North Village Church Vision

We are entering into our 4th year as a church and it feels like it is a year where we have been able to articulate our vision with greater clarity.  It isn’t that it has changed over the last few years, but we are able to take broad concepts and break them down into much more definable details.  This has been very helpful and encouraging on a number of levels:

– Personally it has given me greater clarity when I communicate our purpose as a church to new people, leaders, and on Sunday morning.

– Practically it has helped me delegate these responsibilities to other people.  If you look at the diagram it is just an overview shot of our vision, but we have people who are running with these each of these roles with greater detail.

Year 4 Vision

North Village Church 2012

Three years ago we started with 18 adults in our living room and 13 children to step out in faith to start North Village Church.  Today we are 175 adults and children!  I wish I could tell you it was because of great leadership or great ideas, but it is simply the result of people humbling themselves and turning their hearts toward Jesus to see His majesty, power, and glory so that it lifts our eyes to be involved in the lives of other people.

This next year we are praying for our hearts and minds to be shaped by this idea of being rooted in our relationship with Jesus.  To help us move in this direction we are going to focus on three questions:

  • What are you learning?
  • Who are you running with?
  • How are you on mission?

 

Financial Prayer Guide

On Sunday we shared our new budget with North Village Church.  In our last three years as a church God has been so faithful to North Village Church.  We have met our budget every year and after our first year we have been financially sustainable.  This is rare to see from a new church.

It is partly because we have tried to keep our budget as stream lined as much as possible and mostly because God has gone before us and moved in the hearts of His people to invest in what He is doing.  Below is a recap of our budget over the last 3 years and a prayer guide is attached that we hand out to everyone at North Village to prayerfully consider how they would invest:

Year 1:  $150,000 (It was as cheap as we could get the budget)

Year 2:  $170,000 (We made a few adjustments, but this was our first year to not rely on outside support.)

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Chic-Fil-A: Good Intentions

In our culture today there is a political debate on the sanctity of marriage, and on a deeper level there is a humanitarian debate on the acceptance of people.  When the common Christ-follower hears about these debates in the news or mainstream media it is overwhelming for them.  They are confident in their position on marriage taking place between one man and one woman, but they also don’t know how to express their views without coming across hateful.  They are conflicted.  They want to show their support of what they see in Scripture, but they don’t know where to start, what it would look like, and how it should be expressed.

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Same sin, same habits, same problems…

I think if we are honest there are times in our relationship with Jesus where we are discouraged because we see a lack of renewal and transformation.  We are confident of our faith in Jesus’ work on the cross.  We have experienced renewal and transformation in the past, but there are times we can get discouraged because we don’t see a pattern of power and restoration in our personal lives.

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Abide 2012

As a church we want to be exposed to Jesus as much as possible so that we can abide in Him and His truth for our lives. “Abide 2012” is going to help us do just that.

During the month of July, NVC is asking you to participate in a scripture challenge where you receive a verse of Scripture to read each weekday through text message. Our theme for the month is “Jesus is ____________. 25 truths about Jesus.”

So each weekday in July you will receive a text message with a verse and a truth about Jesus. Our hope is that this is another small way we can be reminded of who Jesus is and who we are in Him. This could be a life changing month in your life and in the life of our church and all you have to do is read a text message!

To participate, text “Abide” to Tim Birdwell at 512.966.2364. Text messages will begin on July 2nd and end on August 3rd.

How’s the “Dog Fair” a win for North Village Church?

At the end of April we celebrated our 4th Austin Dog Fair!  You can click on the link here to watch a video recap of 2012.  In addition we outlined some of the ways the dog fair is a win for our church below:

For the last year I have been gathering local pastors to pray for and serve north central Austin and on Sunday while we were hosting the dog fair there was another church partnering with a neighborhood to clean up Northwest Park and Shoal Creek.   That means the body of Christ is having a tangible influence in multiple places in our community.

We had over 50 people from our church come together to help make it happen, which is awesome as our church is partnering together to have greater influence in the community.

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Connecting on Sundays: How?

Meeting people and connecting with Jesus on Sunday morning can be really difficult.  We typically show up feeling rushed or behind.  We aren’t sure where to sit.  We aren’t sure who to talk to and what to talk them about.  Here are the top 10  things to make the most of our time relationally on Sunday:

10.  Preparing our hearts:  Take a moment as you walk from the car to say a short prayer to ask the Holy Spirit to prepare your heart for that morning (Scripture, people, singing, etc.)

