This past week we tried something new: a Jesus-centered art camp for thirty kids in Burlington’s Old North End.  A volunteer team from the River Community Church partnered with Burlington City Church and the Kids Alive ministry to make this happen… which included watching a college student from Tennessee teach Burundi African kids Irish folk dance in Burlington, VT (and there are many reasons I never expected to see that scenario happen).

Many of you already know that we have churches from around the country that support our church-planting endeavors.  Part of this partnership includes volunteer teams for “hands on” ministry in Burlington.  We do this for a few reasons:

• We want them to better understand our ministry context and why we do what we do.
• We want to utilize them to “guinea pig” ideas that we cannot yet do on our own.
• We purposely limit their group size and scope of ministry so that we may replicate it in the future.

The crew from the River Church did an amazing job.  They are excellent musicians and artists who love Jesus and loved on the kids all week.  Art and music have an amazing way of opening kids’ minds and hearts up to their creator- it was great to see this happen and think of the future possibilities as we continue exploring this arena of ministry.  One of the biggest “wins” for the week was seeing several of our Burlington City Church “Old North Enders” connect with three families of the children attending the art camp.  This has been a great challenge for many Christian ministries and secular service organizations- connecting with the kids but not engaging the parents.