Update

Sorry for leaving you all hanging on this blog! I update my personal one almost daily, and probably should delete this one, since I write about the same things on both of them.

Our grand total for our ReThinking Christmas offering was over $29,000.00!! How awesome! The largest gift was $3000.00. So we know that everyone sacrificed, and the kids brought in $1000.00 alone!

We were able to build 3 wells in Ethiopia and help out a local mission in downtown Milwaukee. Last we took up an impromptu offering for the people of Haiti and our people gave over $3000.00. I am sure this week it will be more since now they have had time to prepare for it. I love that The Ridge doesn't just talk about helping people, we actually do it. That's our mission-to help people find and follow God.

In other news...I am sure most of you know, but Eric and I had a miscarriage last week. We are still grieving the loss of our baby, but I think we are doing pretty well. Molly has been awesome, and she has helped us heal, a lot. Bless her heart, she doesn't realize how much good she does for Eric and I.

I am settling into my new position as the Director of Children and Families at The Ridge. Our other children's minister resigned last week. She left on great terms, she just is going through a lot of personal transitions right now like getting married, becoming a step-mom, and a lot of other stuff. She will still be helping out and attending The Ridge, but what this all means for me is that I am in charge!! I am now responsible for birth-fifth grade. I am excited and God has really blessed me with people stepping up and helping out.

Our move to the high school is happening in almost a month! We are getting down to the wire with ordering everything, training everyone, etc. But it is exciting and I am super pumped to see what God does in 2010 at The Ridge!

BIG Announcement

Today at The Ridge, Mark made a BIG announcement...

**The Ridge is moving...into a local high school! This is huge for us! Meeting at the school allows us to double our size, maybe triple. It is going to be awesome! Stressful, hard, frustrating-yes, but worth it in the end to reach out to our community to help people find and follow God, a BIG yes!

Our other announcement at church today was that we have hired a student minister! I am not sure who is more excited about this, the students or Eric! Eric has been trying to do student ministry the past couple years, but neighborhood groups have taken off like none other, and he is teaching at least once a month, sometimes twice. So we all do our best to reach out to the kids, but we need help, and now that we have hired someone, Tyler, we can all breath a little easier!

Tyler starts the day we move into the school. What a nice warm welcome, haha, it's going to be crazy, but I think he is ready to jump in with both feet.

One last thing. The last 3 weeks of December The Ridge has been taking up an offering for our ReThinking Christmas series. Well, the grand total is not in yet, but the preliminary numbers are, and so far we have given over $27,000.00 towards building clean drinking wells, and to a local mission in downtown Milwaukee. How awesome! I will let you know the grand total once it is announced.

For those of you who don't know, I have taken a job at The Ridge as the Early Childhood Director. Tomorrow starts my official working week. I came in during December to start learning the ropes, but now I am on my own! I am really excited about this ministry, and I have a heart for kids learning about God at a young age.

Have a great week!

2009 Recap

Hey friends! Happy New Years to you and your family! We pray that 2010 brings you lots of happiness, good health, and tons of blessings that come straight from God. 2009 was a great year for us, so we thought that we would recap a little bit of it for you...

Jan-We did "One Month to Live" at The Ridge and it went over so well. People are still talking about it!

Winter/Spring-We saw record numbers of people committing to neighborhood groups.

Summer- We participated in "One Prayer" again, and loved it just as much this year, as last year! We had over 20 people get baptized at the end of it! The Ridge sent 20 people to the Dominican Republic to help build a feeding a center and they started working on building a church.

August-Kate graduated with her Masters in Clinical Christian Counseling, and in October she received her license to practice counseling.

August- Molly turned 2!

Fall/Winter- Kate started her private counseling practice called "Restoration Counseling." The Ridge is still growing, we average 515-550 on any given weekend, in Dec. we had 20 people get baptized. We did a ReThinking Christmas series and gave money to building clean drinking wells in Ethiopia, and also gave money to a mission in downtown Milwaukee. We are still waiting to hear the total on the offering, but we will let you know what it is! Kate joined the staff at The Ridge as the Early Childhood Director. She will be working in the office 3 days a week, and all day Sunday.

We are very excited for 2010! We have a couple BIG announcements to share with you all! One of them will be this coming Sunday, after church. Thank you all for your support (financially and prayerfully), constant encouragement, and love! We feel so blessed and honored to have you all on our side.

Our door is always open for visitors!

Happy New Year!

Love,
The Ferguson Family

ReThink-Worship

So I promised another post today, and now I am making good on my promise. I know I talked about our prayer series, and while I really want to write about that, I am going to write about our series we started today. Then post on the prayer series this week.

