Ugly Sweater Sunday

Are we really doing this? You bet we are!

Come Sunday, Dec. 17 wearing your best and ugliest Christmas sweater. Just a little fun with your Cedar Hills family during this Christmas season!

The best Christmas sweaters are often homemade… thing super glue, strings, fuzzy balls.  Be creative.  Google ‘ugly Christmas sweater’ for inspiration.

Stay after the services for a Chili Cook-off – the proceeds will go to the youth group. Contact the office to be a competitor or sign up in the church bulletin.

Who We Are

Core identity: WHO we are.

One Church. Many Places. Following Jesus.

  • We are one church. We belong to a community of people loved by God, making disciples
    who desire to fix what is broken in the world. (Luke 15)
  • We exist in many places. We take the love of God everywhere we go. (John 3:16)
  • We follow Jesus as he calls us to seek, love, grow, and serve. (Matthew 28:18-20)

We are one church, loved by God,
 fulfilling the Great Commission to make disciples who follow Jesus,
by living out the Great Commandment
to love one another in all the places we go.

Core Value: Our compelling WHY.

Because God loves us, we love. (Matthew 22:34-40)

  • Love God Wholly.
  • Love Self Properly.
  • Love Neighbor Deeply.
  • Love the World Boldly.

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength,
and love your neighbor as yourself.”
-Matthew 22:34-38

Core Calling: WHAT we do.

Make disciples who make disciples who follow Jesus in the everyday stuff of life.

  • Seek—Come and see. (Outreach)
  • Love—Come and follow. (Worship)
  • Grow—Come and grow. (Spiritual formation)
  • Serve—Come and be. (Service)

“Go, make disciples of every nation…” –Matthew 28:18-20

Family & Children Ministry Update

We celebrate the impact that our congregation has seen in the lives of families and children in 2017 at a time when we are facing a big transition in this ministry. Our commitment is to grow this ministry so that parents will embrace their calling to nurture faith in their children. Our vision is that our congregation will partner with parents to build strong families. To this end we are engaged in a search to find the candidate that God is preparing to lead us forward in this vital ministry. Your prayer in this season of change are much appreciated as we seek the next Director of Family and Children’s Ministry!

Pray that God will lead us to the person called to carry out this ministry. The Director of Family and Children’s Ministry shall be responsible for the oversight of ministry to families with children, birth through 5th grade. The primary roles will be to encourage and empower parents in their call to disciple their children and to equip others to intentionally focus on developing children into life-long followers of Jesus.

~ Pastor Kent

November Missions Bright Spots

Our mission is to fulfill the Acts 1:8 calling that we will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on us so that we will be witnesses here and around the world! This verse gives us our purpose. Our strategy is to love Cedar Rapids and the world.

We carry out our strategy by praying and asking God to grow a love for people in Cedar Rapids and around the world. We do this by inspiring awareness of God’s work locally and globally, by sending people out in response to God’s call to reach out, and by supporting missions here and around the world.

In 2017 we have seen students reached on the campuses of Coe College and Kirkwood. Katie Smith reached out to students at the University of Iowa. We reached Chinese students studying in Michigan through the work of Linda DeBoer. We started a partnership with Matthew 25 and refugee farmers to grow food to feed families. We fed hundreds of people through the Open Hands Food Pantry. We reached around the globe into Niger (Jeremy and Susan Beabout), Papua New Guinea (Gary and Denise Abbas), The Czech Republic (Beth Larson), and Turkey (John and Becky Leverington).

These are some of the ways we are the hands and feet of Jesus fulfilling the Great Commission of Matthew 28 to go and make disciples of all nations!

~ Pastor Kent & Missions Team

Noah’s Ark – November 2017 News

I am a planner. I have a hard time waiting for answers. I want to know everything now so I can plan. This past year enrollment was very slow. Our numbers were low for a long time. We decided to adjust staff, cut hours, and changed some classes around. So all summer long we prayed hard, did some advertising on social media and our enrollment shot up! So again, we adjusted staff, added hours for some, and remembered to keep praying. How many times are we so focused on the planning that we forget to pray? This year reminded me that all the planning in the world wasn’t going to help if I wasn’t willing to pray to God as well. I’m more focused on what God wants as opposed to what I want done. I love that God still teaches us lessons and doesn’t give up until He’s ready for us. His time is not fast or slow, it’s perfect.

The preschool’s board works hard to keep a tight budget. Basically what comes in covers our budget and our gift back to the church. This year we are again giving a 10% discount to active church members. We gave back $10,000 directly to the church at the end of 2016. Our board for the 2017-2018 school year consists of: Jana Houghkirk as acting chair, Allison Johnson, Kaci Maire, Melissa Oberembt, Jennifer Miller, Carrie Campbell, Katie Curtis, Jan Fick, and myself. I absolutely love my staff! Jan Fick, 24 years, Assistant Director/Lead Teacher; Marcia Bruggink, 15 years as Assistant Teacher; Lori Larson, 11 years as Lead Teacher; Kris Crowther, 4 years as Lead Teacher, and Lorri Anderson, 3 years as Assistant Teacher. Bridgit Humphreys and Rachel Freeman join us as substitute teachers. We are grateful for all 62 families, who have stayed with Noah’s Ark and value a quality Christian education.

