2018 Contribution Statements, New Series in Job, 2019 Ministry Initiatives (Pastoral Emphasis for 1/27)

Members' 2018 contribution statements are in the Welcome Center ready for pickup. Church leadership will find theirs in their church mailbox.

Why is there suffering in the world? If God is loving, how can He allow human suffering? How should we respond to suffering? These questions and more, we'll address in our new series in Job starting next Sunday called "Faithfulness in Suffering".

We had our Church Family Meeting right after the service today. We praised God for the things we were able to accomplish last year and looked forward to the new initiatives for 2019:

• Developing a Disciple-Making Culture: The metaphor is the trellis & the vine. The trellis is a structure that is used to support, to hold up, a vine. The trellis refers to the administrative work within a church, those tasks that, though important, are not actually directly related to discipling people. Vine work, on the other hand, is those tasks of working with the vine, drawing people into the kingdom through evangelism and then discipling them to grow in their knowledge of God and their obedience to him. Far too often, churches get caught up in trellis work (meetings, committees, structures, etc.) while working on the vine (disciple-making) gets neglected. We started preparing for this a couple of years ago, but now we're moving forward with a Vine Project team to help make sure that we have a disciple-making culture at Mt. Zion. This will be a multi-year effort because changing culture takes time. 
• Life Groups & Fellowship Activities for Senior Members: All of our membership is important so we want to make sure that we are ministering to the needs of our senior saints.
• Noon Day Prayer & Bible Study on 2nd Tuesdays of the month: Those who are retired or can participate during their lunch hour will have another opportunity to grow in the Word, pray, and fellowship. 
• Monthly Youth Services on 4th Sundays: This will increase our youth's participation in our services. On those Sundays, the youth will be presiding, praying, and leading us in the call to worship. There will be a special youth-centric message. 
• Monthly Serving at Raleigh Rescue Mission (led by Devoted Disciples): On 2nd Sundays in the afternoon. This will be a great opportunity for us to serve our community. 
• Care Ministry Enhancement (around how we care for those in bereavement)
• GAIN PackHope Outreach: This is a mission project by Cru to help churches to show the kindness of Jesus through humanitarian aid. We will partner with other churches to put together seed packages to send to people in need in other countries. This is a great way to fellowship and serve with other churches for the common good.
• Implementing a new ChMS (Church Management Software) called Realm.