Today we started ReThink Christmas. Mark said each week we are going to take one word from the "Christmas" narrative and focus in on it. Today we talked about worship.

The idea for ReThinking worship came from Luke 2:28 "Simeon took him in his arms and praised God..." Praise defined means-bless, celebrate, worship

This old man, Simeon was promised by God that before he died he would meet the Saviour, the Messiah, the living God. When Mary and Joseph travelled to Jerusalem for the census, Simeon was there, and was able to meet Jesus.

*Worship is anything that we do, that pleases God*

3 Ways we can Worship this Christmas...
1. We worship because we feel like it-hit the pause button, look around, and give thanks, worship/thank God for your spouse, kids, friends, all of the blessings you normally take for granted.

2. We worship when we don't feel like it-We don't feel like worshiping when we just lost our job, a loved one, when we are going through a divorce, but worship is a choice, say it again...Worship is a choice, Psalm 71:23-we are told to choose worship. When you choose to worship God, even in all of the bad times, He will show up in ways you least expected.

3. We see that worship is a lifestyle- Isaiah 29:13, Mark talked about not separating your Sunday life from the rest of your life. Make sure what you do on Sunday carries over to Monday thru Saturday, too.

Everything we do, we need to be worshipful

"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you." Romans 12:1,2

ReThinking Christmas

Sorry I have been behind on posting! If you follow my other blog, then you would know we have been crazy busy! But I promise I will post tonight. I have some awesome notes from the last 2 weeks at church. But today we are starting a new series called ReThinking Christmas. I really have no clue what to expect, other than I am sure it will be good. Here is a promo video we have been showing for the past 2 weeks.

Click here to see it

Today to kick the Christmas season off, we are doing a baptism service. As of right now, we have 20 people getting baptized today. Hopefully there will be more when the time comes!

Keep praying friends...God is not done here in Milwaukee!

Prayer...Week 1

Today at The Ridge we started a new series entitled oh so creatively...Prayer. Despite the name, I think it's going to be great. Who doesn't need help with this topic?

We had a little different worship style at church this morning. It was all acoustic, except we did have drums. But we had 2 acoustic guitars, a viola, an upright bass, and the drums. It was cool, and laid back. A little different than our normal hard rock approach. But I think everyone enjoyed it.

Mark started the message off by asking, "What if prayer had little to do with asking God for things?" He talked about how kids pray, they make lists of things they want, and their prayers are selfish, but adults are not much different than kids in this instance. We read Psalm 27:8, and then we defined what prayer truly is...Prayer is communicating with God.

Mark then offered some communication principles we should use in our prayer life...
1.Talk to God with gut-level honesty-this means be real with God, he already knows how you feel, so tell him! Still be reverent, submissive, obedient, and worshipful in your prayers, but be honest, be authentic with God. Don't you think he deserves it?

2. Talk to God about everything that matters to you- If it matters to you, then it matters to God, nothing is too small

3. Learn to listen for God to respond-we sometimes treat our relationship with God as a one way street, we do all the talking, and he does all the listening. What an awful relationship! Imagine being that way with your spouse, kids, friends, your relationship would stink! Mark talked about how God speaks, it could be an audible voice, it could be an impression that was made in your heart, he could speak in a gentle whisper, but some people will never hear God because they don't quiet themselves.

Lastly, Mark said, "Once you start listening to God, your life should look radically different."

Proverbs 31

Proverbs 31 from The Message

Part 1- Speak Out For Justice...
1. Verses 8/9 ""Speak up for the people who have no voice, for the rights of all the down-and-outers. Speak out for justice! Stand up for the poor and destitute!""-good advice Lemuel's Mom gave him. We should practice this today!

Part 2- Hymn To A Good Wife...
After reading this part, I am left to wonder, does this woman ever have a bad day? Good grief! This passage is something I really try to be, and some days I get it right and other days, I am a huge mess! I think that after reading this, women should want to be held to a higher standard, and we truly do make a difference in the lives of our kids and our husbands. Have you ever noticed that when you are in a good mood, your husband is in a good mood, and your kids? As women, we truly set the tone of our household, and that is a big responsibility. I am not here to guilt trip you, I am pointing the finger back at myself. I think, no, I know I need to read this passage on a daily basis to keep things in perspective, to keep on pushing toward the ultimate goal, and to remind myself that God has given me a big challenge, am I up to it?

Thanks for reading along with me in Proverbs. I learned a lot, and am glad that I was able to share this experience with you all!