watershed: a community church

This Saturday: Fall Cleanup

The leaves are down, and we have a few opportunities to rake and do some general fall cleanup for MARC & HeadStart.  We'll meet at MARC Stoughton this coming Saturday, November 22nd at 9am. Bring a rake, bush trimmers, gloves, a leaf blower or whatever else might help out with fall cleanup. If you know of someone else who could use help raking or fall cleanup, please let Jeff L know (email or 347-7705).

Capturing Your Dream

As you consider your dreams, we'd love to capture what you're thinking in some kind of tangible way.  Will you consider how you might be able to share your dream through art, music, writing, video, or whatever works for you?  We'd love to keep these dreams in front of us as we continue exploring how to live a life that matters, pursuing the dreams of God for our life together.

Living A Life That Matters

What have you discovered about your dreams? Are they helping you to live a life that matters? Over the next 2 weeks, we'll go deeper into helping you discover more about how you can live a life of significance and purpose, even while we're in the process of figuring out our dreams.

If you've been a part of gatherings in the past few weeks, I hope you've been considering how your dreams might be connected to the work of God in the world.  God is the author of all things good, true, just, right and beautiful, and he is inviting you to join that work and discover the life you've been dreaming of. 

This goes way beyond a dream job or a dream vacation and points us to the God who made us and invites us to encounter him everyday in the ordinary moments of life.  Following the way of Jesus leads us to discover this life with God, a life beyond short-sighted dreams.  The Bible says it this way in 1 John 2:

Don't love the world's ways. Don't love the world's goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world - wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important - has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever. (The Message & TNIV)

As you consider your dreams, we'd love to capture what you're thinking in some kind of tangible way.  Will you consider how you might be able to share your dream through art, music, writing, video, or whatever works for you?  We'd love to keep these dreams in front of us as we continue exploring how to live a life that matters, pursuing the dreams of God for our life together.

Check out the latest opportunities to play a part and serve with others in the watershed family.

On Thanksgiving Eve, the watershed family has been invited to join together with other church families from the Stoughton community.  The evening's service will be a celebration of thankfulness for God's work in our community. 

I hope you will consider joining us if you are in town on Thanksgiving Eve.  While the service will have a more traditional flavor, Jeff L has been invited to share a short message during the service. Please pray for his preparation and for God to provide a word of encouragement and challenge to all followers of Christ who gather that evening.

The service will be held at Covenant Lutheran Church at 1525 N. Van Buren St. in Stoughton at 7pm on November 26th. 

Each church participating has been asked to have one person serve as an usher, and one person do a short reading.  If you would like to participate with this, please let Jeff L know (email).

From the Advent Conspiracy website:

The story of Christ's birth is a subversive story of an upside-down kingdom. It's a story of promise, hope, and a revolutionary love that is still changing the world to this day. So, what happened? What was once a time to celebrate the birth of a savior has somehow turned into a season of stress, traffic jams, and shopping lists. And when it's all over, many of us are left with presents to return, looming debt that will take months to pay off, and this empty feeling that we somehow missed its purpose.

Is this what we really want out of Christmas?

What if Christmas became a world-changing event again by turning our focus back to the birth of Christ? What could happen to your family if this focus was celebrated in loud, bold and totally unexpected ways? What if you could actually trade your season of stress for a season celebration and unbelievable memories with your friends and family? What if all of this could save a life at the same time? It can.

Welcome to Advent Conspiracy

What could happen if the watershed family joined together in letting Christ lead us to spend less, give more, love all this Christmas?

...and your dreams matter.

You've got dreams.  There's no one else that sees the world quite like you.  You want your life to count, and to be a part of something bigger than yourself. We get that.  We invite you to be yourself and pursue your dreams.

It's not so important that you support our dreams, but that we support yours.

We believe that God has planted dreams in all of us, and we want to bring these dreams to life - discovering together how to live a life that matters.  It's never too late to pursue your dreams, and we'd be glad to share the journey with you.

While we're focused on making the most of life with God every day, we also gather on Sundays, and during the month of November we're exploring how our dreams can lead us toward living a life that matters.

Living a Life That Matters

November 9 | Dare to Dream Again
November 16 | Overcoming What Holds You Back
November 23 | A Dream Worth Living For

What's your dream?

What are your dreams? Have you achieved your dream? Have you given up on a dream? What's getting in the way of your dreams?

Leave a comment below and tell us about your dreams...