Castle Rock Community Church

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We need you!
Calling all teams! We are seeking those with a heart for God and a heart for people to join us here as we seek to transform the people on Central City New Orleans! We are now accepting teams for the rest of 2010 and Spring 2011. If you love kids, education, prayer walks, relationship building, small construction projects, tutoring and want to combine that with training regarding poverty, youth evangelism, reconciliation and more, then this is the opportunity you've been looking for!
Check out the Mission:NOLA link to the left for more information and to download our application packet. We look forward to seeing you here very soon!

Prayer for new building meeting
Please join us in prayer TODAY (Sept. 8) as Pastor John meets with the church leadership for St. Monica's as well as the financial council about a deal to acquire the property. It's been one hurdle after another, but God has provided all along the way. Please pray that he would continue to open doors and show the way as we seek to follow him and continue to share the gospel in Central City New Orleans.

Summer comes to a close
It's hard to believe that we are already well into August and our summer programs have come to a close. This was such an amazing summer. We had 11 interns who worked tirelessly to assure that our visiting high school missionaries learned as much as possible and that the kids in our neighborhood heard about and saw the love of Jesus lived out daily.

Our interns rewarded the kids who were excelling daily at VBS through certificates and placing their name on the "good job, good job" tree, which corresponds with a cheer we use often.
As always, we are so thankful to all the youth pastors, youth leaders and high school students who came down and helped make this summer great. The kids here love you and the enthusiasm you bring. Keep an eye out for our upcoming newsletter and more about what God was doing in Central City New Orleans this summer!

This past week we took 7 students and 6 adults to Challenge in Columbus, OH. Challenge is the national youth conference for the EFCA. Our students had a much different role this year as they helped coordinate ministry teams that went out into the city. This meant earlier mornings and fuller days, but even when they were tired, they maintained great attitudes and were an example to others.

Our students also helped run Challenge Circle for a Boys and Girls Club each afternoon. Even those few students who had never been part of Challenge Circle before dug right in and got involved with hyping up the kids.
We heard great messages each day from several godly men who spoke through the beatitudes from Matthew 5. Each speaker made the verses very real for the students and explained it in a way that made it applicable for today. Thank you so much to all who have been prayer and financial partners for this summer. Your contribution has made lasting effects on the Kingdom. We are thankful for you and proud of our kids for being such great examples this past week.

Keep an eye out for our upcoming newsletter where we'll share more from our students and what really spoke to them this week. Also, we are so very excited to announce that Challenge 2012 will be right here in New Orleans! Please join us in prayer for all that God will do and for all the preparation that has already begun to take place!

The kids are working hard to memorize their verses and many can still remember the verse from the first week. They are enjoying learning about the fruits of the Spirit and our interns have been very creative in the ways they help the kids remember what they're learning.
We are also preparing to send 7 high school students and 6 adults to Challenge, the EFCA national youth conference, in Columbus, Ohio. This year's theme is Undo and we pray that God will undo our students for Him during that time. The group will leave early Sunday morning and return July 3. Please pray for safe travels, meaningful time with God and as a group and changed lives.

VBS off to a great start
Our first of seven weeks of VBS has gotten off to a great start! We've averaged about 50 kids each day and they are already hard at work memorizing their verse of the week and learning the fruits of the Spirit.

This week has been different than most in summers past as we don't have any teams here, so our interns have been running VBS and Challenge Circle on their own. With 5 returning interns and 6 new ones, they have done an amazing job of bonding with each other and taking care of things this week. VBS has run very smoothly and they've done a great job of working through any problems that arise.
We are so excited for the rest of the summer and pray that God will continue to move and build his Kingdom here in New Orleans.

Saturday night we had our second hip hop service, and this time it was standing room only. Several performances by 3D (a trio of young men from our neighborhood), a drama presentation and a message all shared the gospel in various ways throughout the evening. The service drew a wide mix of people and even young people from another ministry in town were present.
Our second attempt brought some changes, including new lighting and additional participation from church members as well as a larger crowd and door prizes. With each service we learn a little bit more about what works and what will have the greatest impact for the Kingdom. Another service is already in the works for August and we'd ask you to pray for all those who heard the message Saturday and that God would be preparing hearts now for the next service.

