Danny & Sarah with Harold, Lori, and Evan Forbis who will be moving their shampoo and soap to Fresno in the fall.

As I near the city of Fresno, Ca I always think of Pantene (shampoo + conditioner) and a fresh bar of Dove Soap. For the past three or four years I have made over a dozen trips to this city (not counting the nine months that my family and I lived there) to visit my friends and family at Bread of Life Church. Each time I have made the trek I have stayed with Sean, Megan, and in the last year, their daughter,  Addysen Conner. Many of these trips are with only a few hours or, if their lucky, days notice but the response to my coming is always the same as they insist that I stay with them.

After so many times in their home we’ve become more family than friends. If fact, as most of our earthly possessions made their way back home to Missouri last October my wife and three children moved in with the Conner’s for several days. Small adventures, family to family, like that are what form bonds that last beyond years and tie legacy’s together. It was a great time!

The Conner’s are a great example of the hospitality that the C2C family of churches has. Whether it is in the Markeson’s, Davis, or Johnson home in Raleigh, NC; the James or White houses in Omaha, NE; the Luntsford, Forbes homes in Mankato, Mn; the Limmer, Palmer families in Casper, WY; Curry, Scopel, Severs homes in Waverly, Mo. or the Nwagu, Squires, Brooks homes in Pittsburg, KS; they all exhibit the welcome of God with excellence!

I’ve been greatly enriched by the late night and breakfast conversations with all of these and many more. It is a privilege to know men and women like this that so freely give of their hearts and share all that they have with strangers and extended family alike! I know I join many a road weary traveler in thanking this family of Churches for their generous hearts and call for a blessing on all the homes that serve with such fervor.

Because I know these precious people and have “lived” with them, I understand that their motivation is not simply a “good heart” or even that this is just the culture of their local church. This hospitality is born  out of a revelation if Christ and the knowledge that when you serve others like this you are really serving Christ himself.

It was this revelation that made Sarah and I so excited to be able to host a visiting pastor in our home for the first time twelve years ago. Sarah was very pregnant and we were in the first year of our marriage. We were so excited that we had a guest coming and we prepared the best we had for him. We went set out the “good” towel set we had gotten from our wedding  to replace the thread bare ones we usually used and I splurged and went to get TWO different types of cereal and a small assortment of muffins. We were so proud and privileged to have this pastor come and were going to share the best we had with him to ensure he was able to rest after a long day on the road that flowed into a late meeting.  God had given us a chance to serve great men that he had entrusted the care of his people to.

Imagine my surprise when Paul Shipman came to our door and got Sarah and I out of bed to talk with. He wasn’t interested in crashing from a long day, though he had every right to. Instead, he wanted to get to know us and share in the life of the people that were serving him. Sharing your home is a very personal thing but the life that you connect with and the bonds that form in the sharing are amazing!

I say all of that to say this: Thank you C2C for your continued hospitality to your extended family. I can’t wait till I wake up n Fresno again, pull back the shower curtain and see a bottle of Pantene (shampoo + conditioner) and a fresh bar of Dove Soap!

Don and Cheri White have been teaching an awesome Pastoral Training class at Covenant Family Church for the last few weeks. When those classes were first announced one Sunday, we were asked to raise our hands if we were interested in attending. If I could have found a way to sit on my hands without looking really awkward, I would have. Pastor People was on my list of Things to Never Do: right between, Babysit Three Vomiting Children (again) and Wear Red. If you’ve grown up as a church kid, you’ve probably heard a phrase something to the tune of, “Leading is about being a servant first.” Somewhere along the way I realized that wasn’t just an overused saying… it was real. Pastoring people is HARD work. And I knew I would not enjoy it. I mean, people are annoying, and needy, and whiney. And most of the time, when they are being annoying and needy and whiney, it’s right in the middle of something else I’d rather be doing. I thought to myself, “Wow, I just do not have the pastoring grace.” As a side note, I have learned I am really selfish (marriage has taught me this as well…but that’s a whole different story).

