{"id":1733,"date":"2010-03-28T22:09:05","date_gmt":"2010-03-29T02:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=1733"},"modified":"2010-03-28T22:09:05","modified_gmt":"2010-03-29T02:09:05","slug":"baltimore-2010-day-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/?p=1733","title":{"rendered":"Baltimore 2010: Day Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Sunday, March 28, 2010 9:33pm EDT BALTIMORE TEAM<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eight years ago I met Aaron Coe<\/a>.\u00a0 He was on staff at NorthStar church<\/a> and running One Goal Sports<\/a>.\u00a0 I was the youth minister at Acworth United Methodist Church<\/a> and he was trying to get our church to partner with One Goal.\u00a0 We joined OGS as a supporting church and a great friendship began.\u00a0 At the same time, Ellis Prince<\/a> was the student pastor at Summit Baptist Church<\/a>.\u00a0 I knew Ellis from a variety of community events and through character education that we both helped with in the local high schools.<\/p>\n

Within a year or two, Aaron had moved to New York City to help with New Hope New York, an initiative of the Southern Baptist Convention and Ellis moved to North Carolina to help plant a church in Charlotte.\u00a0 I occasionally checked the website for the church Ellis was at to see how it was going.\u00a0 I continued working with Aaron and together with a friend lead a College Mission Trip to New York to put on a free sports camp.\u00a0 That ended up leading Aaron to planting The Gallery Church<\/a> in New York City.\u00a0 God has opened tons of doors for Aaron and given him great favor in New York City.<\/p>\n

As Aaron was planting The Gallery Church in New York, Ellis and his family moved back to Acworth and he came on staff at West Ridge Church<\/a> as the high school pastor.\u00a0 Ellis and I reconnected as I had moved to NCCS<\/a> to be the Student Life Director and my husband and I began attending West Ridge.\u00a0 Are you keeping all of these moves straight?\u00a0 We became very involved in the high school ministry as small group leaders with Ellis and Ginger Prince.\u00a0 Clint and I enjoyed getting to know them and both had a great deal of respect for Ellis as a student of God’s word and someone that hoped to ignite that same fire in his students.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, I was mowing the yard and listening to a podcast message from Aaron Coe at The Gallery Church in New York.\u00a0 He was giving some updates about the church and talked about the new church they would be planting in Baltimore.\u00a0 He talked about a high school pastor and his family from Atlanta that would be moving to New York to work with The Gallery for six months before planting in Baltimore.\u00a0 God told me very definitively that it was Ellis and his family.\u00a0 I called him and he confirmed that he was moving and said he hadn’t even announced it at church yet.\u00a0 I didn’t even know that Aaron and Ellis knew each other!<\/p>\n

From that point, God has been stirring my heart for the city of Baltimore and what God is doing here.\u00a0 Around the time that the Prince family left for Baltimore, Clint and I left West Ridge to help plant Freedom Church<\/a> in Acworth.\u00a0 One of the wives in our small group has a sister that moved up here to be a part of the Baltimore team.<\/p>\n

I give all of that background information to let you know that God began this mission trip in my heart eight years ago.\u00a0 It was surreal to walk into The Gallery Church of Baltimore<\/a> this morning and see what God is doing here through the leadership of Ellis Prince.\u00a0 Just as exciting was to know that our New York City team was worshipping with Aaron Coe and his staff tonight in NYC!<\/p>\n

Even before church this morning, David Wise led our group in an amazing devotion about perspective.\u00a0 He really challenged us to look at situations that God has placed us in and ask what God is trying to teach us through those circumstances.\u00a0 It was a powerful message to kick off our week!<\/p>\n

This morning at The Gallery Church of Baltimore was the 3rd week in their series: The Ancient Future Story talking specifically about reflections on Babylon.\u00a0 The Scripture passages were: Psalm 137:1-9, Ezra 1:1-4, and Isaiah 45:1-7.\u00a0 The message was very good and had a lot of historical connections.\u00a0 Ellis left us with the question, “What would it look like for our friends to see a picture of the Messiah — the anointed one?”<\/p>\n

After church we headed to Chipotle for lunch.\u00a0 Lunch was good, but the fellowship was even greater.\u00a0 We have encouraged the team to try and eat with different people as often as possible.\u00a0 From there we headed to the Johns Hopkins University bookstore, walked around campus, hung out in the park, and then toured the Baltimore Museum of Art.\u00a0 Many of us broadened our horizons checking out the art today!<\/p>\n

We caught the city bus back down to the hotel.\u00a0 We hung out here tonight and ordered in pizza to watch the Duke\/Baylor game and watch some movies.\u00a0 Most of the time was spent in conversation…some deeper than others!\u00a0 We closed out the night again by having a team meeting.\u00a0 Both nights we have started by sharing highlights from the day.\u00a0 We all tend to talk at the same time because we have so much to be grateful for!\u00a0 After instructions for the morning, we headed to our rooms for the night.\u00a0 Everyone has to be in the lobby at 6:30 in the morning, so we better get some sleep.<\/p>\n

Thank you for the prayers.\u00a0 We are eager to get to work in the morning.\u00a0 We truly believe that God is the God of this city and greater things are yet to be done here!<\/p>\n

TOGETHER…Cultivating Hearts.\u00a0 Challenging Minds.\u00a0 Impacting Culture.<\/p>\n

Megan Strange<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday, March 28, 2010 9:33pm EDT BALTIMORE TEAM Eight years ago I met Aaron Coe.\u00a0 He was on staff at NorthStar church and running One Goal Sports.\u00a0 I was the youth minister at Acworth United Methodist Church and he was trying to get our church to partner with One Goal.\u00a0 We joined OGS as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-north-cobb-christian"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1733"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1733\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meganstrange.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}