Though we saw the storm strike, our Wiffle Ball Tournament did not strike out, it was a home run! Praise the Lord!

Due to technical difficulties, we are reposting this blog so the photo links work correctly.





For more Wiffle Ball Tournament Photos. Click Here.


Our Summer Jam Tour (SJT12) Wiffle Ball Tournament and Family Picnic started with a few weather challenges. Our first huddle was the heat index pushing 100 degrees. Then the skies opened up as a thunder storm rolled through Colonial Park North right before 6:00 p.m., sending most folks scrambling to the picnic shelter while others ran to their cars! This park was not only ideal for the games, it provided shelter from the storm as well as tables for our family picnic!

Once the storm passed, we praise the Lord, as He reminded us again of His faithfulness by blessing us with a faint rainbow in the eastern sky! Those who braved the weather then began the process of wiffle ball team selection and the games were soon under way! Denise Wilson along with Joe led our tournament games!

We had 4 total teams playing 2 games each. The winning team was determined by the overall greatest number of runs. Awesome prizes were awarded for the 1st and 2nd place teams. Each player on the 1st place team was awarded 2 tickets to the Dayton Dragon’s for their baseball games. Each player on the 2nd place team was awarded a Dayton Dragon’s baseball cap!

Most importantly, when I shared the gospel using the Evange-Cube that evening [before prizes were awarded] God moved and blessed with one teenage boy who gave his life to Christ! He was invited to the tourney by one of our UBC youth too! So inviting others is really working and God blessed!

In addition, this year we have added registration and prize drawings for all community visitors at SJT12. What a welcome surprise to our visitors whose names were drawn for Dayton Dragon tickets or baseball caps! We had our largest community attendance this year for this tournament.

Also, to encourage our UBC teens to invite their friends this year, Rusty and Jill also have a drawing for a $25 I-Tunes card entering all teens who have registered a friend they invited to our SJT12 ministry events. This drawing is offered for each SJT event this summer!

Thanks again to Denise & Joe Wilson for leading our Wiffle Ball Tournament. They did a great job! Thanks also to Sherlene for adding baked beans & chips to our menu to make this a great picnic along with the hot dogs. All of this served on a plate while folks were seated at the picnic tables.

Thanks to everyone who helped and participated in our SJT12 Wiffle Ball Tournament! Huge thanks to Rusty and Jill Young who lead this ministry!

We invite you and your friends [and your pet dogs] to our SJT12 Dog Show this week, Wednesday August 1st. Awesome prizes will be awarded to best dog costume, best tricks, funniest looking, etc. We also encourage our UBC youth to bring friends and be prepared to share the gospel through connecting with Soularium in which they have been trained earlier this year. We praise the Lord for the harvest!

Using Our Talents for God’s Glory…Summer Jam Tour 2012 Talent Showcase



Greer South Carolina mission team performing Arise My Love.

To see more photos from this and other Local Missions events, click here.

What an awesome collaborative partnership for God’s glory! Our Summer Jam Tour 2012 [SJT12]…Talent Showcase was a partnership between UBC’s youth praise team and the Greer First Baptist mission team from SC, singing, playing musical instruments, and acting out live dramas on Wednesday, June 20th at Lebanon Jr. High School. This venue was conducted outside on a beautiful but hot evening!

The mission team from Greer, SC was led by Robbie Gravely, with 50+ youth who shared their talents to give God glory and impact our community for Christ. Folks were seated on the lawn and in chairs enjoying the SJT12 talent showcase. Our UBC Youth Praise Band, which made a huge contribution of talent and time, was led by Mike Copenhaver. Our guests also enjoyed free, popcorn, popsicles, and hot dogs!

One of our community visitors that evening was a former US Olympic gold champion softball player! And how did we find this out? When a few of our UBC youth [Ella & Hazel] shared “Soularium” [connecting with others to share the gospel message] with her….she shared her story too!

To close out the evening together, the SC drama team performed “Arise My Love” as a crescendo of dramatic proportion for the evening. Then, the SC youth pastor, Ryan Holtzclaw, shared a clear and compelling message of the Gospel.