These classes though, were completely not what I expected. And I think I can officially speak for everyone (since I spent Sunday after church interviewing everyone) when I say that we have been blown away by the richness and sheer “good stuff” we’ve encountered. When you get down to it, pastoring people on some level or another, is really unavoidable. The whole, “Love one another,” “Feed my sheep,” “Go into the world and preach the gospel”… well it all comes down to pastoring at some point. Don and Cheri have shared their wisdom in the most down to earth, man on the streets sort of way. These classes are about real life.  As Lin Crum put it, “You don’t have to necessarily be always ‘nicey, nicey’ to be a pastor. It takes all flavors to pastor all kinds of people.”

I can’t think of a single class that I didn’t immediately find an application for in the days following. In fact, at times I’ve felt like I was already in the lab for Pastoring 101 without realizing it. Words that have been used to describe this class are: profitable, meritorious, and rich. Andy Goettlicher shared how one class in particular made a big impact on his marriage, helping him and Carrie to break previous soul ties and grow their relationship. He also shared how a class hand out on Psalm 23 had helped him understand that Psalm for the first time.

Peggy Maertens says she has been learning more about how to better care for and meet the needs of people. Don Millican says he has really enjoyed gleaning from Don and Cheri’s depth of experience. And I really don’t think anyone could disagree with Jennifer Kneefe, “Don and Cheri have great God-given wisdom and it has been such a blessing to learn from them. Their personal testimonies have offered great insight into how to apply kingdom solutions to very difficult situations.”

But these classes aren’t just for us. Interestingly enough, at Covenant Family Church,  a lot of what we’ve been hearing from the pulpit, visiting ministers, prayer, and—well—everywhere, is that God is drawing us more and more outside of ourselves, to reach into our community. So, to Don and Cheri (or should I say Mr. and Mrs. Miyagi), keep on teaching us to “Wax on, wax off,” cause it’s working! And even though my arm muscles hurt a little… I’m still glad I didn’t sit on my hands that Sunday.

Her response: “Jesus takes us always step by step. He doesn’t reveal
the whole all at once. So I would tell anyone who feels this: Please
take another step and do something to the closest person—inside your
family, inside your town, inside your church. You can encourage
someone with a word. You can give a flower to someone. You can do
something. When you do, Jesus will open the door for you for more.
Take the step.” Pastor Don White urged us all with this message and
encouraged us to ‘let’s move from theory to practice and “TAKE THE
STEP!’ And take the next step we did, and another, and another.
Christ’s Family Church continued in His path shown to us for outreach
to friends and family in Christ over this Christmas season at
Timbercreek Apartments.

The next step started out with a gift wrapping social. In previous
years gift wrapping was done at a local department store, but this
year we thought it would have a greater impact and continue to build
relationships if we made it a personable social event. We were able to
use Timbercreek’s clubhouse and set up with refreshments, desserts, a
coloring and craft area for the kids, Christmas music, and as much
socializing and gift wrapping as we could fit into a few hours. One of
the best parts of the whole evening was that there were some who came,
not to have gifts wrapped, but just wanted to spend time with the CFC
volunteers simply because of the previous outreach events and
relationships we have with a lot of the residents there. We also
invited everyone to our Christmas Eve service.

A few days later we were back in the clubhouse again to bring gifts in
the name of the Lord. We held our second annual Christmas at the Creek
drive to help those at the apartments needing a little assistance this
season. We were able to beat our giving goal of last year, and this
year we had seven families, with a total of twenty three kids to buy
gifts for. They were all able to receive some toys, personal care
items, and warmth (hats, gloves, and full size blankets!). The local
Vineyard church also gave some assistance and was able to help out
each family and provide each family with not only a good size bag of
groceries, but a bag of various meats for each  family as well. While
they weren’t as extravagant as gold, frankincense, and myrrh, they
were received as such from those we were able to serve. All the
families were open to receiving a Christmas blessing prayer, and
several had additional prayer requests as well.

At the end of the event, as we prayed in closing and expressed the
compassion we had for the people and situations which people asked for
prayer, Pastor Don reminded us that we were not doing this to ‘get
people to come to church’ (even though some have come because of it),
it is about serving where we are at, meeting them where they are at,
and sharing Christ’s love and the Good News with them. We were also
given great wisdom from Lollie Hofer that we do not look upon them as
just people living in a low income apartment complex in less than
favorable situations, but friends and family in the name of Christ,
and that we are their Church (some of them just don’t know it yet). We
left with a great feeling of joy that day.

