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A beautiful Monday! A fresh start of a week! The middle of summer! All things to count as joy today! 

I’m back home after a whirlwind weekend in Oklahoma for a friend's wedding. We enjoyed getting to help their family with the wedding event as they were such a big help to our family for my sister's wedding a month ago! I got to do their wedding flowers for them, so I of course was a happy lady! This week will bring some more flower time as my flower patch is in full swing. I hope to open the road side stand this week! Creating with flowers has been such a wonderful creative outlet for me, getting to develop and create something with my hands instead of my head, has been very life-giving!

I’ve been doing some summer clean-out in my office and in the Roots Work Room spaces over the last few weeks. That always helps me start fresh as we come into a new season! This week I hope to finalize the teaching schedule for this year's Wednesday Roots Nights as well as the Roots Kids and Adults Sunday School schedule for the rest of 2026!

Please don’t forget to RSVP for the Roots Volunteer Training on Sunday, August 2nd. I always enjoy the planning and execution of this event as I get the opportunity to energize all of our amazing volunteers for another year of service! This year we’ll add to our training the Security Team, a new initiative that has been in the works since the beginning of the 2025 Building Renovation Project. You’ll hear more about the role and function of that team in the coming weeks! 

If you haven’t already, get your family and friends signed up for the Roots Family trip to Guppy Gulch, an inflatable water park in Delta, PA. ALL are welcome, not just families with kids at home! The cost is $25/person, lifejackets are provided for you. We’ll head that way immediately after the 10:30am service. 

 During our staff meetings we’ve been reading and discussing “Doing Church As A Team” by Wayne Cordeiro. The chapters we discussed today kept revisiting this quote… “I’m convinced that the influence a church has on its community will be determined in large part not by the personality of the pastor, the size of its building, or how long the ministry has worked in the community. It will be determined instead by the percentage of involvement in the ministry of each member. This marks the transition from attendance to ownership, from being consumers to contributors.”  Church family, how will you choose to take ownership and be contributors to the work and life of the Church this fall?!

 

What WE’RE Learning This Week: A nugget of what our Lil’, Youth and Adults Roots heard this week

Lil’ & Bridge Roots Psalm + Big Idea: Psalm 59: Anger is controlled when we give it to God!

Youth Roots Psalm + Big Idea: Psalm 91: Homeland Security 

How Every Generation Lives This Out: Talk as a family... Could you worship God like David did in Psalm 59?

 

What I’M Learning This Week: Sharing what I’m reading and listening to lately

I was reading in 1 Kings this week, particularly the accounts of the prophet Elijah in 1 Kings 17 and 18. Here, God is giving words to Elijah and directions to the next destinations. Time after time in these two chapters, I watch as God laid out a plan for Elijah that always included provisions for him - housing, food, purpose. The provision was always and already part of God’s plan. 

Elijah, faithfully and repeatedly, “went and did according to the word of the Lord” (1 Kings 17:5). It didn’t matter how much of what was ahead that God revealed to Elijah, in fact based on what we read here, most times it wasn’t much. It didn’t matter because Elijah KNEW the God who provides, TRUSTED him to do so and so why would he have anything else to do other than OBEY?

If we know and trust that we serve a God who always and already has provision drawn up in the plan, let’s be a people whose response is “whatever you’re asking, God, the answer is yes.”

Sermon Resource: Running on Empty: Elijah Week 1

 

Make Every Week Count: Parenting, Grandparenting & Spiritual Mentoring Resources

Something to Read: Super pumped about this resource and wish I could give it to every family! If you’re looking for a super helpful tool to guide your family discipleship, grab Wonder: 52 Conversations to Help Kids Fall in Love With Scripture!

Something to Listen to: One thing about me… I love kid’s worship music. I stumbled upon “His Name of Jesus” recently and with one listen it’s been in my head for days. Its simple and beautiful reminder of Psalm 23. I hope it gets stuck in your head today, too!

Something to Follow: A great learning resource for the individual disciple, or a group of disciples, check out this newer study on RightNow Media - Passion Equip - Essential Theology

 

How Can You Pray? Prayer Requests and Praises from Roots Ministries

PRAY for energy and Spirit-led inspiration for our Adult Sunday School elective teachers as they begin the second half of our summer session!

PRAISE for wonderful reports from each of the Church Board Commissions at last week’s board meeting. May God’s blessing be over this body!