A Note from Dr. Tim Kimmel
We just can’t wait to have Dr. Tim Kimmel at our RBC Marriage Conference next month! Here is a note from Dr. Kimmel that tells you a little more about the time we’ll spend together.
Don’t forget to register before Christmas to save an extra $10!
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Hi RBC Couples!
I’m so excited to be with you for the Grace Filled Marriage event at the end of January! I can’t wait to tell you about the secret ingredient that can radically improve your marriage. I’ll teach you how to super-charge your communication, conflict resolution, spiritual connection and sex life with the pivotal quality that so many loving marriages lack…GRACE!
This Christmas, give your spouse and family a gift that will echo long into the future! Investing in your marriage is a gift to your spouse and yourself, but don’t forget that having a lasting, healthy marriage is the ultimate gift to your kids and grandkids. So much of their future success, happiness, relationships and spiritual journey rises or falls on the legacy your marriage leaves for them. A grace-filled marriage will change yourworld and theirs for good!
Hope to see you there!
Tim
Thank You from Guilford Elementary
We want so give a huge THANK YOU to all who donated of their time and resources to make the Guilford Elementary School’s Community Thanksgiving Dinner a huge success. Our congregation donated over 90 pies and 1000 servings of stuffing. We also had 12 volunteers who helped serve the families by pouring drinks and carrying trays for moms with lots of small children. This was the largest Thanksgiving Dinner that Guilford has hosted to date, with over 900 people enjoying traditional North American Thanksgiving foods, many for the first time. Parents who often don’t have the resources to feed their families an abundant meal like this were truly grateful. We are thankful for you, our generous congregation and our faithful God who allows us to serve these families and staff at Guilford Elementary.
RBC Annual Report 2015
“I will remember the deeds of the LORD, I will ponder all Your work and meditate on your mighty deeds.” – Psalm 77:11-12
Our Annual Report is not a list of our accomplishments, but rather a recounting of some of the great things God has done in us, for us and through us over the past year.
The 2015 Annual Report is available in print format at the Welcome Desk in the church lobby, or you read through the online version here. You can also click here to download a PDF.
We hope you’ll take some time to read through it, remember the mighty deeds of our great God, and be moved to deeper gratitude and trust in our great Savior.
God at Work in First Fruits
For over 20 years, the youth ministry has run the First Fruits project the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Every year, we raise money by raking leaves and doing other jobs throughout the day. That evening, we purchase lots of food and deliver the food to families in need in our community. This year, with an army of over 650 workers, we raised over $43,000 to provide food for over 100 families. We were also able to provide college scholarships to five local high school seniors.
Because we have been doing this for so many years, it is easy to just assume numbers like these will happen. But every year God does something that just makes us realize it is His work and His plan, not ours.
First, this year we had over 200 students from Parkview and Herndon High School sign up to work with us. These students have no affiliation with RBC, but the schools announced the project and they came to work with us. As a youth ministry, we are always trying to think of creative ways to reach out with the truth and hope of the Gospel to the students around us, and it’s so cool how God has taken something we designed to care for those in physical need and open so many doors for us to tell so many students about their greatest spiritual need. We never had a “strategic plan” or “vision” to turn First Fruits into an outreach, but it is now our biggest outreach of the year. Please pray for the hundreds who heard the Gospel at First Fruits.
Second, God orchestrated several food deliveries in ways that only He could. To identify many of the families we assist, we work through parent liaisons at several local public schools. We seek families that are experiencing hardships, but not currently being helped. These families are then randomly assigned to one of our 32 teams.
This year, as one team was entering the home of the family they were delivering to, the face of a young girl and her parents lit up. They were excited not for the food, but that one of the people delivering the food was the girl’s preschool teacher from several years prior. This instantly broke the ice and allowed for a powerful opportunity to share the love of Christ. When a group of strangers walk into someone’s home with bags of food and gifts, it can be awkward. But God, in providentially working out the right family with the right team, completely changed the situation. Only God can work out situations like that.
A similar situation happened with another team. They were supposed to deliver food to a different family, but at the last minute their delivery was switched. It just happened to be switched to a family a team member knew, which has opened the doors for additional ministry and care for the family.
God is not random. Our God is powerful and is doing great things in our midst, even when we don’t recognize it. Thank you so much for giving us jobs, working with us, donating to the project, and being part of what the Lord is doing to make His name known in Northern Virginia.
Below are some highlight pictures from the day. Enjoy!
A Quick First Fruits 2015 Update
Praise God with us for the work and blessings during First Fruits this year. Last Saturday, November 21, we had 32 teams composed of 659 volunteers completing 133 jobs. This day raised $43,490! The teams used some of what was raised to buy groceries and bring gift cards to 32 families with financial need that night. An additional 40 or more families will also be receiving grocery gift cards in the next few weeks. Five local high schools will be participating in a Perseverance Scholarship for seniors as they prepare for college. Teachers will also be nominated for a gift from us. All of these opportunities to exemplify God’s love to our neighbors is only possible because of the many people who sacrificed their time, energy and finances. Thank you!
To learn more about how First Fruits has an impact, read First Fruits: Beyond the Leaves.
Haiti Update & Christmas Hope
Pastor Aaron and his family spent the month of October in Haiti working with Pastor Francois’ church and orphanage in Pignon. In this video, he gives a brief report from our sister church there.
If you would like more information on the family mission to Haiti during Spring Break 2016, visit www.restonbible.org/familymissionhaiti.
To support the Christmas Hope project, visit www.restonbible.org/christmashope.