In addition to all of this, the CFC Roots Youth group also ‘Adopted A
Family’ through the local Salvation Army, pooling resources from the
teens, they were able to buy gifts and a Christmas dinner for a family
of five here in Omaha. They will be Jesus’ hands and feet and present
it to the family later this week.

So remember the words of Jesus ‘…and you will be my witnesses in
Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth’
(Acts 1:8). Here at CFC we are serving, and in the words of Mama
Maggie Gobran ‘taking the next step’ in our own Jerusalem, while being
connected to our Judea and Samaria. What is the next step to take in
your own Jerusalem?

Media attention highlights Jesus in Denise Kreighbaum’s battle with breast cancer

Denise Kreighbaum from Covenant Harvest Church in Pittsburg is featured this month in the Pittsburg Women of Distinction Calendar (Mrs. December).  As most of you know, she went through a battle with breast cancer and God has opened some amazing doors for her to share how Jesus enabled her to overcome in the midst of the battle.  She spoke at the candelight vigil for the breast cancer awareness month in October.   Here are a couple of excerpts from the front pages of the Pittsburg Morning Sun newspaper as well as the December calendar page.

The Morning Sun, October 6 2011 – Record crowd gathers for 13th annual breast cancer candlelight vigil  PITTSBURG -

A record crowd gathered Wednesday night at the Pittsburg State University Lake for the 13th annual breast cancer candlelight vigil.  “This is the biggest crowd we’ve ever had,” said Kelly York, Southeast Kansas regional outreach coordinator for Early Detection Works, which sponsored the vigil along with Susan G. Komen for the Cure Mid Kansas Affiliate…

Guest speaker was Denise Kreighbaum, who shared her story of battling the disease with prayers from friends around the world, the love and support of her husband and four daughters, her faith family at Covenant Harvest Church and, of course, her God.
“I’m not a courageous person, I’m a timid person,” Kreighbaum said, “but God has given me the courage to fight cancer.”

The Morning Sun, October 5, 2011 -  Denise Kreighbaum spreads a message of hope  PITTSBURG

Denise Kreighbaum, front and center, stands with her high school students at Covenant Harvest School. Her students and many others in her church family and natural family were very supportive during her battle with breast cancer. She will share her story during the 13th annual candlelight breast cancer vigil at 7 p.m. today at the Pittsburg State University Lake.
“We thought it very fitting to invite someone to speak whose faith is so strong,” said Kelly York, Southeast Kansas regional outreach coordinator for Early Detection Works.  Kreighbaum and her husband, Doug, came to Pittsburg on Sept. 27, 1991 to serve as senior leaders at Covenant Harvest Church. He is senior pastor, and she teaches at Covenant Harvest School…
Dr. Boban Mathew, her oncologist, told her that she would probably begin losing her hair after her first treatment. This was especially painful to Kreighbaum because her daughter, Katie, was getting married on Oct. 17. “I didn’t make an appointment to have my hair done because I thought it would be falling out, but God was really faithful to me,” she said. “The day before the wedding my hair still wasn’t falling out. I had to make a last-minute appointment to get it fixed, and I had my own hair for the wedding photographs. Then, the day after the wedding, my hair started coming out in handfuls and my husband shaved my head.”

Her chemo lasted for six months and ended on April 1, 2010. “In the middle of my chemotherapy, I got news that my daughter Nicole was going to have a baby and I was going to be a grandmother,” Kreighbaum said. “That helped me through it.”…

Kreighbaum said she was surrounded by love and prayer during the ordeal. “People prayed for me, which meant so much; people brought in food,” she said.  “A friend came and cleaned my house every week.” After the chemotherapy was over, Kreighbaum recovered well and continues to do well…

Kreighbaum was a little surprised to be asked to speak at the vigil. “I’m not much of a public speaker,” she said, “but I have a story.”  Part of that story is to share a message of hope and faith.  “It doesn’t do any good to ask ‘Why me?’,” Kreighbaum said. “You have to find things to be grateful for. This helps me to help others in difficult situations. I tell them that I’ll pray for them. I tell them that God is faithful, He helped me and He’ll help them.”

