The Village
Eric Cepin, a leader in the kingdom of Jesus by the will of God, to the holy saints of the Village: see, I have employed the hand of my wife again in my communication to you. A big hug of grace and peace to y’all.
The Great Summerfest
I do not want you to be uninformed, my friends, about the great Summerfest. Twice a month for the next four months, there will be partying and studying like you’ve never seen before. On the first Monday of each month, a big BBQ will be held at either the Cromer or the Seneca house. This event is designed to be a place where the community can get together and enjoy each other, but also where we can invite friends from outside to get to know people in our community and participate in the fun. On the third Monday, a different teacher each month from the Village will be talking about some subject he enjoys. Childcare will be provided for the third Monday Bible studies. Drumming Circle
We recently held a Drumming Circle wherein we broke into four groups to broach the challenge of raising $50,000. Each group came up with very different, but complementary, ways of solving this problem.
The group I will refer to as The Moore Group (simply because it contains 2 Moores) concluded that each member of the Village needs to come up with approximately 20 - 50 names of people they know who may be interested in helping the Village out or with whom they could communicate about our current dilemma. This group decided to divide the Village into seven different groups and assign each group a Motivator/Encourager. Hopefully within the next month, you will be receiving a phone call from your designated Encourager, who will help you to brainstorm and will encourage you in your quest to come up with fifty names. This group is also planning on putting together a database of all the names so that we don’t send duplicate letters out, and so that we have a centralized record of addresses for future thank you notes, newsletters, etc.
The second group, hereafter known as The LeFevre Group (simply because Jeremy has such an interesting last name) concluded that putting together a comprehensive website which includes audio, text, and money donation resources, as well as the ability to subscribe to an e-mail newsletter, should be developed as a primary destination in raising support. This website would be completely separate from the Village website, villagersonline.com, and would be referred to in support letters, promotional material, and linked to via people’s websites on the internet. The Village would employ Jeremy’s firm in creating this website so that it would have a distinct & professional appearance.
The third group, which will be called The Nerds of America (simply because it contains 2 University High School graduates) decided to take on the responsibility of writing a general support letter which could be sent either to individuals or businesses, with the option of personalizing it for a specific individual or group of people. Rumor has it that this group claims that they will have this letter finished by the 31st and will have raised $200,000 by the end of the summer. Our hope as a community is that they will have the letter finished sometime in the middle of July. They are supposedly meeting this weekend to write this beautiful piece of propaganda.
The last-but-not-least group shall be known as the Heavy Hitters (simply because they claim to know many important people and also have a member, Bill Kemmeries, who they proudly put forth as having raised over $12 million for non-profit organizations). This group came to the conclusion that they each knew a variety of people in larger churches to whom they could go to discuss funding possibilities for the Village. This group also discussed the possibility of putting together an art show/concert to raise money for the Village
Sadly, the fifth group does not exist. We would formerly have called this enclave The Administrative Group. Its primary responsibility would be to make sure the other four groups followed through with their most honorable intentions. This group does hereby exist, and shall be dubbed The Pastor Eric Group (simply because its purposes have fallen to me). However, if you can say that you, So-and-So, are a servant in the kingdom of God gifted in the ways of administration, then give me a call (please!) and we will join forces for the accomplishment of much good. If you are wondering what an administrator does in the kingdom of God, it means that you would make phone calls or send text messages or e-mails to many people to get progress reports and convey information between groups. |
