“Sunday Morning Worship at Crossroads is like every other church. Our music gets loud and rocks. We dress casually (like jeans and t-shirt). Our people are nice, Jesus loving, many are ex-somethings, outcasts, and/or losers. Sermons are delivered in plain paper vocabulary, held together with strong biblical doctrine tape and one or two frilly absurd story bows on top. And we don’t take an offering. Just like every other place you could visit. But feel free to drop by if you don’t believe me.” -Pastor Matt

Missionary Project Blog

Hey everyone! Time for another update from your friendly local missionaries. Sorry for the lapse in them. Things have really been taking off for us and are heading in an exciting direction!

This past week, we've been making it a point to make sure someone new hears the gospel everyday. The idea of just approaching someone and sharing something I hold so precious was kind of intimidating at first, but we pushed through any sort of resistance on our end and really got it out there.  We walked around campus sharing with people on the street. Not as awkward as I expected, and it was really kind of cool to see people actually listening to what we had to share with them. The idea that the people we speaking to may be truly hearing the gospel for the first time is exciting. We also kind of transitioned our canvasing of neighborhoods with church invites into a more evangelistic thing.

We started knocking on doors, sharing the Gospel, and asking if prayer for anything was needed. It was a great time, and a great encouragement, seeing peoples reactions. I think I speak for me and Shane both when I say we look forward to doing that more.

We're still serving at the Settlement House, a men's shelter in Elkton, once a week. I think we're really starting to connect with some of the guys out there who we get to see every week. It's awesome to see them opening up, and being able to talk to them on a more personal level. We might even go bowling with some of the guys there this week.

 We're looking into spending some time down at the beach on the boardwalk handing out bible tracts. That's some hard work there, because from past experiences, the last thing people want to talk about at the beach is God. We could definitely use prayer for that endeavor, that hearts would be softened to us.

The ball is really rolling for us, and we aren't finding ourselves lacking in things to do, which is great! We've made some awesome connections, and they're all really helping us out. I thank everyone for all of their support in our effort. If you could keep us in prayer, that our preaching of the Gospel would be effective, and that peoples lives would be changed through our delivery of the message. That we would be bold with our speech, and have a hunger for people to come to the Lord. Thanks again, and until next time.

2nd Blog Entry

Hey everyone, time for another update on our going ons. This past week we got to partake in some cool ministries and reach out to some people!

      Wednesday we got to meet up with the campus minister, Tyler Ellis, and flesh out the survey we're gonna be giving to people on the street. We just brainstormed some questions and compiled a list of them. We're trying to ask people open ended questions that are spiritually charged. Things to get them thinking about God and where their lives are in relation to Him. We're really looking forward to it and we may even have a record of peoples answers for everyone to see.

      After we were done with Tyler, we went onto campus and met up with the "UD water guys". It's a ministry started up seven years ago by an at the time student. He was a prayer group leader and felt lead to get out on the street and hand out water during the hotter months and just share the love of God with people. We handed out around one thousand bottles of water all with labels on them to invoke spiritual thinking. We got to talk to people and ask if they needed any prayer, and even pray with people on the street which was awesome! It was cool to be able to help out with that, reach out to the people around us, and help build up other Christians all in one go. It was a great time.

      On Thursday we cooked for the Settlement House, a homeless shelter in Elkton. We made pulled pork bbq for the guys out there and they dug it. It was great to see God providing because we had made what they had given us, and it definitely didn't seem like enough food to go around. When we got there there was already a line, and it turned out that we set the months records for the number of people coming out. Fortunately our God is good and we ended up with a single extra sandwich! How awesome is that!

      Friday morning we were out in Elkton handing out tracts in the Big Elk Mall. Felt right, seeing as it was Good Friday. We spent the day fasting and praying.

      Saturday had us going out to Parkesburg, Pennsylvania. There we volunteered our time to the Egg Drop, which turned out to not be an egg drop at all. The original plan was to have twenty thousand plastic Easter Eggs fall from a helicopter onto a field, at which point the children attending would be unleashed to gather them. The rain kind of put an end to that, but we instead did it inside of a gymnasium and had an awesome turn out. It was great to see a church hard at work to reach out to the lost around them and really try to make a difference in their community. It was a blessing to be a part of that.

      Sunday was an awesome church service where we got to celebrate the day our Jesus, our Savior, author and perfector of our faith rose victourious from the tomb! Hallelujah! It was the culmination of a week of evening services going over the last week of Jesus' life before the crucifixion. I encourage anyone who hasn't taken the time to do so, to study that time. It was quite a blessing to hear about it in depth and to be built up in it.

      Continue to pray for the Haiti trip and means of raising up money for me and Shane to go. Tickets are bought so we'd like to be able to pay for them. Thanks to everyone who has given their time to pray for us, and we cannot express how valuable that is to us. Thank you all for your continued support in our endeavor and have a blessed week!

1st Blog Entry

First blog entry here from your friendly, local missionary Rich. We're  currently coming up on the end of the third week of this experiment, and God is already revealing how awesome He is. I'll just give you a quick  recap on how things have been going so far.

The first two weeks that we have had were kind of slow, but have still been exciting. God has kept good on His promise to take care of those who  seek first the kingdom of heaven and has been providing everything we  need beyond measure. He has been answering our prayers left and right  and is really pointing us in the direction He wants us to go. We had  been struggling to make contacts and to get involved with different  organizations the last two weeks. It just seems like a lot of the "easy" places to get into (prisons, nursing homes, etc.) are really over  saturated with help and the other places we want to get involved with  (colleges, local shows, roller derby, etc.) have been much more  difficult.

We'd been able to reach out to some local charities, helping out at the  settlement house (a men's homeless shelter in Elkton) and a nursing home near Rising Sun.  We were also filling out our schedule  with various bible studies, research projects, and handing out  invitations to church. While all that was cool, especially being able to bless those charities, I felt like we'd been lacking really getting  into the ministry I felt was the most important. That being reaching out to the lost and spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ. We felt like  we needed to reach out to the lost at the UD campus, and the younger  crowd in general, but we also felt like we needed a connection on  campus. After much prayer we finally had a breakthrough this week.

We attended a college run bible study on campus Tuesday night and ended up meeting the Campus Minister, a fellow named Tyler. We told him what we  were doing and had been doing and he was really excited for us. He was  willing to let us plug into the campus ministry as a sort of launch pad  for what we were doing. It was awesome to get that prayer answered, and  we will be meeting with him this Tuesday to flesh things out more. The  Lord has been blessing us every step of the way so far and I'm excited  to see where this goes!

Speaking of meeting people, we've met a lot of awesome Christians, to see how  they do things. It's just been a blessing to hear other people's  testimonies and to see them on fire for the Lord. We met a Pastor in  Camden, N.J. who does street ministry out that way and is riled up for  the Kingdom. We also met a woman who I only know as Ms. Eleanor. She was a powerful Christian woman who directs a Christian youth summer camp,  and invited us out to speak at it later this summer.

Well, this is where things stand as of now. I just want to thank everyone who has supported us so far, whether financially, through prayer, or with  delicious food. We are ever grateful for the blessing and the obedience  to God to help those who need it. Until next week!