VBS starts next week
We are excited to have 11 interns here for the summer! We've got a great mix of personalities and talents as well as several who are coming back for a second or third year. They are in training this week and are hard at work preparing for our first week of vacation Bible school which starts next Monday.
We are very excited to get the summer rolling and seeing kids again that we may not have seen for a few months. Summer always gives us a great opportunity to reach out the the youth of our neighborhood in ways that we don't always have during the rest of the year. It also gives us a chance to meet some of those kids' families and start to build relationships with them.
We look forward to continuing to share with you all that God does here this summer. Thank you to everyone who has been a financial partner or who will be bringing teams down. Your work for the Kingdom cannot be measured!
We need your help!
We currently have 47 youth sponsored for the summer but we still have 228 to go! Each summer we offer seven weeks of vacation Bible school for kids in the neighborhood. We take 52 students to KAA (Kids Across America) camp where they hear the gospel on a daily basis and this year we'll be taking 11 students to the Challenge 2010 conference.
Each of these activities gives us an opportunity to help students grow in their faith, receive Christ or hear the gospel for the very first time. These things also give our youth a safe place away from the violence, drug use and hopelessness that they come into contact with on a regular, sometimes daily, basis.
If you'd like to sponsor a young person this summer, a full scholarship is $350, half is $175 and a quarter scholarship is $87.50. You can donate online by clicking the "donate now" button to the left. You can also send a check to the address at the left and put "KAA" in the memo line so we know how to designate your gift.
We believe that God has big plans for our youth this summer and we'd love to have you be a part of it. Thank you in advance for your part to reach the young people of Central City!

Want to be part of National Project but don't have a team? No problem!
Summer High School Missionaries needed: We are in need of 300 more high school missionaries to come help run our summer 2010 programs.
We have modified our requirements to allow individual students the ability to come serve by themselves without their youth Pastor or a youth sponsor. We have opened the week of June 12th-19th for this purpose.
Students who come on their own will experience great training on evangelism, cross-cultural ministry and have ample opportunity to put this training into practice. While in New Orleans, the students will be supervised by Urban Impact staff at all times including over-night.
Please take a moment to pray that more students would come for the summer to ensure we can provide vacation Bible school and Challenge Circle for our childre.
For more information please call Joan Hathaway at 504-523-5556 or email at joanh@urbanimpact.org. Let her know you are interested coming as an individual student. If you are interested in bringing your whole youth group we have openings for that as well.
We need you for National Project
Do you work with high school students? Have you ever wanted a way to present issues like poverty, reconciliation and service in a practical way? Well, have we got a deal for you!
We still have plenty of space available for National Project and we are actively seeking teams of high school students who are interested in coming down to serve for a week with us. We, or more accurately, our high school teams and interns run vacation Bible school, teach Bible lessons, run Challenge Circle and receive training on all of the above issues plus several more.
We know several youth groups will be attening Challenge this summer (we will too) so that has created many extra openings for teams here in New Orleans. So, if you aren't going to Challenge, check out our National Project info here. If you are going to Challenge and know a church that isn't but might be interested in sending teams south, let us know!
We pray God will richly bless the kids of this neighborhood this summer as we work with you to spread the gospel and the love of Jesus all summer long.
Blight Busters part 2
We are so excited about all of the opportunites we had to reach out to our neighborhood these past two weeks as part of our Blight Busters initiative. God allowed us to meet neighbors we might not have met through other means and allowed all of our staff to spend significant time out of the office and in the community serving.
Many people from the neighborhood stopped by to say hello and thank you for what was being done and one man has even decided to take it into his own hands to keep his corner clean. Another gentleman stopped one of our staff members to inquire about how all of these people could be so happy and singing and praising God when they had so much work to do cleaning up the neighborhood. She was able to explain to him that it was all about the love of Jesus and while he said he didn't understand that, she was still able to share some hope with him.
It's encounters like these that make cutting grass and sweating in the sun worth every ounce of energy. It's a chance to change lives through simple service that leads to questions which lead to an opportunity to share the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. A big thank you to all of the teams that served alongside us. Please know we are grateful and you have helped to change lives.
For more about Blight Busters, check out this video from ABC 26, a news station here in New Orleans.

Last week we launched an all-out clean up effort in a concentrated area of our neighborhood. Called the "Hoffman Triangle," the area we are cleaning spans more than 35 blocks and is a portion of our target neighborhood. Last week we had volunteers from across the nation, as well as local volunteers, throughout the entire area.
The goal is to clean as many vacant and overgrown lots as possible in an effort to renew a sense of pride in the neighborhood as well as getting rid of some of the hiding places for drug activity.
"We are not comfortable being a community that has one of the highest crime rates in the Greater New Orleans area," said Pastor John. "We are working to remove all obstacles, including blight, that hold our neighborhood back from being a shining example of a new New Orleans."
The neighborhood clean up continues this week with another hundred volunteers. Please pray with us that this effort will glorify God, be a light to our neighbors and open the door for fruitful conversations.

Prayer for building tour
This Thursday our staff will be able to walk through the property of St. Monica's church. This is the building that we are considering for purchase instead of building an entirely new facility. This tour has been a long-time work in progress and God has been good to give us this opportunity. Please join us in prayer for wisdom, direction and vision for the future as it regards to our building project and how we move forward.