9.  Look for new people:  New people are always fun to talk with, even if they are just “New to You.”  Ask them, “How long have you been coming?  How did you hear about North Village?  Where do you live in Austin?”  Those are just a few go-to-questions to get you started.

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Austin Dog Fair

On April 29th we are going to host a dog fair for north central Austin at Brentwood Park.  This year we even got approval from the city because last year we had over 800 people, tons of dogs, and news coverage that led the city of Austin to inquire about why they didn’t know about this event.  Oops!

You can click on the link to watch our video from last year or you can visit www.austindogfair.com for more details.

Help us get the word out!

Zilker Kite Festival

On Sunday after church we got to go down to Zilker Park to celebrate the Kite Festival.  It was our first time to attend and it was awesome!  You can’t really see the kites in the picture that well, but there were thousands of them everywhere.  Ours got tangled up a few times, but for the most part it was great!

Spiritual Journey: The Mission of God

As we prepare our hearts for Easter we are going through a spiritual journey at North Village Church.  It is a time to press into the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus by turning from our sin and trusting in Jesus’ work on the cross.  If you would like a copy our spiritual journey you can click here.

Throughout the spiritual journey we will be reading through devotionals together as a church, fasting and encouraging one another to press into a deeper relationship with Jesus.  Then on March 25th we will conclude the spiritual journey with a celebration of what we have been learning during these 30 days and begin to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ for our sins and His glory.

More Than Friends Part 1 (Example #2)

Example #2:  You do something I think is wrong

What do we do when we disagree?  You drink more alcohol than I think you should.  You handle relationships with the opposite sex in an unhealthy way.  You gossip about someone behind their back.  You have a way of always hurting others with your words.  What are we going to do?  Are we going to avoid hanging out with those people?  Are we going to act like it didn’t happen?  Are we going to make excuses?  Are we going to tell someone else to talk to them?  When we do this we are telling ourselves God didn’t want this, and we are powerless to see anything change. But what if we were more than friends?  What if the gospel shaped our relationships with one another and instead we:

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More Than Friends Part 1 (Example #1)

Example #1:  Your child hurts my child

What are we going to do when our children hurt one another?  This is a sensitive subject isn’t it?  We love our children, we defend our children, we protect our children, so when my little angel gets hurt by your little terror then it can get really complicated.

What are you going to do?  We might gossip to the other parents and say something like, “Be sure to watch your children around that “one” over there.  We might attack and say something like, “You need to do a better job of watching your children!”  We might suppress and become bitter so every time we see them we think to ourselves, “Yep, there they go doing a horrible job of parenting!”  When we are doing this we are telling ourselves God didn’t want this to happen and I need to do something to fix it!  But what if we were more than friends then the gospel will shape our relationships with one another and we can:

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More Than Friends Part 1

When we trust in Jesus’ work on the cross we become sons and daughters who are adopted into God’s family.  Therefore, the relationships we have with one another is more than friendship.  It is more than a way to meet new people or have someone to hang out with on the weekends.  So much so that there is a supernatural quality to our relationships with one another, but sometimes those relationships can still be difficult.  Consider a few of these possibilities:

  • How many times have you been hanging out with someone from North Village Church, and there is someone in the group that you really rubs you the wrong way.  You can’t explain it, but you are actually thinking about what other group of friends you could hang out with so you can avoid that person.
  • How many times have you been in a conversation with someone and they talk to you about something that is really difficult?  You empathize with them, but the best you can come up with is something like, “That sucks and I will be praying for you.”  Inside you are wishing that you could have said something more meaningful.
  •  What do you do when you have a friend that seems to always have the same problem.  You know every time they go down this road it is going to end up in the same place.  You are thinking to yourself, “How come they can’t change?”  But you never say anything because you are afraid you are going to hurt their feelings.
  •  How many times have we been trying to talk to someone, but they keep playing with their phone, checking email, checking updates, and texting, and it feels like what ever is going on in that phone is more important than having a conversation with you.
  •  Or, how many times do you show up at church on Sunday and you see everyone talking to everyone, and inside you are wondering, “How come nobody is talking to me?”  Why does it look like everyone else is so friendly, but nobody is friendly with me?”

Scripture teaches us because of our faith in Jesus there is a quality to our relationships with one another.  Below are 4 characteristics that shapes our relationships with one another.  Take a moment and consider how they might apply to your relationships.

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