SUNDAY (3/14) - Daylight Saving Time & St. Patrick's Day Parade!

Just a couple of things to know about THIS Sunday (3/14):

1. Daylight Saving Time is starting (again) this Sunday! So, don't forget to put move your clocks ahead one hour or else you'll be at Sunday Gathering at the wrong time!

2. St. Patrick's Day Parade:
Just a quick heads-up that this Sunday is also the New Haven's St. Patrick's Day parade. The parade is set to start at 1pm and end around 4pm. From the parade route, it appears that Elm Street will be closed from College to Orange, and Temple will be closed from Grove to Crown. Here's my best guess (parade route in green, street closings in red):

The police said they'll start opening up streets even while the parade is still going, so some streets will already be re-opened by 4pm (hopefully).

Anyway, plan accordingly. Come a bit early (come downtown and watch the parade!) and we'll see you at 4.

Share Your Story & Listen to God in Community

The past few months at ECV, we have shared testimonies of God’s activity in our lives during Sunday gatherings. From providing physical and emotional healing and meeting financial needs, God is showing up and making a positive impact in our lives. As we continue to seek a living and active God to meet us regularly, we hope and desire that God will answer that call even more. We want to hear these stories and we want to provide opportunities for folks to share them. If you have a testimony, please send it to stories@elmcityvineyard.org. We’ll be in contact with you about how we plan to celebrate God’s presence among us!

Additionally, if some of the testimonies and messages you’ve heard at ECV have made you more curious about hearing God’s voice and practicing that, then I definitely encourage you to check out any of the homegroups we have during the week. Our goal is for these groups to be places where we can encounter God’s presence and share what God is doing in our lives. Regularly listening to God is a commitment that shows up in the ecv community covenant, and we strongly desire that the covenant is accessible to everyone. Conveniently, the Thursday homegroup led by Marilyn de Guehery, the Maskells, and me will be downsized due to students’ spring break, so we’re particularly up for hosting any one who might have questions about how God speaks or want to practice hearing from God in community. It meets at 180 Colony Rd at 7:30pm. I hope to see folks there and to continue to hear how God is moving.

Opportunities to be involved in New Haven!

As we're in this season praying for our city (among other things), I'd like to share some events & meetings that are going on in New Haven that I personally would like to attend and I invite you to join me in representing ECV at these meetings and creating deeper connections to our city!

Here are a list of events/meetings (most of which I'll be attending personally) that I thought you might be interested in attending (For more details about these events/meetings - scroll down): - - Feel free to email me if you'd like to come along!

1. Organizing Meeting for Shaw's Supermarket! - Tuesday, March 9th, 6:30 pm at Dwight Substation/150 Edgewood Ave. (Day & Edgewood)
2. Whalley, Edgewood, Beaver Hills (WEB) Management Team Meeting - Tuesday, March 16th, 7:00pm at Beaver Hills Substation (386 Whalley Ave.)
3. West River Neighborhood Association Meeting - Tuesday, March 23rd at 6:00pm at Mutual Housing (730 George Street).
4. CARE Community Dialogues 2010 - All are on Wednesdays (3/17 - 4/28) from 6:30-8:00pm - See locations below.

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1. Organizing Meeting for Shaw's Supermarket! - Tuesday, March 9th, 6:30 pm at Dwight Substation/150 Edgewood Ave. (Day & Edgewood)
As you may have heard, the Shaw's on Whalley Ave. is closing at the end of March and since this is one of the few supermarkets in close proximity to a number of neighborhoods on the west side of New Haven (as well as to Yale), the future of this space is both a serious economic as well as a public health issue for our city.

The meeting on Tuesday will address the following concerns:
a. To insure that a neighborhood supermarket with secure employment exists, and
b. That there is an opportunity to address health issues and health policy by what kind of vendor(s) replaces Shaw's.

Also, there will be hearings (check the City's website for time & date), but this meeting will help us hone our message to the city for those hearings!

2. Whalley, Edgewood, Beaver Hills (WEB) Management Team Meeting - Tuesday, March 16th, 7:00pm at Beaver Hills Substation (386 Whalley Ave.)
(Meets every 3rd Tuesday of the month at 7pm)
I know that there are many of you who live in either the Edgewood or Beaver Hills neighborhood, and since it seems important to start engaging our city where we actually live, then it would be great if you could join me for these meetings where we discuss issues that affect our neighborhoods, such as the police shooting range, crime rates, engaging youth, park clean-ups, etc.

3. West River Neighborhood Association Meeting - Tuesday, March 23rd at 6:00pm at Mutual Housing (730 George Street)
(Meets every 4th Tuesday of the month at 6pm)
In addition to the WEB meetings, I have been regularly attending these neighborhood meetings in West River - This is a neighborhood that borders both the WEB and Hill North neighborhoods and it is really turning itself around - I have been particularly inspired by the people who are part of this group and it would be great if some of you can join me in seeing what they are up to (and possibly contributing to their work as a church!)

4. CARE Community Dialogues 2010 - All are on Wednesdays from 6:30-8:00pm
CARE is a group working out of the Yale Public Health School that has been working on a Community Health Project where they are hoping to engage the community in creating holistic solutions to the health problems that they face. Below are a series of "community dialogues" that CARE will be holding to share the results from their community health surveys, conducted in six New Haven neighborhoods during the Fall of 2009 (some of the dialogues have already happened already). Help to improve health in your neighborhood and New Haven!

Here are the dates/places for the next dialogues:

West River: March 17th
NeighborWorks New Horizons, 730 George St.

Hill North: March 31st
Wilson Library, 303 Washington Ave.

Newhallville: April 14th
Stetson Library, 200 Dixwell Ave.