I believe in free preschool for those who can’t afford to pay. I don’t believe that our taxes should pay for all those who can pay. As a Preschool Director, it hurts my heart knowing that we have a quality preschool and loving Christian teachers who can offer way more than ‘free’ and we could reach twice as many families as we do. Please join with me and pray for the future of Noah’s Ark Preschool.

In Christ,
Leslie Clauson
Director of Noah’s Ark Preschool

November 2017 Adult Discipleship Update

It has been an exciting year for our Discipleship Vision Team. Our ‘on’ and ‘off’ campus cells continue to provide a growing number of families with the opportunity to connect with one another. There is still much work to be done in our groups owning the cell values. Some of our groups this past year merged with others and new groups continue to develop. Our focus on training and forming new cell groups will continue to be a way that we hope to reach out beyond the walls of the church to become a church that does life with one another in community.

The Adult Discipleship Cross Training has experienced a blessed year and is off to a good start this fall. This year we increased our Sunday morning classes to four instead of three. An additional Cross Training class is now offered on Tuesday mornings. Adult Discipleship opportunities continue to expand with a primary focus on the Bible, family dynamics, and other biblical electives presented to help resource our spiritual development.

Please continue to keep the search team and process in prayers as we seek our next Director of Children’s Ministry. If you have not attended a Cross Training Class or Cell Group, be sure to visit us online or at one of the registration tables for an opportunity to connect with others.

J.R. Henderson
Pastor of Spiritual Development

Little Ones Like Me

“The disciples came to Jesus and asked, ‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: …. ‘Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me…. See that you do not look down on one of these little ones. For I tell you that their angels in heaven always see the face of my Father in heaven…. Your Father in heaven is not willing that any of these little ones should be lost.’” (Matt 18:1-14)

Jesus loves little ones. Little ones are weak and dependent. They know their need for God. Jesus loves both literal and metaphorical children. They are the “micro”-people who become “mega”- people in God’s family. Jesus assures us that angels are assigned to help them and that not one of them will be lost.

As Pastor of Visitation and Care, I enjoy reaching out to “littles” because I myself am a “little” in need of God. When I visit families, I want children to know that they are at the center of God’s attention. When “grown-ups” sit in pain-filled hospital rooms or at tense kitchen tables, whenever we cry to him in our weakness, we can be sure that heaven comes down to meet us in our need.

When we lose a loved one, or get stopped in our tracks by a serious illness, we have God’s angels watching over us. When we face addictions, disasters, family conflicts, divorce, job loss, or depression, we just need to remember one thing: despite ever present suffering and evil, not one of God’s “little ones” will be lost.

Alan Crandall
Pastor of Care

November Worship/Media Update

I have been blessed to see how God is at work within the worship and media ministries over the last year. The biggest success by far was my absence. Taking a maternity leave always worries me—worry that things will fall apart, the holes will happen, volunteers fall through the cracks and just general chaos. But by the grace of God and the best crew of volunteer leadership, this NEVER happens. Our volunteers are awesome. We had great help through our worship ministry intern, Emily, but the  strength of our leaders and teams became very evident in my absence. Thank you, thank you! I feel blessed by the 70+
volunteers who call worship ministry their team at Cedar Hills.

Another cool expansion from the past year has been the addition of the Cedar Hills app. We’re still learning how to best use this unique tool, and it continues to surprise us. The “Quick Question” of the week has been the most popular feature in the app, but it is also growing in popularity for registering for classes and special events, and weekly giving of tithes. The
app also has the capability to submit photos to us of all the neat things happening at Cedar Hills. Every now and then someone will capture a pic that we would have otherwise missed. It also has a link to our sermon podcasts, one of the best online Bible tools I’ve yet seen, a link to our church community builder (CCB), and a button to submit prayer requests. We’re always looking for new ways to use it to engage and provide resources, so this tool is ever-evolving. Have you downloaded the app? Check the App Store or Google Play to find it under “Cedar Hills Community Church.” Easy.

Other highlights of the year—the 1st service choir at the Fall Kick-Off—wow! I hope you had the chance to hear them as well!
This has been a year of flourishing and growth and empowerment. We are blessed.

Leah
Director of Worship & Media

November Journey Update

Over the year of 2017, the Journey Student Ministry has watched God grow and move our youth group. To kick off the year,  we redecorated our ministry room to reflect the call God has on our ministry to reach those far from Him. Here are some numbers that show the impact God has had on us and we have had on the community.

  • Hundreds of prayer requests prayed for and answered.
  • Hundreds of friends prayed for about faith.
  • Over 50 individual gospel conversations.
  • Over 100 students attend an outreach night at SkyZone.
  • All six of our student leaders have consistently shared their faith and led testimony times.
  • Student leaders lead four outreach days in our community.
  • We’ve had most students attending Journey in the last six years.
  • Doubled our registration for the Lead The Cause Evangelism training event.

God is continuing to move in our student ministry and we are excited to see what happens in 2018!
Jeremy Van Genderen
Director of Youth & Young Adults

Love. Belong. Serve.