For many years different people from the church in Kirksville have labored and prayed over the city of Edina. People have moved here to see the Kingdom of God advance in this area and have waited for God to open the doors to the city.  There has been a home group here for many years, but everyone traveled to Kirksville for service on Sunday.

In March of 2010 Roger Moore and Tommy Hutchens spent the day in Edina praying and driving around the city.  In the natural it looked like the city was dying, but once they stopped on the town square to pray, God showed up. It became evident that we should move to Edina and pastor these people.

The first step was to find housing for us. This was not an easy task, but Steve Golden was determined to find the right house for us.  At the last of April he found a house that was the right house, but had to be remodeled before anyone could live in it. The only problem with that was Tommy and I were leaving for the Philippines for six weeks from the end of May until the first part of July. This wonderful group of people along with help from the Kirksville church, completely remodeled this house. They tore off wallpaper, painted, ripped up carpet, laid new flooring, and received us with open arms and much love when we returned.  It was overwhelming. We knew we were home.

Now that we were moved we still traveled to Kirksville for Sunday services until October.  On October 10, 2010 we had our first Sunday service at the Edina Country Club where we met for several months. The doors of the city were beginning to open up to us.

May 15, 2011 brought a time of new beginnings. Life of Christ Church opened its doors for the first time. Old things had passed away and all things were new. We had our first service in the new building we had rented and remodeled. God opened the doors for us to rent the old Edina lumberyard which is on the town square, the perfect market place.

It has been one year now since that first Sunday in the country club. God is meeting with us, people’s lives are being changed and the Kingdom is advancing in Edina. God is giving us favor in the city as we serve the community and love the people.

By Kathy Nickerson, Bethel, MO

Our recent Leadership Conference in Kirksville, Missouri, felt like a family reunion much of the time. We really did come together from Coast to Coast and beyond. Friends came from the East Coast, West Coast, Mexico, the UK, Sweden, and the Midwest.

I was fairly overwhelmed with emotion much of the time. Seeing people we love so much and hearing about the great things God is doing in their lives. Learning about the exploits they are doing to reach the lost world. And just when I thought it couldn’t get much better, Evan took the stage.

Evan’s dad, Harold Forbis, is a worship leader who has trained many of the worship teams in the C2C churches. He is a true father to a whole generation of worshippers. His son, Evan, is a Lead Worshipper.

In all the years I’ve known Evan, I’ve never seen him have a bad day in worship. He is always there, full-bore, giving God everything he’s got. And then giving it away to other people, too. One Sunday, when Evan was in elementary school, my husband Wendell was having a rough day. I don’t even remember what the problem was, but Wendell’s shoulders were drooping from some kind of weight that day. He sat down on the edge of the stage after church, just staring off into space.

Evan came up, looked at Wendell’s face, and started to prophesy. Evan hadn’t found his voice in those days. He spoke in sign. So he touched Wendell on the shoulder, pointed to Heaven, and then completed the sentence. “Jesus Loves You.”

It is the most valuable prophetic word Wendell ever received.

So, dear reader, you can imagine the emotion exploding in my soul when I saw our man Evan take the stage as a member of the conference worship team. He took his percussion job quite seriously. Although, being Evan, he was willing to pause long enough to shoot me his trademark smile for this picture.

Our theme this year was Mandate, Mission, and Mobilization. They are good words and they describe a great adventure. I’m so glad to be on that journey with people like Evan Forbis, man of God and worshipper extraordinaire.

by Kathy Nickerson, Bethel, Missouri,

Heartland Academy Community Church

If you have hung around with this family of churches very long, you’ve heard the story of my husband, Wendell, and I and this theme song from the old sitcom “Cheers.” We weren’t even actually watching the show at the time, we just heard a bit of the song as we were flipping channels one night. We had moved to Rolla, Missouri, while Wendell did his medical internship, and we were terribly homesick for family and friends.

Suddenly, we heard those words about wanting to go “where everybody knows your name, and they’re always glad you came.” And that crazy song settled something inside us about relationships. We knew we’d make any sacrifice to spend the rest of our lives living in community. United with friends who loved God, loved one another, and loved a dying world.