West Rock: April 28th
West Rock Development Center, 260 Wilmont Rd.

Light and healthy refreshments will be served. RSVP and questions, please contact Alycia at 203-785-7651 or alycia.santilli@yale.edu (or you can just email me directly and we can work out which ones to go to together...)

OK - I think that's it for now! Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions about these events/meeting or if you want to come with me!

Consider Committing…

On Sunday I talked more specifically about what the "consider committing" piece of our Lenten experience might look like. I shared three kinds of commitment in particular, suggesting, depending on where we're at, that God might lead us to make a commitment to:

1. Extend Lenten commitments. A lot of this stuff we're taking on during Lent is good year-round. if you're new to prayer, perhaps during this season, you'll find that God is leading you to continue to intentionally invest in praying in one or more of the directions described above. If you don't normally take time to read the Bible, perhaps during this season, you'll find that God is leading you to continue reading even after our six weeks are up. Either of those would be great commitments to consider if that's where you're at.
2. Get baptized. Baptism is an ancient rite of the Church, publicly marking a decision to pursue Jesus. I know there are already a couple folks up for getting baptized later this spring, a couple weeks after our six weeks are up (4/17?). As we encounter God together in prayer and in Scripture, consider whether God might be leading you to take this step to commit to pursuing Him this way.
3. Invest in what God’s doing at ECV by adopting the ECV community covenant. With various groups of leaders in our church, we've been considering whether God is leading us as a church to articulate concretely our commitments to Him and to one another as we build God's church in ECV. The community covenant expresses our best shot at describing the commitments we sense God calling us to make to one another as we try to orient our lives around Jesus. I really think that this avenue for commitment will be an important one for us in this season.
   

Now, especially that last opportunity for commitment—the community covenant—has raised a lot of questions for different folks. What is it? Perhaps, more to the point, what isn't it (I suggested Sunday that it is not about legalism, or drawing a boundary around our community, or institutionalism).

Basically, what we're hoping for all of the commitments we're considering during Lent is this: that they will serve as opportunities for us to make decisions to orient our lives around Jesus—and support one another as we do so. If you have questions about what the covenant means for you, if you didn't catch the sermon Sunday, check that out; it's available online. And if you still have questions, you should have an opportunity to talk things through in homegroup this week—and, of course, you can feel free to contact me (matt at elmcityvineyard.org) with any lingering questions.

I'm really excited to see what God will say to us as we consider committing in these various ways, taking steps to orient our lives around Jesus. I sense that this is just another step in the good things that God is building in us and through us at ECV. I'm so glad to be a part of it.

elmcityvineyard.org Outage [update]

Update: Looks like all the issues are resolved, quicker than we hoped. With these kinds of problems, there can be lingering issues for awhile, but, at least for me (matt), everything seems to be working as of this morning (2/27, 9am).

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Hey, so, it looks like as of this morning we're having some difficulties with elmcityvineyard.org—and it sounds like we may continue to have troubles for a week or so. In the meantime:

1. Send all ECV email to elmcityvineyard@gmail.com; people's individual ECV (@elmcityvineyard.org) addresses will probably not work for the next week or so.
2. www.elmcityvineyard.org can be found at elmcityvineyard.blogspot.com (where it normally forwards anyway)

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Lent at ECV

Yesterday (2/21) was the first Sunday of Lent, the season leading up to Easter (4/4). We talked about a few different things we've sensed that God is inviting us to do during this season. The best way to get up to speed on that is to read the handout we distributed and listen to Sunday's sermon. Below is a brief summary of each of the three things we sense God inviting us to do during this season, three challenges I offer to you:

Pray

In the spirit of engaging with God as real, active, and living, I want to encourage you to pray in three particular directions:

1. For something it would take God to do in your life.
2. For a handful of folks in your life in New Haven who you'd like to experience more of the good things of God.
3. For our city.

The handout from yesterday has something of a worksheet to help you make concrete what and whom you want to pray for in this season. I encourage you to take some time early this week to fill that out or otherwise make specific your prayer commitments.

Read the Bible

Yesterday we distributed the first week of a study guide that will lead us through the entire Gospel of Luke (one of the ancient accounts of the life of Jesus) in the next six weeks. That study guide is also available online, via daily email (subscribe at the study guide site), RSS, Twitter, or downloadable pdfs. We'll also print out a few paper copies every week and will have them at church on Sundays.

So please join us in reading through Luke in this season. I'm really excited to see what God will do as we encounter Him in scripture.

Consider Committing

Finally, as you pray during this season, I’d encourage you to pray about perhaps making a commitment to a life following God. The key is to make a commitment that matches where you're at in seeking God and then helps you take a step forward. The handout that you got has some practical thoughts on kinds of commitments you might make: extending various Lenten commitments, getting baptized, or committing to invest in what God's doing at ECV.

That last one especially I'll talk more about next week. For now, let me just let you know that with various groups of leaders in our church, we've been considering whether God is leading us as a church to articulate concretely our commitments to Him and to one another as we build God's church in ECV.

So that's the invitation: pray, read, consider committing.

Let's dig in; I think it's going to be an exciting 6 weeks.

ECV Global Outreach Meeting (2/21)

This Sunday (2/21), the Global Outreach team will meet to share and pray for global outreach concerns and interests represented at ECV. We will also pray for Audrey Lin, our ECV missionary in Taiwan. This meeting is open to all!

WHAT: ECV monthly GO meeting
WHEN: Sunday, February 21st, 1-2:30 p.m. Lunch will be provided.
WHERE: Maskells' home, 180 Colony Rd. New Haven, CT 06511.
Contact Kathy, 203.687.5345.

See you there!