Jr. High Update: The Amazing Race
Pastor Aaron sharing the gospel with a room full of Jr. High students for our first FNL of the school year.
Our Jr High’s first Friday Night Live of the new school year was a huge success!
The event was set to the theme of the Amazing Race in which the youth were placed into teams and given clues to find different stations around the church to complete challenges before advancing to the next station. As a team, they had to put together a giant puzzle, knock down boxes with tennis balls launched from a water balloon launcher, copy a small painting, learn a portion of a TobyMac dance routine, shoot baskets from either different locations in the basketball court, find and memorize a Bible verse, and several other challenges.
That night, we had over 20 youth indicate on their info cards that they had accepted Christ as their Lord and Savior after hearing Pastor Aaron preach the gospel! Praise God for the great turnout, great weather, no major issues, and for the students that indicated their new faith in Christ.
Kids Camp 2015 Recap
Jesus is calling us to move beyond the beach and into the waves, to a place of adventure, purpose, and true joy! “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” – Jesus (John 10:10b)
Kids Camp 2015, “Surf’s Up,” has come and gone. This year’s camp was a huge success with roughly 400 children and volunteers in attendance over the five days. The children of the church were challenged in their faith and their walk with Jesus, while many children from the surrounding community got to hear the gospel message presented through music, drama, and Bible teaching, perhaps for the first time. We were blessed with the positive feedback that came in from parents and children alike. Here is a little sampling:
“The kids were coming home from an afternoon summer camp and they practically ran to the car each day in order to not be late to RBC!”
“My heart leapt when my son, who never wants to lead prayer at home, asked if he could pray after coming home from Kids Camp.”
“Our son came home after the second day of camp and asked us to pray with him to receive Jesus’ gift of salvation and eternal life.”
To go along with our theme, “Surf’s Up,” the children were encouraged to bring an offering toward Christian Surfers International (www.christiansurfers.com) and enthusiastically responded. Those funds will be going toward a children’s outreach in Panama this summer through Christian Surfers. These are the moments that make the long hours and hard work of volunteers and staff alike more than worth it.
We are so very thankful for all that God did in and through Kids Camp 2015, “Surf’s Up,” and are already looking forward to next summer! We are also so thankful to the volunteers without whom Kids Camp would be quite impossible. Thank you for answering the call to raise up a generation that knows Christ and makes Him known.
CLICK HERE FOR STOKED TV’S DAILY SURF REPORT VIDEOS! Fresh from Kids Camp 2015, Surfjan Stevens and Keanu Reefs bring news, weather, beach conditions and more on Stoked TV’s Daily Surf Report!
about kids camp
RBC Kids Camp is a week-long day camp open to all children entering the 1st grade through the 6th grade* and takes place the last week of June. Through quality Bible teaching, art, drama, music, and a ton of awesome games, Kids Camp (formerly VBS) is a unique opportunity for children to begin or grow in their relationship with Jesus and to learn to share their hope and joy with others. Check out www.restonbible.org/kidscamp for more info.
*There is a Kids Camp program for nursery, pre-K, and rising kindergarteners which is open to children of Kids Camp volunteer staff only.
Kids Camp 2015: Daily Surf Report
Fresh from Kids Camp 2015, Surfjan Stevens and Keanu Reefs bring news, weather, beach conditions and more on Stoked TV’s Daily Surf Report!
From the Field: Haiti Family Mission Update
Over Spring Break, a team of 21 parents and Jr. High students flew to Pignon, Haiti to serve with RBC-supported national pastor, Francois Romelus (featured here in a previous From the Field). While adults from RBC had visited before, it was the first trip that included students, and it was amazing to see the way the Lord used them.
Pastor Francois runs an orphanage of 50+ children, and it was such a blessing to see the ways that our students could play and interact with them, despite the language barrier. Our students were really able to open up the children there and practically show the love of Christ. On top of playing games of soccer, teaching them to skateboard, braiding hair, and hanging out, we also had several special opportunities with them.
We set up Easter Egg hunt with them and talked with them about the resurrection of Christ. We treated them to s’mores cooked over an open fire, after which everyone licked clean their sticky fingers. We had English classes as they taught us some Creole. And we took the oldest ~20 students to a beach a few hours away. Most of them had never been to the ocean and didn’t know how to swim. It was a treat for them, and a blessing to have fun with them.
We also had the blessing of helping the local church run a VBS-style children’s program. While it was a bit chaotic at times with almost 400 children who couldn’t speak English, it was an amazing blessing to serve the community. Our theme for the week was “Mwen Se Trésor Bondye” or “I am a Treasure of God’s”.
We had a great opportunity to play and do crafts with the children and act out Bible stories, as the national pastors taught God’s Word. At the end of each day, each the church provided a meal of rice, beans, and a little chicken for the children, and it was humbling to see how so little meant so much to them. Please pray for the children to understand that they are God’s Treasure.
Finally, we were blessed with many opportunities to connect with and encourage the local church. Eric Smith, the chairman of RBC’s elders, taught a marriage class. We were able to hear the testimonies of and pray for all of the national pastors and elders of the church in Pignon. Please continue to pray for them as they face many hardships and persecution to lead the church.
Thank you to the many who prayed for this team. We definitely saw the answers to many of your prayers. Please continue to pray for Pastor Francois’ children and their futures, as there are very few career opportunities for them.
**Thanks to all who attended the team review on Wednesday, 4/29 in the Jr. High Room. Please continue to pray for Pastor Francois and the ministry there.