Our Summer Jam Tour 2012 [SJT12] leaders are Jill & Rusty Young and they continue to recruit for participants as well as laborers as we impact our community for Christ! Our next SJT12 ministry event is our Wiffleball Tournament and Family Picnic scheduled for Wednesday, July 25th. This will be held at Colonial Park North [off Monroe Rd.] and it begins at 6 PM!

For more SJT12 details and registration information please use our link: www.urbancrest.org/summer-jam-tour or call Jill Young @ 513.383.5893.

Please continue to pray for God to yield a harvest of new believers as we faithfully impact our community for Christ and share the gospel. See you soon at our next SJT12 ministry event!

We've "Disc-overed" Something New!

Really? No more block parties? No, …really, we don’t have block parties this year because we've disc-overed something NEW... Summer Jam Tour 2012!

We launched Summer Jam Tour 2012 [SJT12] with six great new exciting venues to reach our community for Christ. On May 30 we “soared” with our first new ministry venue, Ultimate Disc Tourney!

God blessed us with great sunny beautiful weather, 70-some degrees with a slight cool breeze. Jim and Julie Reutener [and Emily too] led this sporting event. They began with basic instructions and training drills, then teams were formed to play ultimate disc [like Frisbees advancing the discs to cross the fields and source goals as they threw and advanced the discs.

Jill and Rusty Young [along with Ella and Haze their daughters] are leading our SJT12 this year working with a core team to create our awesome community outreach for this summer. We have expanded from the neighborhoods [of our former block parties] to the community. Our goal is to engage more of our community through our local missions outreach as we share the gospel praying that many are transformed through Christ. Pray that God grants a harvest of many new believers to His Kingdom through SJT12 this summer!

We also thank our UBC Youth Praise Band [directed by Mike Copenhaver] for joining us in our collaborative partnership to reach our community for Christ! Our teens were “jamming”…sharing worship songs of praise….guess that’s one of the reasons we call it Summer “Jam” Tour huh?

Please invite your friends and neighbors to join us this summer for SJT12! You can check our website, register on-line, or invite others through Facebook.

Our next SJT event is our Talent Show, June 20th, at Lebanon Jr. High. Invite others to join us! Our UBC praise team and drama teams are participating as well our visiting mission team from Greer, S. Carolina.

Check out our website sign-ups for you as a volunteer and/or participant in our Summer Jam Tour: www.urbancrest.org/summer-jam-tour.

Pray that God does great things by adding many new believers to His Kingdom that only He can get credit for through SJT12 this summer! May our prayer request mirror the prayer request of Apostle Paul in Ephesians 6:19…that God would give us boldness to proclaim the gospel with clarity!

Soularium…it’s just Solarium without “u” [you]…building bridges!

Our Soularium training on Sunday May 6^th was truly a dynamic collaborative partnership with Brian Frye, Collegiate Ministries for State Convention of Baptists in Ohio, Pastor Aaron Taylor [our youth pastor] and me with local missions!

What an awesome time together learning to build bridges to connect with others…even total strangers... and hear some of their “personal stories”. Then we had the opportunity to share our story, our testimony of how Christ has transformed our lives. This built a bridge and connection for us to share the Good News of the gospel with others.

After a time of breaking up into small groups and gaining feedback from all attendees, we learned the 3 primary reasons why we don’t share our faith and the gospel with others:

1. Fear of rejection
2. Apathy toward others
3. Don’t know how to share one’s faith

This training was designed to help us overcome all three of these objections/fears. We partnered 1 on 1 to practice using the 48 pictures of Soularium to engage, listen, and build bridges/connections with others so we could share our story [testimony] and the Gospel.

We had over 70 attendees, foot-soldiers for Christ, who were trained and then deployed throughout Lebanon and Cincinnati Outlet Mall in Monroe. Meeting folks, sharing the Soularium pictures, listening to personal stories, and sharing their personal stories [testimonies].

The beautiful gorgeous Sunday afternoon was a blessing since so many families were enjoying picnics, parks, etc….Our foot-soldiers for Christ saturated the parks, side-walks, downtown and the outlet malls connecting with others.

As planned, we returned back to UBC to share about what God did. Youth and adults shared about how well connecting with others had gone. Everyone was excited about what God did and how they learned to build bridges with others. God even blessed when a boy prayed to accept Christ! Praise the Lord!

