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• A Beautiful Mountain Setting
• Rest and Recreation
• Dynamic Speakers Including Ed Stetzer and Jon Randles
• Inspiring Worship and Testimonies
• Connecting Points for Specific Ministry Interests

As Haiti begins the long process of clean up, recovering and healing Southern Baptist Disaster Relief is actively in the process of relief efforts in Haiti and at home. While chaplains and Assessment teams are impacting hundreds of families where they live, stateside Southern Baptists are actively taking part in the national Buckets of Hope campaign. Here in Colorado many of our associations and local churches have stepped up to champion this relief effort through their own congregations and in their communities.

A number of churches from Mesa Verde, grand Valley to the Front Range have challenged their congregations for 100 percent participation...and are seeing the fruit of that. Read more

Theme: Live With Urgency: Share God’s Transforming Power

Scripture: Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is God's power for salvation to everyone who believes, first to the Jew, and also to the Greek (Holman Christian Standard Bible).

Purpose: Read more

• To nurture in Southern Baptists an awareness of and sensitivity to the many people groups and personalities represented in North America, and the urgent need for all to be transformed by God’s power from sinful man to redeemed believer.
• To inspire and challenge Southern Baptists to sow down the gospel throughout North America.
• To encourage Christians to be active in sharing the gospel with their families, friends, and neighbors.
• To increase awareness of and participation in praying for and giving to North American missions efforts through the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering®.

Just as unique as the snowflakes falling, over 500 Colorado girls, from 5th - 12th grade, moms, leaders and volunteers attended Define Weekend, February 19-20 at Riverside Baptist Church, Denver.  

Friday evening, after praise and worship time, author, speaker and founder of Redeemed Girl Ministries, Marian Jordan, set the tone for the weekend with this statement: The only one who has the right to define you is the one who created you. She showed the girls how they are a precious treasure like a china cup rather than a cheap Styrofoam coffee cup.  From her personal testimony, Marian shared her struggles as she sought to deal with the labels she acquired as a child and the results of the damaging life choices she made trying to fill the void caused by those labels. She encouraged the girls that labels do not define us and that God can redeem us regardless of our choices. During the closing commitment service girls filled the altar area as they sought out an encourager for prayer and took the opportunity to write with a black marker on black silhouettes their requests to God for the weekend, so what was written was known only to them and God. 

Later Friday night, Ayiesha Woods, Christian artist and Dove award nominee, rocked the house with her soulful mix of music and connected with the girls as she encouraged them that they are “gems to God.”

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HAITI UPDATE- 2-11-2010

Southern Baptist Disaster Relief is on the ground and functioning in Haiti!  SBCDR has established an Incident Command, has numerous medical teams operating across the affected area and has started doing assessments of homes and chaplaincy work with those families.  The conditions are still very harsh but SBCDR is beginning to help the Haitians look to their future, physically and spiritually.

Back home, Colorado Baptists are doing their part to assist in the recovery efforts as well:

From Colorado, Dolores Southern Baptist Church wrote the Baptist Global Response office to say they showed slides of the devastation in Haiti and took up an offering of $1,000 for Haiti relief. As the church treasurer, Colleen Smith, was organizing the money, a 9-year-old boy ran up to her and said, "Wait until I go to the van. I want to help." Read more

Friends, Many individuals across Colorado are asking if there is something they can do personally (beyond giving financially) to help the victims of the Haitian earthquake. The North American Mission Board (NAMB) has designed a way that every Southern Baptist can get involved! Colorado Baptist Disaster Relief (CBDR) working with NAMB is giving opportunity for all Colorado Baptists: youth, children as well as adults to get involved and help! Read more

What unites us as Colorado Baptists? What common bond do we share that will help us truly impact this state by penetrating lostness?  Is it the Cooperative Program? Is it the Baptist Faith and Message? Is it sharing particular affinities such as being a product of a “mountain/western” culture? Is it geographical proximity? Is it style of worship? Is it our methodology and ecclesiology? What truly unites us as Colorado Baptists?

While I am a strong proponent of the Cooperative Program and believe it to be the most effective means of fulfilling the Great Commission through shared resources, and I subscribe wholeheartedly to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000, and appreciate the diversity of our many worship styles, methodological and ecclesiological expressions of church, I believe there is something more deeply fundamental that unites us. It is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

I am afraid that we are living in an evangelical culture where the gospel is being assumed and whenever this happens, the next generation almost always suffers a drift into liberalism, pragmatism, and a down-grade on the most important message we are called to share. In 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, Paul reminds us that the gospel is of first importance. He writes, “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you- unless you believed in vain.  For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,  that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.”

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Many of you have asked, “What are Colorado Baptists doing in response to the tragedy in Haiti?”  Colorado Baptist Disaster Relief is working with our national and international partners in planning response in the near future you can check for those updates here.

But we as Colorado Baptists do have at least one of our own on the ground in Haiti.  Aaron Dramann, the son of Larry Dramann, Pastor of East Boulder Baptist Church is working with the International Mission Board-FUSION team.  The FUSION program blends rigorous personal and spiritual disciplines with challenging opportunities for ministry leadership and practice.

