Diagrams Made Easy

The church has to be the living body that it was created to be. Thus it has to REACH out into the community. Christ sent out the 70 in pairs of two. Sounds familiar, yet undone most of the time. Let's work together to change that.

A Church has generations in it as a strength. Wisdom cannot be faked and so it must be passed down. We have "boxed" ministries into age groups for good reasons, yet it is crippling our future generations. Let's build intergenerational ministries together!

Volleyball With Impact.

I wanted to call this blog post "Purpose Driven Volleyball," but that has probably already been trademarked. Here is a great story from a great guy who is doing incredible things down at Doheny:

"Beach volleyball. Words that bring to mind images of busy summer days, Top Gun, or even Summer Olympic gold. What these words do not make you think of is ministry, unity, and salvation. But these are exactly what beach volleyball has brought to the college group at our church. My wife and I spent the past year playing regularly with a couple of friends and after Misty May and Kerri Walsh put the sport back on the
map this summer, we decided to give our college students an opportunity to learn how to play. It was a pretty simple set-up: meet at 8am, warm-up, teach a few skills and play some games. Week by week we were having what we expected, a lot of fun and some memorable moments.

Soon we started grabbing lunch together afterwords and some incredible results began to manafest. What started as a fun interest began to bear a lot of fruit. Here are three realizations as we began to look at what was happening:

1. Ownership. The people who came to volleyball began to take ownership of the group and their faith. These where the ones that became the most excited to participate in our other Bible studies and even planned additional times to get-together to hang-out building up the unity of our group.

2. Evangelism through relationship. Some of our students started to stick around and join up with the Saddleback college class that meets at 10 am. As they built relationships based on volleyball, they started having opportunities to actually show Christian love and share the good news of Jesus, inviting people to church and other
gatherings...

3. and lastly... after playing volleyball, a girl from the college class accepted Jesus Christ as her Lord and Savior with one of our college ministry students who had taken a particular interest in volleyball and living out his Christian faith.

The idea of living out our Christian faith is living missional! Praise God for reaching others through us by a fun and silly game!"

A story from Derick Zeulner, a pastor at South Shores, Dana Point.

The Relational Tangible Object

In ministry some have found that its hard to measure effectiveness because relationships are viewed as intangible objects. I however disagree! I believe a relationship is a tangible object. Its who you turn to and lean on when things get tough.

Its our relationship with Jesus that has saved us. We needed saving and Jesus, in relationship, put skin on and came to our rescue. A guy named Thomas once put his hands in His nail holes - that's tangible.

We have been sent to be the tangible Jesus. Help us make that possible. Your donations and support help us to train up and send out college and young adults that are committed to walking students through their toughest years. We want to train up and send you out as well. Lets begin our relationship. Times are tough. Let's lean on each other.

From the mouth of our mentors:

Davey and I have been sailing for a few months now at Lake Mission Viejo. God has given me a catch twenty-two circumstance in our sailing outings. The wind at LMV isn't the greatest, not to mention the most reliable. But as it turns out, that's not a bad thing. Sometimes we have a hoot, hiking out (that's when the boat is tipping, and you lean out over the water to keep from capsizing) - those are the times we come for the adrenalin rush.

Others times the water is dead calm. Times like these are when the deep spiritual conversations spark and I really get him. God has blessed me by using me in Davey's life, and he is slowly becoming more comfortable with our conversations.

Eric - Lifestyle Mentor
Passion: Sailing
Church: Terranova
Lives out Passion: Mondays

The Highest Recommendation

If your faith is looking to be challenged and grown or you are seeking to understand why we do what we do at Project Hangout then I have a recommendation for you. This is the kind of book that I am telling everyone about and am thankful that Al Seibert told me about it. The book is an easy read as it is broken down into devotional (1 page style) morsels that you can chew on each day. The author, E. Stanley Jones summed up the book in its title, "The Word Became Flesh." It will challenge a person of any faith to live the way God intended and yet it flies in the face of the traditional church structure. Enjoy the reading, I hope it turns your world upside down.

The Word Became Flesh, By E. Stanly Jones

The "Living Missional" Challenge

Our challenge to you is to live missional. Try it. See how it changes your view on life and see if it makes the red letters of Jesus jump off the page. I know it has for me. After all it was he who said, "Come, follow me ... and I will make you fishers of men. (MT 4:19)"

Have you gone man fishing lately? Probably not, but you can - and we are here to help because Jesus also said to "make disciples. (MT 28:19)" We believe you have what it takes, after all God has given you specific gifts/talents/passions to connect with people. (Mt 25:14-30, Psalm 139: 13-16)

LIVE MISSIONAL, live with intention and purpose. Be invitation and relational Make opportunity of the places you are and the things you love. Dive deep into pursuing relationships with others WITH the goal of LOVING THEM like Jesus did.

Remember, this is what Project Hangout is all about. We are here to help. We have training, resources and people to guide you. You will never feel more gratification than serving your God in the way that His Son did.

Leave your stories as comments. Let's hear about them as we encourage others to live without boarders by following Jesus and being all about relationships.


Project Hangout Testimony from Project Hangout on Vimeo.