The Latest

As of Sunday February 20th, we have sent emails to twenty families living in the Palouse area inviting them to our vision casting meeting.  We have just booked the 1912 building in Moscow for the site of our meeting, which is March 7th.  This meeting will be for those people we have relationships with and will be the first of our vision castings opportunities.  Please be in prayer for this time and we will keep you up to date as we know more!

What does fully funded mean?

Many of you have been asking what does fully funded mean.  Well in our case, it means that for the first year, Barry's salary as a senior pastor of a church plant is covered, minus any benefits, by our denomination. Next year, the denominational giving goes down significantly as they front load the funding.  Their term is, "make a church planter hungry but not starving."  We are blessed to have this assistance from our denomination! 

The EMC believes in supporting people not "stuff".  This means that we have no funds to put towards starting the church.  We believe that God is going to provide all of our needs.  We wake up everyday in great expectation of how God is going to provide!  We have NO idea how we are going to find the funds to get off the ground but it's God's church and He will make it happen.  Maybe he will use you?  We have no idea!

What we need...

Many people have been asking us what we need to get off the ground once we get to Moscow and start meeting with our launch team.  We have quite a few financial needs in order to launch.  We have zero money to start so whether you are a part of the Crossroads body in Nampa, a friend or family member of Barry and Anna or are Moscow folk who want to know our needs, we thought we would make a list to see if you can help in any way.

**** Before we go any further, we would like to preface these needs by saying, if you are not a part of a local body and want to give to Intersect, we are thankful and receive your gifts with joy and thanksgiving.  If you do belong to a local church body, please keep tithing what God has called you to in your local body!  If after you have tithed to your church and want to make a love or a faith gift to Intersect, we receive your gifts with great appreciation.  May God supply all our needs according to His riches and glory.


Needs to get off the ground:
Funds needed for:
Non-profit business license
Website hosting for Intersect website
Website design for Intersect website
Intersect logo design
CCLI license
Media Computer
Media Shout
Video Projection Unit
Projection screen
Bibles (To give to those who don't have one)
Sound System (sound board, speakers, monitors, amps, cords, microphone, etc.)
Copy machine/Printer
Advertising
Trailer to store and transport equipment

We are sure that we are missing stuff but here is a list of what we know that we need right now.  If you would like to give a tax deductible gift towards these items or if you would like to sponsor an item, please let us know and we will let you know how you can give.

why intersect

Who are you? What are you doing here?  Stop and think about that question...

Have you ever heard the saying, "with God their is no coincidences"?  We believe this to be true.  When we look back at ancient times, we see that God had strategic purpose in locating the people of Israel geographically right in an intersection of influence.  Two major trade routes from Rome, Egypt and Asia all intersected in the land of Israel.  God didn't put the children of Israel on a remote island, He placed them at major intersections where they could influence the world. 

God's desire for His kids to influence the world still remains.  When we join God's family and take His name, He places us in different intersections to influence those who haven't joined the fam.  When we know who we are and recognize why God has put us where He has - we can hopefully answer the questions above, who are you and what are you doing here.

Our desire at Intersect is to give people opportunities where their lives intersect Jesus.  As Jesus transforms our lives, He sends us out to have our lives intersect others.  These are our major intersections where God has called us to be:

Intersection of our brokenness and our identity in Christ

It is hard to trust people who don’t walk with a limp.  A lot of “Christians” walk around like they got it all together.  This is scary!  We are all broken in some way because we are born into a broken world. Whether it is physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual, we are all far from perfect.  When our brokenness intersects Jesus, He doesn’t take away our limp.  In fact, He uses our brokenness to qualify us to be used by Him.  Our condition of brokenness doesn’t change but our identity changes.  We no longer live in the identity of the world but we live as a child of God. 

Intersection of people and grace

Grace is to be treated not as we deserve but to be treated with unconditional love, kindness, mercy and favor.  If God treated us as we deserve, our future would look pretty grim.  Thankfully this is not the case; in fact it’s the opposite.  God loves us and continually goes overboard to show it.  Isn’t it pretty awesome that God’s evaluation of us is based on our heart and not on the way we dress, on our political leaning, or on how much, (or little) we got our crap together.  We are pretty fortunate!  God’s desire for us is that we would see others through the lens of His grace. 

Intersection of honesty and safety

Honesty is one of the most important parts to a healthy relationship, however as we all well know, being honest (even with our spouse) can be challenging because of the chance we might be rejected. It says something about God that He knows all about our “stuff” and He still accepts and loves us. In the same way living authentically with each other is critical to ensuring that Intersect is a safe place.  If God is a place where we can find refuge, then we need to be a people where others can come and be in safe hands.

Intersection of our best and peoples needs

 God doesn’t need me!  Really?   The statement is true in the sense that God is all-powerful but He usually chooses to use people to accomplish His purposes.  When we were in desperate need, God choose to give us His best (Jesus) to be our solution.  We live in a needy world. God’s design was that He would use us to meet those needs.  We are called to go the extra mile, to give from the best of what we have, and love out of our abundance.  Our desire is to not only intersect the community locally but to serve the world globally.  Just as God gave us His best, our desire is to meet people’s needs out of our best.

Intersection of truth and love

God is a God of Truth.  Jesus came to confirm the truth. We are to worship in the Spirit of Truth… We believe in God’s Truth!  However, approach is everything.  We want to live out God’s truth not shove it in the face of others.  Not everyone will agree with God’s Truth and it is not our job to convince them of it. Our job is to demonstrate God’s love and to allow His Spirit to draw people to Himself.

Intersection of simplicity and excellence

The question is, would you rather be an inch deep and a mile wide or an inch wide and a mile deep?  Intersect chooses the latter.  Our desire is to be a community who keep it simple and give it our best in the things God calls us to do. 

our values

 

Prayer- PRIORITY ONE – plain and simple.  Nothing happens with out it.

Fun- We believe in enjoying life together, laughing with one another and embracing God’s sense of humor.

The Power of Story- God loves story! We are all part of it.  The more we learn about it, the more we want to cheer it on!

Serving – To truly be a disciple of Jesus, you have to be his servant.

Community- We want to become a significance and active part of our local community.

Family - Promoting growth of healthy families.  (nuclear, blended, single parent, divorced, adopted, foster, children living with grandparents, and even those who bring neighbor kids to church are all connected by being part of Gods family.)

Mentoring- Developing leaders by being intentional about finding Pauls and Timothys.

Experimenting- We are not afraid to do things differently. We want to be one avenue where God can do a new work or a new thing in and through us.

Innovation-We will not become trapped in doing church the same old way.

Practical Truth- We want to act out our faith for the world to taste and see.

Giving- We believe that as God has freely given to us that we will joyfully give of ourselves to God and to others. Time, talents, resources.

vision statement

 To be a gathering of merciful people who embraces a diverse community of people from different cultures, backgrounds, ages, and spiritual journeys with radical acceptance in the body of Christ for the purpose of infiltrating our community with the love of God .

We dream of launching a fun, out of the box, glocally (globally/locally)focused community that singularly focuses on loving people.  The avenues of accomplishing this call would start by recognizing that we were created with the purposes of loving God and by doing so, radically loving and serving people.  Our love will define us!  The love that we have for one another will produce a rich soil, ready for growing our community together.  A safe place of honesty and Truth will cultivate an atmosphere where God can purify us as He transforms us to be more like Him – producing a great harvest.