Race and the Gospel: How the gospel transforms racial divisions in our world and our city.

 On Monday, January 26, 2015,  Eastbrook Church was honored to host Bishop Walter Harvey of Parklawn Assembly of God for a conversation and time of prayer on the topic of race and the Gospel here in the city of Milwaukee.
4 times a year we gather as a church to discuss key topics to help us move forward together. This year, we begin our Leadership Forum series with by addressing the challenging topic of how the gospel transforms racial divisions in our world and city. In a city known as one of the most segregated cities in the United States, we want to live into the dream of God for a multiethnic people rooted in the reconciling gospel of Jesus Christ.

 SEE VIDEO BELOW:

---

http://vimeo.com/118023597 

Downloads:

Agenda & Next Steps Handout

http://www.eastbrookchurch.org/content.aspx?site_id=10809&content_id=433143

Boomers: Are you using your talents, abilities, strengths and passion in serving?

Opportunity to develop your strengths is more important than your role, title or your pay!

"Across the board, having the opportunity to develop our strengths is more important to our success than our role, our title, or even our pay."  Strengths Finder 2.0   Tom Rath

 Seems like one of our goals should be to be aware of the opportunities around us and even actively search for them!

 The earlier we start searching the better.
But it is never too late to start!

Great place to start is in our church!

Making the most of every opportunity!

.

Seizing opportunities is directly tied to the spiritual gift of discernment. When we see what looks like an opportunity, we have to discern whether we are seeing a true opening or just our own wishful-thinking or a random idea. 

Just because an opportunity arises does not mean that we should take it. An opportunity is just a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something. We still have the hard work of determining whether it is something WE SHOULD DO!

Opportunities are doorways that God opens. It is divine leading, even though we may not be able to predict what lies beyond.

Ability to see with the eyes of God, think with the mind of Christ, and walk in the power of the Holy Spirit! A good prayer!

Baby Boomers and Beyond : Amy Hanson

Great information on Amy's Website and Blog.

Amy's Website

Amy's BLOG

Baby Boomers and Beyond : Ministry Launch at Eastbrook Church today: Jan 25 , 2015

Taking Flight Into Kingdom Connections

Sunday, January 25th At Eastbrook Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This is the official launch for Eastbrook's Boomers and Beyond Ministry, open to baby boomers and beyond....that is anyone 50 years and older, especially those who have retired from full-time jobs.

We will have well-known author and speaker Amy Hanson, formerly of Central Christian Church in Las Vegas, and we will have a ministry fair to display the different ways older adults can get involved in serving during their mature years!

Questions? Contact Joan Wendelburg; wendelburg at wi.rr.com , 262.242.5345.

Don't forget to come hear Amy Hanson this Sunday at the B & B Launch!

She will be speaking to the combined SFI classes in Fellowship Hall, along with Pastor Marc Erickson, at 9:30 in Fellowship Hall with a talk entitled: "Your Legacy: Sharing Your Life with Future Generations".

At the 12:30 lunch Launch itself, her two talks will be: "Reaching Out and Making an Impact" and "Finishing Well".

You do NOT want to miss what God has to say to us at Eastbrook through Amy!

How and where our food is produced.

Tomatoland:How Modern industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit.

Just finished reading  Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit.

Found out about the book from a post on Facebook by my friend Rick Slager. We both have an agricultural background.
Me as an ex vegetable grower. Had a small commercial lettuce farm in my younger days. Rick as an ag missionary to Africa and his retail farm stand in Central Wisconsin. Met Rick at a BAM (Business as Mission) meeting) at our church. Interesting how connections & relationships develop and grow!


Back to the book!

Also, author Barry describes how fields have been sprayed with pesticides and the effects on the workers... I have seen in Mexico.

Traveled past the large tomato fields that Barry describes while in that area  in 2010 when I made a presentation at ECHO (Educational Concerns Hunger Organization) on social media. Ft. Myers, Florida. Didn't have a clue as to what was going on past those 10 ft high berms shielding the fields from view.

Won't be eating  tomatoes now until I do more research.
Will probably wait until we have vine ripened tomatoes in Wisconsin in July.

What the Publisher Says about the book 

Supermarket produce sections bulging with a year-round supply of perfectly round, bright red-orange tomatoes have become all but a national birthright. But in Tomatoland, which is based on his James Beard Award–winning article, “The Price of Tomatoes,” investigative food journalist Barry Estabrook reveals the huge human and environmental cost of the $5 billion fresh tomato industry. Fields are sprayed with  more than 100 different herbicides and pesticides. Tomatoes are picked hard and green and artificially gassed until their skins acquire a marketable hue. Modern plant breeding has tripled yields, but produces fruits with a fraction of the calcium, Vitamin A, and Vitamin C, and fourteen tiimes as much sodium as the tomatoes our parents enjoyed. The relentless drive for low costs has fostered a thriving modern-day slave trade in the United States. How have we come to this point?
Estabrook traces the supermarket tomato from its birthplace in the deserts of Peru to the impoverished town of Immokalee, Florida, a.k.a. the tomato capital of the United States. He visits the laboratories of seedsmen trying to develop varieties that can withstand the rigors of agribusiness and still taste like a garden tomato, and then moves on to commercial growers who operate on tens of thousands of acres, and eventually to a hillside field in Pennsylvania, where he meets an obsessed farmer who produces delectable tomatoes for the nation’s top restaurants.
Throughout Tomatoland, Estabrook presents a Who’s Who cast of characters in the tomato industry: The avuncular octogenarian whose conglomerate grows one out of every eight tomatoes eaten in the United States; the ex-marine who heads the group that dictates the size, color, and shape of every tomato shipped out of Florida; the United States attorney who has doggedly prosecuted human traffickers for the past decade; the Guatemalan peasant who came north to earn money for his parents’ medical bills and found himself enslaved for two years.
Tomatoland reads like a suspenseful whodunit and an exposé of today’s agribusiness systems and the price we pay as a society when we take taste and thought out of our food purchases.

