to further the process along, but there is still much to do.

If you have heard about Encounters and wondered how to get more information or get plugged in, then this is for you:

This coming Thursday (July 16th) at 6:00 p.m., we will be hosting an Encounters launch team meeting in the Life Lessons room at the Temple. The meeting is open to everyone, whether you are just seeking more information or are looking for somewhere to serve; all are welcome.

This week we will take a closer look at our upcoming schedule of events and get updates on what teams are forming and what some next steps are to stay on track for our target launch date of January 9th, 2010.

Come join the excitement and see what God is doing here at the United Methodist Temple!

A Day Worth Celebrating

Today, folks from all of our Sunday school classes and from both of our worship services mixed and mingled as we celebrated the conclusion of our successful building campaign. How did we celebrate you ask? With lots and lots of food, of course!

To all of those that prepared the food and those that helped serve and staff the brunch, we offer a huge round of applause and a hearty thank you for your gifts of service. For those that helped to make the vision for the building campaign a reality, we offer our thanks to God for the gift that you all continue to be to our community. A final round of thanks goes to our audio visual folks for an incredible slide show of all of the physical work that has taken place at our church over the past few years.

We encourage you to keep and eye out here, on the website, in the Messenger and in the Template for more opportunities to fellowship (and eat!).

Our Concert with Jana Alayra

If you hang around the United Methodist Temple for very long, you will discover two very important things. First, we have programming and worship that reaches a variety of interests. Whether it is contemporary or traditional, children or adults, discipleship oriented or social, there is something happening at the Temple for just about everyone. The second thing that you will notice with anything that the Temple undertakes, is a level of excellence. We simply won't engage in a program or outreach that doesn't meet this core value of ours.

To that end, huge props must go to our Children's Director, Brook Wommack, for her work in organizing and implementing an incredible Vacation Bible School kickoff last Sunday. For those who weren't able to be at the Temple last Sunday night, we were blessed with the return of Jana Alayra. She lead us in more than an hour of worship, story telling, testimony, dancing and laughter. It was an incredible time of fellowship and worship together. The sanctuary was alive with more than 200 people in attendance.

Here is a slide show containing some of the great moments of the concert (my favorites are the ones with the dads dancing with Jana!):



Special thanks to Jana, her husband and Brook for another great concert!