VBS & Sports Camp

In June we hosted two major outreaches to the kids and families of Medina with our annual Vacation Bible School onsite at New Life and a sports camp at Memorial Park. We partnered with First Baptist Church of Elloree, South Carolina to host the sports camp. They also helped with a Kids Bible Club in the morning as well as hanging dry wall at a local home that had received some flood damage from earlier Spring storms. We capped off the week with a Family Night in the Park.

Martin Center Plant Drive

We collected some new plant starts for a vegetable garden for The Martin Center in Canton. The Martin Center exists to build relationships with teens and families in the Canton NE and SE inner-city communities. For more information about this ministry go here. The garden has been a great tool for the volunteers and staff members to build relationships with the people of the neighborhood in efforts to reach them for Christ. Frank Haugh organized the collection of these plants.

Crazy Love

On Wednesday April 23rd we're starting a study of Francis Chan's book Crazy Love. We meet at 6:30 each Wednesday and everyone is welcome to join them. Contact info@newlifemedina.org to get involved. Quotes from the book:

“Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at things in life that don't really matter.” 

“Lukewarm people don't really want to be saved from their sin; they want only to be saved from the penalty of their sin.”

“I believe He wants us to love others so much that we go to extremes to help them.” 

Men's Ministry

We started a new Men’s Ministry on Saturday March 15th. We had breakfast together and great conversation. We hope this will be the start of a monthly opportunity for the men of New Life to get together and encourage each other to greater faith and service to Christ. 

Winter Sports

We spent January preparing for the Winter Olympics by praying for the athletes, support personnel, and the people of Russia in Sochi. We also prayed for IMB volunteers in Sochi who were sharing the gospel and attempting to plant churches in Russia. Download a prayer guide from http://www.engagesochi.org/pray.

February 2nd at 5pm at New Life we had our annual Super (Pro Football Championship) Bowl Party. We watched it on the big screen together and of course we had a pot luck with prizes!

New Life was host to two indoor soccer foot skills training sessions for kids in our community on Mondays from 5-6pm (U9) and 6-7 (U8 and younger). We have since relocated our training to the gym at Heritage Elementary School in Medina from 5-6:30pm on Mondays. The sessions were led by Ohio Fusion coaches.

We are getting ready for our Annual Jack Hutton Memorial Chili Cook-off on Saturday March 22nd at 5pm. Bring your best pot of chili! Come hungry and prepared to vote. Prizes will be awarded! We'll have Basketball on the tube.

Sunday School Reboot

In January Philip Decker helped to lead our teachers to kick-off our “Generations of Grace“ curriculum for our Sunday School and Children’s Church Classes. With this change, we've simplified our curriculum for our kids' program on Sundays. We were previously using two different sets of curriculum. Now, our Sunday School and Children's Church classes are spreading the teaching, projects, and activities over the span of the entire Sunday morning so that kids that go to both classes will receive a simplified,. unified, coherent teaching that they can apply to their lives throughout the week. 

Our Middle & High School students are continuing in their study of “Systematic Theology”. We are over 600 pages into our study. Only about 600 pages to go!

Advent Season and Christmas 2013

As a church this year we encouraged each other to work through John Piper's daily devotional "Good News of Great Joy"

You can download this free Advent daily devotional for Christmas 2013 written by John Piper and provided by the people at Desiring God from here:

http://www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/books/good-news-of-great-joy

The ladies of New Life celebrated a trip “Around the World” at their annual Women's Christmas Celebration. It happened Saturday December 7^thfrom 3-6pm at Brenda Bolenski’s home.

Our Community Groups held a combined Christmas Party on Wednesday December 18th from 6:30-8:30pm.

Our family and friends celebrated Christmas Eve at 7pm during our annual Christmas Eve Candlelight Service.