Sept 16-18

This week I, Kristi, completed a year a graduate studies with North Park to earn my Certification in Marketing Management. In that program I took classes in digital marketing that helped me work on improving the church's online presence. I took a class on branding and completed my final project on Crosstown. I am thankful to Crosstown for helping me to pay for these classes through a continuing education option. This month I also passed my three-year anniversary of employment at Crosstown.

Stating Monday, Sept 19th Crosstown will look a little more like a school. Thirty students from a local homeschool co-op will be utilizing the building for classes Mondays and Thursdays from 10:00-1:00. They are thrilled with the space and are looking forward to being able to do some more hands-on curriculum like cooking classes. The group is offering some financial support to the church and is also excited to perform service for our congregation.

So far over 250 rolls of TP have been donated!

Guests to the food shelf often bring their own bags, but it is very helpful to have extra paper bags on hand. If you have paper bags we would be happy to see them reused.

This week's food distribution had some special items. Trinity Lutheran of Minnehaha Falls helped students prepare for school with backpacks and supplies. And the Lake Nokomis Library brought over two boxes of free Spanish books.

We are blasting off this year by learning 4 spiritual habits...Say what, now? That's right! Spiritual Habits are ways we can grow with Jesus. An exercise to grow our FAITH MUSCLE! Parents can join at home, too. Kids Too! invites kids ages 4 years through 5th grade for an evening of Bible adventure, games, music and small groups. Questions contact Polly polly@crosstowncovenant.org

The Youth Commission is hard at work preparing for the 2022-23 ministry year and we are excited to welcome our students back on Wednesday nights beginning on September 21. This fall we will continue our Wednesday night programming of games, speakers, and small groups. Our speaker series will include our leaders, both returning and new, as well as guest speakers from our church community. Our leaders this year are Cory Carlson, Deena Fischer, Nancy Olson, and Heather Polhemus.

If you have questions about the upcoming ministry events and activities, please reach out to Heather Polhemus at hpolhemus@gmail.com or Jess Edwards at jess.lea.edwards@gmail.com.

"This year’s class shared deeply personal faith stories at our DC Banquet as well as authentic creative projects. Here’s a summary of our class of 2022...."

We haven't forgotten about you! This summer Life & Mission has spent focused time reimagining a step forward in our adult ministry. Thank you for helping in that process by completing our survey last month.

We are excited to announce a new title: Grow Groups! The intention is to see all adult ministry groups, short-term or year long, drop-in or significant study under this umbrella of Grow Groups. The hope is that 90% of the congregation would find a group within a calendar year to plug into. We are making a concerted effort to ensure that you can clearly understand the group, its content, leadership style, homework, fellowship and more as all these groups will be organized into the church app. One of the requests you shared in the survey was a desire to better understand if the content will be personally spiritually challenging. We understand that everyone is in a different place in their spiritual walk so we are working out how to best communicate this "level." More information to come...

The Next Steps campaign is moving along. Camp is looking to build a new chapel that will also serve as the welcome center and offices. Did you know that the original dream building was estimated to cost $12 million to build? After some very serious discernment on the essentials, the current proposal will cost $4.5 million. Construction is scheduled to begin Spring of 2023 as long as they reach a $3.5 million pledge threshold. As of Sept 15 over 3 million has already been pledged!

Passion for Christ Compassion for People