Preparing to Launch - One Week to Go (Part 1)

Well, it’s almost here. We’re just one week away from re:Generātion’s preview service—Sunday, February 28th @ 7pm—and only two weeks away from full launch—Sunday, March 7th @ 7pm.

With things about to officially get underway, we wanted to focus on answering two very pressing questions: (1) “What should you be doing to prepare for the launch?” and (2) “What should you expect at the preview service?” We’ll spend today’s post examining the first question and jump into the second tomorrow.

What should you be doing to prepare?

1. Pray. As simple as this sounds, we really can’t stress it enough. Pray. Pray. Pray. To help you be a bit more intentional and informed in this area, here are two of the prayers we used during December’s 5(hundred) Hours of Prayer on the gospel and mission/outreach. We’d also love for you to be praying for the leadership team and the ministry leaders.
2. Get connected to a Life Group. I know we say this in almost every communication (whether e-mail, phone-call, blog-post or training event) but again, as simple as this is we can’t stress it enough. Community is absolutely essential to every area the Christian life: discipleship, personal transformation and even mission. If you haven’t yet connected to a Life Group plan to come Sunday night we have at least three to choose from: the CCC Life Group (led by Taylor and Aaron), a service-project Life Group (led by John McKay) and a group reaching out to recovering addicts and prisoners in transition (led by James Calkins). Also, both Allie (Starbucks) and Donna (McDonalds) have volunteered their work places as “connecting points” with lost people that we could use as intentional stomping grounds. E-mail, make a phone call or come Sunday night ready to plug in.
3. Invite. If you’ve been putting off inviting someone to re:Generātion—whether they’re unchurched or churched—now’s the time to act. Three steps: (1) Know who you want to invite and pray for them. (2) Do whatever you can to build and develop that relationship in an authentic and caring way. (3) Plan how you’ll invite them and then do it. At CCC I’ve begun inviting people from class to our new Life Group by simply saying, “A few friends of mine and I are starting a new club to dialogue about spiritual and cultural issues. It’d should be a lot of fun and really interesting. It’d be great if you could make it.” However you go about actually saying it, even if you aren’t that slick or cool, the important things are to be real, be yourself and to just go for it.