1. For your campus makeover project: Consider contacting Trees for Houston if any landscaping is on your school's wish list. In some cases they will have available trees, tools, laborers, and know-how for free for planting and maintaining items that beautify a school and help the environment! For more information contact Randi
Cleary,
Marketing
and
Education
Coordinator at 713.840.8733
or
randi@treesforhouston.org.
2. For your Mentors:Lemonade Day 2009 is coming on May 3. During the TMT Module 3 dates, the representatives from Lemonade Day will be presenting information on how you can implement this initiative in your schools. The organization Prepared For Life holds an annual "Lemonade Day" to introduce young people to the disciplines and rewards of entrepreneurship and handling finances. Print the information found at their website and take it to your school's community liaison, or principal, and ask their permission to have Mentors invite their mentee to consider participating in Lemonade Day together. Then provide this resource to the Mentors with your encouragement that they take advantage of this opportunity to deepen relationship with their student and do some experiential mentoring in life skills.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Helpful CSA Resources...
CSA Coaching Tips
Coaching Tips ...
1. CSA Team meetings: Regularly invite key volunteers who are doing a great job to your Team meetings, so you can make heroes of them! And periodically invite potential members of your CSA Team to meetings as one way of guaranteeing a "succession" plan that produces informed, trained future leaders of the Team.
2. Whole & Healthy Children: now is the time to get your principal's wish list of improvements to be made in a Makeover and to schedule that workday date! The school will have further evidence that you are their ally, that we've come to serve, and we're eager to listen and act in response to their hopes and dreams and frustrations. And spring is a great time to schedule a workday - cooler weather than summer, and fewer people on vacations. Getting the tasks and date set now gives you time to recruit both volunteer workers and donors.
3. How are we going to raise $10,000 per School?: Between congregations and businesses in your CSA, we can work together to raise the necessary money for each Whole & Healthy Children school. Please see the attached resource for ideas on how to raise the money from your congregational network. Michael Aceves-Lewis, Development Director for Mission Houston can be a resource to raise money from your network of businesses with your CSA. Please contact Michael directly at michael@missionhouston.org with a shortlist of 5-10 businesses that we could target to assist in this fundraising effort.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
Truth telling leads to personal transformation
by Trisha Taylor
Most of us who have been Christians for very long have developed some level of personal mastery around the teachings of Jesus. We know what Jesus wants us to do and we do it most of the time. It's even pretty easy for us—we don't even think hard about it any more. At the same time, we have some level of disobedience in our lives. There is some place where we know the clear teachings of Jesus and yet we don't obey.
Sometimes that disobedience is just out and out rebellion. Other times it exists because people have a large capacity to live in denial - we are inauthentic about what is really happening in our lives. Living in a culture of "image management" we construct a world in which we pretend that we are not being disobedient. Even more often, if you scratch beneath the surface in conversation, you'll discover that the habitual disobedience grows out of years of trying to obey but experiencing failure after failure. Ultimately, that person becomes resigned and cynical about things ever changing in this area of their lives.
It is the deep conviction of the Faithwalking community, that personal transformation will often be jump-started when a follower of Jesus can tell the truth about his or her habitual disobedience. By walking in the light with a loving God and in a non-judgmental community of friends, our truth telling opens up possibilities for significant growth that didn't exist before.
In our Faithwalking retreats, we work to create a safe place for participants to tell the truth about their obedience - and their disobedience - in a manner that is liberating. What once was hidden is opened up to encouragement, prayer support, and accountability.
Albert (not his real name) participated in our second Faithwalking retreat. Out of a time of solitude with God, he came back to his small group and with great courage made this confession. "I am harsher, more demanding and less forgiving with my wife than I am any other person in my life." As his confession was heard, a new possibility began to emerge. By faith, Albert, declared his intention to seek prayer support and accountability for changing this long standing pattern with his wife. With his faith declaration, the support and accountability of a small group, a renewed commitment to trusting God to change his behavior, and a Faithwalking coach, today Albert and his wife say that their 25-year marriage has been profoundly renewed.
We invite you to consider joining us as we allow God to create a community of transformational leaders in the homes, neighborhoods, workplaces and third places of our city.