You might want to check out this link...to see what Mexico is doing. 
Tomato growing in Mexico

and then what a non profit group is doing. 

http://www.takepart.com/article/2014/12/23/rabbis-immokalee
  
You can also follow me on Twitter for up to date info.

Richard Dassow @RichardDassow  ·  

Progress in the Tomato fields of Florida! http://ciw-online.org/blog/2015/01/new-aff/ …

Richard Dassow @RichardDassow  · 

Alliance for fair food http://www.allianceforfairfood.org/take-action/ 

#tomato #socialjustice #faith
___________________________________________

How your church can use Linkedin to help create unity and help people find jobs! 7 Benefits of this strategy!

Benefits of having a private church linkedin group:

1. Easy to see all the profiles quickly of everyone in the group.

2. Easy for "new" people to connect with others. Assimilate    quickly!

3. Can pray for each other better as you know them better!

4. Can be of help to people finding new jobs. Jobs at individual's place of employment can be posted! Person looking and applying for that job has a "friend" at the company. As we know, it's all about "relationships"!

5. Can keep track more easily of your people and what they post on "Twitter"! And other social media!

6 Easy to start a discussion or ask a question of the group.

7. Group is searchable: Can find people with similar interests. Now you can call them and meet for coffee, etc

First your church needs to have a passion and desire to see the importance and understand what community is!
Community 101 by Gilbert Bizezikian


Then, start a Linkedin Group!

Linkedin is a great "tool" that can help connect people.
That is the first step. Although not everyone is on Linkedin, it is very easy to create a short and basic profile. And it is FREE!  Linkedin is NOT like Facebook. As Author Wayne Breitbarth says, "Linkedin is Facebook on steroids"
Wayne is the author of The Power Formula for Linkedin Success. Also a member of our church. Thanks Wayne for teaching me 99% of what I know about Linkedin!


All this helps create "community"

Someone from the church can easily start a "GROUP".
Not a job for the pastor to do! Find someone with an interest and passion for this!

It helps if the staff is on board with this new endeavor!
Without promotion with the pulpit...the group will not flourish.

Shortly after joining Linkedin I started our group:
It's called Eastbrook Community. It is a closed group, meaning only people who have a relationship with Eastbrook are let in. WHY? My vision for starting the group was to help connect unemployed people from Eastbrook with employed people. Members can post available jobs on the site and unemployed people then know someone in the company.
That's part of the secret of getting a job. It's all about relationships!

Here is our PROFILE: 

Private group. To request membership, click Join and your request will be reviewed by the group manager.

As our pastors and church office give us names of new members, they will be invited to join our group!

What a great "tool" to use to get acquainted with fellow Eastbrookers!

We all have a place in our church. We should be radically welcoming as a church. A place for new people to experience community and get "connected" Our Groups 277 + members are only a small part of Eastbrook but we can take a lead in welcoming new people.

This is just a bunch of people whose lives have crossed in this place to come together with a view toward advancing the cause of Christ through God-honoring work.
If you have a desire to be a resource for our unemployed, either by posting job openings from your place of employment on this site or desire to pray for our people, please join our group.

This is a place for Eastbrook people to connect with the purpose of enabling careers, ministries, and new business opportunities. The depth of experience available in Eastbrook's people is remarkable. This group could enable Eastbrookers to reach out in new ministries, to start new businesses, to grow in their careers.

Wouldn't it be exciting if, as the economy languishes, Eastbrook people came together to start new things.
Mission statement and goals may change, so come back again. Your input desired!

_________________________________

 While on staff at Eastbrook I had a weekly prayer group for unemployed people. Anyone could attend, not only Eastbrookers. Besides praying for each other, we learned about using Linkedin as a "tool" for finding a job. It worked. People did find jobs!

Anyone who faithfully attended even if they were not a member of Eastbrook, I let in the group.

Also, a great benefit is that all 277 people can easily see each other's profiles!  

What is the benefit of that?

Well, we can easily get to know people better! 
New people from our church can see the other 276 members of the group. 

Can call them, invite them out for coffee or lunch...

The members of the group are searchable!

Wayne Breitbarth even found a golfing partner using linkedin. Great way for finding new friends!
Possibilities are endless!

If you are going for an interview and know the interviewers name...find them on Linkedin and you will know all about them. You can be sure that they have already looked at your profile. 

So, the bottom line is: Start a group on Linkedin! Your vision or mission statement may be different than ours.

Let me know if and how I can help you with this!

Would love to hear how you are doing!

Do you know of any churches that are already doing this?
We could connect on Linkedin and or Twitter...private conversations.

Blessings

Richard

 The Power Formula For Linkedin Success

New Year Goal

Be "rooted", "grounded" and "grow" and so rise to the top of your "field"...and "bloom" where you are "planted" ...using the "Abilities", "gifts" and "Strengths" God has endowed you with.