Our local mission strategy is to keep building on this momentum for Summer Jam Tour 2012 as our local missions outreach this summer. Check out: www.Urbancrest.org/Summer-Jam-Tour for sign-ups and details. Our vision is to deploy each person trained to use Soularium throughout our Summer Jam Tour events.

Through building this relational “bridge” using the picture stories of Soularium, folks begin to “unpack” their life story…this makes the conversation more personal and relational. Quite frankly, I was surprised what folks were sharing with me in just a few minutes. As this sharing takes place, the barriers to the gospel are reduced as we share our transformational personal stories [testimonies] and the Good News of the gospel as we share scripture.

Hebrews 4:12-13 tells us that God’s Word is powerful and effective. As we combine sharing His Word along with the work of the Holy Spirit, God begins a great work in the lives of those who need Christ.

Our 1^st Summer Jam Tour 2012 [SJT 2012] event is May 30^th, Ultimate Disc Tournament at Warren County Career Center [on 48, just north of Rt. 122].

This is a rallying cry to all of you who are now trained in building these relational bridges through Soularium... we need you to attend all Summer Jam Tour 2012 ministry events, sharing your story through Soularium. See you all there!

Below is our complete summer schedule for SJT 2012. Plan to be there, have fun, and share your faith!

Baskets of Hope Celebrates Third Anniversary at UBC

Volunteers hard at work in the gym preparing our Baskets of Hope.

“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures…”

 [1 Cor. 15: 3-4, NKJV]

During this Easter season, we celebrate the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ -- Jesus Christ, the Hope of the Gospel! What a great time to reach out to our community through our Baskets of Hope [BoH] ministry to share this Good News of the Gospel. In addition, we blessed recipients with food to share with their families around their dinner tables while remembering Easter.

Registration is a great time to get to know new members of our community.

On Sunday evening, April 1^st , we blessed families at Urbancrest and Living Word Baptist Church, our new church plant right here in Lebanon, with our Baskets of Hope [BoH]. We celebrated our 3^rd anniversary for BoH too! We also added our third BoH service. Our Hispanic Ministry, lead by Ruben Calzado, met in room 203 where our guests worshiped and heard God’s Word in Spanish and English; this was a bilingual service!

Our UBC youth praise team led our worship time together [Thanks, Mike Copenhaver], along with our drama team. Our youth were awesome! We thank the Lord for what He is doing in their lives!

Our Youth Praise Team leading worship.

Pastor Tom shared our Easter message with great practical illustrations using his golf club. We had several respond to the Gospel invitation including five [5] who invited Christ into their lives for the first time and several others who made re-commitments or responded in another way to Gospel! Praise the Lord! Pray that these new believers connect with UBC and become Christ-like disciples serving the Lord in their ministry calling.

We served 126 families at UBC and 23 families at Living Word [our new church plant in Lebanon], for a total of 149 families! This is about twice the number of families as we served for our first Easter BoH!

Thanks BoH team for the hard work, calls, and follow-up with our BoH families to make all this possible. The preparation and distribution of our food baskets went very fast and efficiently.

Our BoH team is led by Kristy Purkey with contributing team leaders Nathan Coates, Melanie & Rob Pritchard, Cathy Dwire, Janie Caudill [lead LWBC location], and Sandy Huddleston. Photographs submitted by Dewayne Jeffers. To learn more about BoH and how you may serve in this ministry, please contact Kristy Purkey: ppkp90@embarqmail.com or 937.604.1461.  

Christmas Brings Hope to Local Families

Baskets of Hope reached a new level in Lebanon in December. Three services were held simultaneously for over three hundred families! We praise the Lord for His goodness because we know that without Him, this would not have been possible.

Under the direction of Kristy Purkey, our new BOH leader and her teams, two hundred and seventy-five families received Baskets of Hope at our UBC Christmas event on December 18. Registration team leader, Nathan Coates, reported that families started arriving well before 5 PM for our 6 PM service. The registration team handled the increased number of recipient families with efficiency, enthusiasm and warmth. Thanks, registration team, for your attitude of service!

