This summer, our congregation hosted two Love Avenue events: our second annual Carnivalfest and a Laser Tag Party.
I came up with the idea for our Carnivalfest a couple years ago inspired by the desire to bring back local events that had stopped happening in our community. There used to be an annual 4H Carnival and a Community Fest in town and those just slowly went away, hence the name Carnivalfest. I had lots of fond memories from them as a kid. I knew we needed to reach out to our community and thought this was a great way to make this happen as a congregation. As a congregation we are committed to involving every age group in the planning and hosting of these events. We need everyone to make this work.
The first year, our theme was the Armor of God. It was a huge success. By the time participants made it through each game or station, they were taking the whole Armor of God with them home. After the first carnival, we were sitting at the GCI conference in Dallas and the theme for our next carnival came to my mind: Mysteries of God, which turned into the Miracles of God Carnival. Even though I love the miracles from the Old Testament, I wanted people to see the whole picture of what Jesus had done for each person.
When you started through our Carnival, you walked in and were met by a huge rock mound, with a stone that was to be rolled away as they entered the tomb. The next room was dark with a bright light in the corner with a tomb with the words written “he is risen” and the cloth laid upon the tomb empty. This room had a fog machine to give it the full effect. They then went through the black plastic to an open room with bright colors and a display of taking a walk with Jesus. This is where the parents signed them in, with phone numbers and signed our waivers, received a crown of their choice, received their “God is especially fond of you” bags and our church information. Then Pastor David set them in our crowning chair and crowned them a child of God with: “Know that you were formed a child of God, placed in his heart and placed in this world for a purpose.” At this point they could play laser tag or walk through our Red Sea, welcomed by Moses. We had a photo booth, with take-home pictures with the name Carnivalfest 2021 Community by Grace. We had many games, a face painting booth, handprints (laminated with a magnet), Donut Bobbing, Cake Walk, Balloon Stomp, Cave walk to the Fiery Furnace and a Maze that brought you through to the Big Room. Each one of our booths had a miracle attached to it. The maze was dark and long. It took a good five minutes to get through it, and halfway through they changed it up. Everyone had a great time.
One of the highlights was seeing all the teens and adults coming together to work on booths. The hardest part for me was letting go and being ok with kids and teens taking creative license—things didn’t have to be perfect; God is not looking for perfect people. I had to be ok with whatever they produced for me! I knew it was in God’s hands and from the beginning I had to remember that. Too many times kids do things and get a “that’s fine,” or “that will work,” instead of a “Yes, great work! God would love it! Thanks so much for being here to help.” We have to meet them where they are instead of expecting them to do things exactly as we would. As a congregation, we live that, no judgment, none of us are perfect. God loves us and meets us where we are, and Jesus is present in our lives whether we accept it or not.
Several members of our congregation shared photos, insights, and highlights for weeks after the carnival on their Facebook pages, Snapchats and Instagram. We have had one new family start coming since the carnival, but when we have a game night, laser tag, or bonfire, everyone from the neighborhood shows up, whether they have been attending church or not. I feel this is great–we are meeting them where they are.
Even though our regular attendance is low sometimes, we have about 75 to 80 attend our church when they can or an event is planned.
My sister, Niki Katzenmeier, has been a huge asset to our church, since she moved here in June. She came up with the idea of laser tag and we planned it together. We purchased 32 guns and batteries and started gathering big boxes, used our half doors from the maze and put black plastic up and turned off all the lights. We used our whole church area. In our eating area, we had the laser gun table set up with waivers. While the first bunch played we would get the second bunch set up with the rules. Anyone who was not playing still could enjoy visiting with the parents, or the visitors. During the first event we had a make-your-own-pizza station, which was a huge success as well. Thanks to Niki’s help we were able to make this event happen.
Niki has also completely revamped our bulletin board, so we have sign-up sheets for all the events, church service, anything we do! It’s bright and pretty. We also have included a spot for prayer requests, and all our upcoming events are added to the board. People want to get out and need to see who we are!
Heather Ferguson
Love Avenue Champion
Wheatland, Wyoming
GC Tallapoosa has a good plan for engaging their downtown neighborhood. The Johnson’s are well known in the community – it helps that they live in the one square mile around the church building. The Johnson’s invested in a downtown building space (they call it The Union) where the church meets. They prayerfully hope it will become a center of community activity; they are starting to see traction in that regard. Let’s pray for their efforts to join God’s mission of love and grace to their community.
New Life in Christ, the GCI congregation in Queens, New York City, joined with hundreds of volunteers in our Richmond Hill neighborhood in delivering thousands of backpacks to families in need. The River Fund, a neighborhood non-profit focused on combatting poverty and its effects on families, organized the event, and New Life was a sponsor. Our team, led by Florence Emerole, one of our Love Avenue Champions, joined in preparing backpacks for distribution to families in need as identified by the River Fund. As a result of our relationship with the organization, we were allowed to add a message of the hope of Jesus along with our congregational brochure to hundreds of backpacks, adding a real presence of Christ to the event while meeting physical needs. We prayed over many backpacks that our messages would reach the hearts intended by the Holy Spirit.
The mission of The River Fund is “to feed and empower those we serve to move beyond the lines of poverty.” Their slogan is “Taking Poverty Personally.” This matches a stated objective of our congregation’s outreach to make a difference in the community in Christ, especially in light of the pandemic, and we have partnered with this organization on a number of projects in the last few years.
Joffre is now out of the rehabilitation facility and receiving nurse and therapist support at home. He’s trying to build back muscle strength and continue the healing process. Your prayers and cards have been much appreciated, and we ask for continued prayer for motivation, pain control, and strength for all of us.
On Saturday afternoon hundreds of Surrey neighbors lined up with about 13,000 water balloons and had a total blast. If you’re wondering how we determine who wins a water balloon battle, we don’t. It actually makes for amazing debates and bragging rights for everyone all year long.
Camp Surrey provided ice chests full of water bottles and juice boxes as well as hand sanitizer and insect repellant. We decided to keep the fun going after dark and hosted a movie on the park lawn. A couple of months ago, we cast a poll on our neighborhood Facebook page and let them pick the movie (with the stipulation that it had to be G or PG). Zootopia won by a landslide! It was an incredible evening of neighbors loving neighbors.
We had between 400 and 500 people participate in this event. We had well over 150 children. We made a special announcement before the movie. Pastor Joe introduced himself and invited everyone to join us at the Surrey Hills Elementary School Gym the next morning for a special worship experience and blessing of the children. I’m thrilled to say we had SEVEN brand new faces Sunday morning. Praise God!
I often think of the old saying from the movie “Field of Dreams” when it comes to relaunching our church into this neighborhood. I used to always quote the line, “If you build it, they will come.” Weekends like this are a loving and gentle reminder from my Papa that I need to change that mantra in my head. The truth is that “God will build it, and we will love.”