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Thank you all for your continued prayer and your sacrificial gifts to this effort.  There have been a number of Colorado Baptist churches that I am aware of that have given to the relief efforts in Haiti and I am sure many more that I am not.  Below you will find the most current information regarding SBDR response to Haiti, with commentary in italics.

1. Southern Baptist (SB) Disaster Relief Operation

• SB assessment team to return to Florida for debriefing on Tuesday.
• SB Disaster Relief network to enter the strategy development phase.
• SB Disaster Relief volunteers are not first responders (i.e. military, fire fighter, police officers, rescue & recovery teams).  While some of our volunteers may actually be first responders by trade/career, we are not a first response organization…we are a relief organization.  We will continue to support first responders but the bulk of OUR response will be over the long term.  It has been said, “When the cameras go home, we come in.”

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What is PowerPlant?

PowerPlant is a ministry of the North American Mission Board designed to engage students in church planting and evangelism. The first PowerPlant project was in 2003, and it has been growing since then. PowerPlant participants will learn church planting principles and evangelism skills each morning, then have a chance to engage personally through assigned ministry team activities in the afternoon and evening. Students and adults will begin to see that the church is not about buildings . . . it's about people! And there are lots of people in North America who need Christ!

Denver Church Plants and Planters Needed...contact Christy McDonie at cmcdonie@cbgc.org for more information.  Read more

One of the blessings of working at the Colorado Baptists’ convention office is getting to see the reports coming in from across the state that tell what God is doing through Christians dedicated to Him in sharing the Gospel of Christ in a variety of ministries. Colorado is made up of many cultures and it takes a lot of prayer and stepping out in faith to share Christ and meet needs in these diverse people groups. These ministries encompass Christian Challenge ministries to students on Colorado’s university and college campuses, food and clothing ministries, house churches and small group studies, new church plants and churches that have been around a while. Read more

Be Still and know that I am God. Psalms 46:10

In the last edition of the Rocky Mountain Baptist I wrote about the insidious threat of internet pornography that is trapping some of our believers. I urged our men to flee evil. With this edition I’d like to suggest that there is another ministry killer out there that is more subtle than the computer. This “killer” doesn’t just threaten our ministers but it threatens all believers; both men and women. It’s called burnout or perhaps spiritual fatigue. Read more

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1. Pray! Mobilize your church to pray for all lost people in your community and your church’s efforts to reach them. Determine your territory.
2. Determine which homes your church will touch through prayer and the Find It Here Gospel distribution. Check with your association to identify other participating churches so as not to overlap efforts.
3. Order Across North America materials. The first item you’ll need is the Pastor/Church Preparation Guide. You can download this for free at www.gps2020.net or order a copy for a small fee by calling (866) 407-6262, (866) 407-6262. You’ll also need to order plastic bags and Find It Here Gospel drop-in pieces from your association or state convention at cmdonie@coloradobaptists.org —or find contact information at www.gps2020.net. Be sure to order enough for each home in your territory. You can also order church promotional items such as stand-up banners, outdoor banners, postcard invitations, bulletin inserts and many other items from Outreach, Inc at www.Outreach.com: search “Find it Here.”
   

Much has been written and spoken about God's Plan for Sharing (G.P.S.) in recent months. By now you are aware that G.P.S. is not a program, but an emphasis or initiative by the S.B.C. to simply say, "we need to get back to making the main thing (sharing Christ with everyone), the main thing!" This initiative comes as our beloved convention is experiencing years of a lack of growth in this key statistic representing souls being "born again" into God's Kingdom! A recent survey by Parade of spirituality in America revealed that although 69% of those surveyed said they believed in God, 59% said that all religions were valid and 50% said they seldom attend religious services. Read more

Recently, I was invited to speak at a women’s ministry meeting at Arapahoe Road Baptist Church. The theme for our meeting was: “Sowing and Reaping in northeastern Colorado”. As I was preparing for my missions presentation, the Lord led me to John 4:34-37: “My food, said Jesus, is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Do you not say, ‘Four months more and then the harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests the crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Read more

Pastor Throws Frozen Turkey Through Church Wall
(Just another fun Sunday at New Life Greeley)

Sunday evening, Pastor Ken Mowery, threw a 10 pound frozen turkey through the wall of the sanctuary at New Life Community Church in Greeley, Colorado. Actually, “the bird” only flew part of the way through the wall according to Mowery.

Mowery, who has pastored the church since its beginning in 1999 stated, “There was no ill will toward the turkey or anyone else. I was simply demonstrating to church members the proper way to bowl with a frozen turkey.” Read more

A Colorado Springs church is joining forces with an international organization to bring attention to the problem of child sex trafficking.  The partnership was announced Sunday at the City Auditorium. 

"These children are being sold and they're being beaten, and they're being raped and they're locked in rooms for years without seeing the light of the sun," said Clayton Ross, Pastor of Grass Roots Church. 
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Of all the liability issues that are facing the church in recent years this topic has become important for a number of reasons. First, in recent years sexual misconduct claims have been one of the most common forms of litigation involving churches and second, many of the largest settlements from these litigations involving churches are associated with this type of claim. What should the church, the associations, and the state convention be doing to safeguard ourselves from this present danger? We need to be informed as leaders and then we need to take the appropriate steps to reduce this risk to our ministries. Here are some important steps that we need to take! Read more