The Garden

The Garden serves as a homeless shelter 7 nights a week for 50 women and their children to receive healthy meals, a warm bed but most of all, the Love of the Father.  Daily transportation is provided to The Atlanta Day Shelter for Women and Children in downtown Atlanta to help with job counseling, computer training, childcare, etc.  At The Garden they pour out the love of Jesus on these beautiful women as the Lord ministers to their hearts. A service or Bible study is offered nightly in the Sanctuary for the women and children. It is always open to the public and they welcome volunteers to help drive, cook, serve meals and teach. The Garden is totally funded by GOD! and his Children.

The Garden operates under the guidance of Pastor 7 and 7 Bridges to Recovery.

The opportunities for you to serve at The Garden are as BIG and as many as the dreams you can dream.  Contact me and let’s talk about your NEXT step toward serving at The Garden.  If it’s your Cluster Group, your family, or you as an individual.

Are you ready to serve at The Garden?

Cheryl Kniffen’s mission to Haiti

Dear Vine Family,

I would like to make everyone aware of an organization that I am involved with that does mission work in Haiti.  Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and the poverty there is heart-breaking.  The name of the organization is Eternal Hope in Haiti, Inc.  and the website is www.eternalhopeinhaiti.org.  The group was founded by Dr. Twilla Haynes, who lives in Hoschton, who first went to Haiti  26 years ago to teach a clinical to Emory nursing students on public health.   To use her words, after going there and seeing the poverty, she had no choice but to go back.  First the group only provided medical missions, traveling there quarterly to provide clinics in and around Cap Haitian (the second largest city in Haiti).  When three hospitalized orphans needed the medicine the group had for malaria, the hospital could not take the medicine, but could allow the group to care for the children if an orphanage was established.  That event led to the opening of Hope Haven orphange, which has grown to an orphanage that cares for 48 children today.  Many of the children come from the medical clinics and are medically fragile in some way (most come to the group near death from starvation) others are street children who either have no family or their family has abandoned them.

In His Service,

Cheryl Kniffen

dckniffen@gmail.com

770-307-2714

Outreach Methodology . . .

Methodology: for our purpose, we will use the Sebren’s Dictionary version over Webster’s Dictionary – just because Sebren’s Dictionary will be much easier to understand (at least for me.)

meth*od*ol*o*gy  [meth-uh-dol-uh-jee] – the way and the why things are done to accomplish the ultimate goal.

The Methodology for Outreach Ministry at The Vine comes through the statement Making Disciples Making Disciples.  It will seldom be accomplished through events, but will usually happen when we as believers individually use our unique passions, skills and gifts to Love God and Love others.  The desire of The Vine is not to tell you what you are passionate about or where you should be serving the Lord.  You have the Holy Spirit in you, the same power which raised Jesus from the dead.  What is he leading you to do?  What are you passionate about?  What dreams do you dream for the Glory of God?

My role at The Vine is to facilitate and equip members and regular attendees to Love God through Loving others.  When you are ready to take your NEXT step from your seat, and “get off your donkey,” let’s get together to talk about your passions, skills and gifts.  What has God uniquely gifted you to do for His glory as He works through you?  Don’t know what He is calling you to do, just know something is stirring inside of you and you can’t get away from it?  Great!  Let’s get together and begin to walk through the process together.  I am passionate about helping people connect to their NEXT step in ministry and would love the opportunity to walk this out with you.

Will we do events on an organizational level?  Yes, but they will NOT be the norm.  They will have very specific purposes in reaching the community and will be an opportunity to help people who have little passion for outreach to have a better opportunity to see it up close.  The Outreach Methodology is this: Each member / regular attendee is to seek the place God is calling them, and use their unique passion, skills and gifts.  Making Disciples, Making Disciples.

How is God calling you to serve?

July 4th Follow-up . . .

July 4th was a great day of connecting with our neighbors and people who were visiting our community for the holiday weekend.  We had 36 adults, 8 kidzu children, and 2 infants serve God through serving others on this day.  Through setting up as the ONLY free booth in the park, we were a big hit and a draw of great attention.  Not only were we doing a 30′ blowup obstacle course and popcorn for free, but we were registering people for a $250 gas card.  We registered 110 different families and of those, 46 indicated they would like to be added to our mailing list.  This was a great day full of fellowship with believers from The Vine, other churches, and people from the community who are not connected to “the church”.

We are following up with a letter to all who registered for the $250 gas card.  Once we have informed them of the winner, we will honor our commitment and only continue contact with those who asked to be added to our mailing list.  Below you can read the follow up letter being sent to those who registered.

“Thank you for taking the time to stop by our booth and register for the $250 Gas Card.  The winner is Linda Musgrove!

It was an honor to serve the community through our booth in the Braselton City Park.  Thank you for giving us the chance to serve you.  If you would like to know more about The Vine you can connect to us further at http://www.connecttothevine.org.

Please let us know if there is anything we can do for you.

Jason Sebren

Outreach Pastor”