We’ve traveled some interesting roads since then, but our commitment to this lifestyle has never changed. That is why we are looking forward to this fall’s Leadership Conference in Kirksville, Missouri, September 22-25, 2011.

It will be like old home week for us, since we spent more than twenty years in the church there. It will also be like a great family reunion with people coming from so many other places.

If you’ve never been to one of these conferences before, come and join us this year. We can’t wait to know your name.

‘…Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.’ Deuteronomy 15:11

This is just one of the many scriptures where God asks us to serve others and to reach out to the less fortunate. We at Christ’s Family Church have reached out and served in various opportunities over the past few years that the Lord has placed in front of us and put on our hearts. Recognizing that this is an important part of what Christ calls us to do, CFC’s leadership team has worked hard to instill that as part of our culture in which the statement in our weekly bulletin reads ‘A community of people on a quest to creatively extend His Kingdom to those around us by loving God and each other while cultivating a supernatural culture of honor, generosity and service.’ (emphasis added).

Often when we think of being generous, and serving the poor and needy, our thoughts tend to drift off to what we have read or seen of third world countries. Other times we think of everything needing ‘fixed’ in the world that we become so overwhelmed because we don’t know where to start and we end up ‘shutting down’ and not doing anything. In both of these mindsets we ultimately end up losing sight of what Jesus often places right in front of us in our own area or community. We have received great blessing from the Lord to reach out just a few blocks directly south of our church building to a low income apartment complex. This is home to over 500 residents, over 280 of them are children, with nearly all of them living below the poverty line. Looking around in the surrounding neighborhoods you would not think twice that this is an area of the needy, which is why these opportunities are often overlooked. Even at CFC we had been at our current location for nearly 5 years and did not notice it until a little more than a year ago. But listening to various stories, situations, and needs which come from the residents and children there, and you cannot stop your heart from instantly wanting to reach out to them.

CFC has been reaching out to them and serving the residents in a variety of ways every month (serving Saturdays, teen boys group, food pantry drives), and every quarter we do a ‘big event’ to reach out to as many residents as possible and their needs. This past month we decided that the biggest need would be school supplies for the kids for the ‘back to school’ season. Our goal was to get enough school supplies for at least 30 children. After many prayers, announcements and emails later to the church congregation, a few weeks later we had received various contributions to help support the cause. After many hours later of going over the supply list time and time again, driving from store to store and price matching on the sales going on to stretch our financial contributions, we were ready. It was also a great evangelical opportunity, many people would see the carts full of school supplies and asked if we had a lot of children, to which we were then able to share what we were doing!

With the help of some volunteers from the apartment residents, as well as from CFC, we setup the school supplies onsite at the apartment network center. We were also very blessed that some of the members of our church family from The Good Shepherd Church in Germany (Dagmar Gernth, Carmen Kottmann, and Carmen Koeder) were also in Omaha for the event and came to help serve as well. We had no idea what to expect, this being our first school supply drive. We looked outside 15 minutes before we were to start and there was already a large line forming. We said a prayer and opened the floodgates. The best term to describe it was ‘organized chaos’. All of the school supplies were claimed and we were finished in just 20 minutes.

In the end, we found out that we were able to bless over 40-50 children with some of their school supply needs. Most of the parents were very grateful, and some stayed for a while after we were finished and shared stories with us of how hard times were, and how much this was a blessing. Overall there was a lot of assumptions we made which were not correct, and there were quite a few things which didn’t work as planned. We learned a lot of lessons throughout the process on how to improve the school supply drive for next year. But despite the shortcomings, the sheer joy and happiness of not only the look on the kids faces as they picked out their school supplies, but within ourselves as well as we were able to bless them, made up for any frustrations we had.

For those of you know CFC, we are not the biggest church in town in terms of attendance, but we are huge based on our heart, many diverse gifts and skills within our church congregation, and a big God whose cup overflows! We simply see people’s needs, take a look at what we can provide (instead of what we cannot), and step up to put love into action. School supplies may not be much more than a cup of cold water, but given in the name of the Lord, they are a huge blessing to those in need, and it will not lose its reward.