Over 300 families attended Baskets of Hope services on December 18, 2011.

BoH guests and UBC members came together in our Worship Center to sing Christmas praise-arrangements with our choir and praise team led by Pastor Dave Bickers. A new, added dimension to our BOH service was the baptism of two people from our Thanksgiving BOH event. We all witnessed and celebrated the change that Jesus Christ has made in their lives!

 

After Pastor Tom shared a brief Christmas message from God’s Word, five guests came forward to pray with our counselors who were led by Sandy Huddleston. They invited Jesus into their hearts and lives, truly receiving the Gift of Christmas found only through trusting Christ!

 

After the service, Melanie & Rob Pritchard and our assembly team set a record time of getting all 275 families through the receiving process in 35 minutes! This included the gift area, overseen by Jessica Copenhaver, where over 400 age-appropriate gifts were distributed through the generosity of families at Urbancrest.
Thanks to everyone who stepped up to donate gifts, monies or to help wrap the gifts!



Hispanic BOH families met separately at UBC for their own service in Spanish. We assembled a bilingual team from UBC that served by sharing their testimonies, reading God’s Word, presenting the Gospel and praying, etc. in Spanish! Our Bible study leader Ruben also shared about our plans to begin Bible studies. Ruben hails from Cuba so he is fluent in Spanish and culturally relevant with the Hispanic community. The initial stage in our Hispanic Ministry strategy is to begin Bible studies in homes or apartments in order to develop connections and nurture Christ-like disciples.


Our third BOH service was at a second location in Lebanon, Living Word Bible Church, a church plant that began in September 2011. Their BOH format was very similar to the others with distribution to many families that live close by the 500 West Mulberry Street location. Exciting news: When Pastor Chris Straw gave the Gospel invitation, several guests responded by giving their lives to Christ!


Thanks to all participants for your service and partnership in our Baskets of Hope ministry which is helping so many families and changing lives for eternity as they find the true hope in Christ.


We look forward to our next BOH celebration for Easter, Sunday evening, April 1st! Please mark your calendars now and make plans to serve and join God in His mission as we share the Gospel with our neighbors in need. To serve, please contact Kristy Purkey at ppkp90@embarqmail.com.



Each Basket of Hope included ham, two cans of green beans,
two cans of corn, a gallon of milk, butter, salad, salad dressing,
boxed potatoes, cookie mix, sugar and other
trimmings for a family Christmas dinner.



Hope for Thanksgiving



Volunteers assembled 298 Baskets of Hope in 2 locations.



We served 298 families in Lebanon, OH with our Baskets of Hope [BoH] on Sunday, November 20, 2011! This set a new record for families who attended our Baskets of Hope service and received food for their holiday celebration. What a blessing to share the hope we have in Christ with folks from our community!

In addition to the record attendance,
services were held and baskets distributed simultaneously at
two [2] locations that evening...
at Urbancrest and at our new church plant, Living Word Bible Church
meeting in the Professional Services Unlimited building on Columbus Avenue.

Families at both locations received turkey, corn, green beans, boxed potatoes, milk, cookie mix, and more! More importantly, after the gospel was shared in both Baskets of Hope services, God moved and blessed as people came forward during Pastor Tom’s invitation. We had nine [9] new believers and three [3] people re-dedicating their lives to Christ! In addition, five [5] people came forward requesting to be baptized here at Urbancrest during our Christmas BoH service.



Families picked up their Baskets of Hope in our gymnasium
after attending a special Thanksgiving worship service.


Our Christmas BoH services will be Sunday evening, December 18th at Urbancrest and Living Word Bible Church [LWBC]. LWBC has moved to their new location, 500 W. Mulberry Street, here in Lebanon, to better serve our community and grow as a church.

If you know of a family that needs a Basket of Hope for Christmas, please call 49HOPE4 (494-6734) and leave their name, phone number, and address so we can add them to our Christmas BoH list.

Your family can help serve our community through BoH Christmas the evening of December 18th. For more BoH details, either for recipients or to volunteer, please contact our BoH leader, Kristy Purkey at ppkp90@embarqmail.com.



Greeters in the gym made guests feel welcome as they
went through the lines to pick up the Baskets of Hope.