DC Pics

More pictures of our journey in DC...

Ray at the National Mall, in front of the Captial

Me in front of the Capital.

Our Nation's Capital...

Washington Monument

Orchids at the Botanical Gardens...

Another beautiful orchid...

Old and New

The long wait for pictures has come to an end. I lost the cable that goes from my camera to my computer in our move and I have had no luck with finding one; however, I was recently informed that all I need was the card out of my camera - I discovered that the card fits right into the side of my computer! Ta Da! And now we have pictures...

Here are pictures of our "old" house and our "new" house...By old and new I mean "old" - the first house we lived in when we moved to DC and "new" is our second, current place of residence.

Our "old" house was three blocks off of Mt. Vernon Avenue on East Howell Avenue in Del Ray - an area of Alexandria, VA.

The front of our "old" house.

The backyard of our "old" house.

The front of our "new" house - we have a white picket fence & a porch!

The fireplace in our den...

Our massive backyard. It goes all the way down the side of the house and across the back of the house.

Take Off Complete!

We had our official launch - our grand opening to the public...DC Metro Church is now in the air! It was a really exciting day yesterday...one that followed a week of things that just didn't seem to work out. We had a gas buy down scheduled (where we had agreed with a gas station to buy down the price of gas by $0.50/gallon for up to two hours) - and after finalizing details, contacting newspapers, TV & Radio stations with Press Releases, we had to cancel it and retract our P.R.'s because the gas station came back and said we decided not to do this. We had print materials that were supposed to be delivered by Friday that aren't coming in until today, so much of our resources weren't available; signs have been printed in the wrong color; our 50,000 household mailer (shown above) only hit a small portion of the zip codes we intended for it to hit prior to Sunday...it seemed like it was one thing after another last week. However, God is good and He knows our heart and vision to was to do His business and loved on people.

We did have some great things happen last week...we were on two radio stations with our produced radio announcement (thank you Celebration!). One of the stations was a secular station where one 30 sec. radio spot is $750 - CRAZY! They did, however, make us quite a deal and came down to $86 per 30 sec. spot...GO GOD! We also participated in First Thursday on the Avenue - passing out water, glow bracelets and dog biscuits - as we shared with people and invited them to services on Sunday.

The truly amazing this is that we had 250 people join us for church yesterday. We started out with 2 services, which is not normal (if you can anything about starting a church normal)...most churches starting out begin with one service and grow to two. We had around 100 people at our 9:00am service and around 150 people at our 10:15am service. Absolutely amazing...I think it truly blew everyone of us who have been praying about this for 9-10 months to 9 years, as Pastor David & Taryn have...it happened and God blew this thing off the ground from the get-go...

We will have pictures up very soon from yesterday as well as a copy of the service available on the DC Metro Church website at www.dcmetrochurch.org.

Thank you so much for all of you who have been praying for us and for the church - don't stop now. Now we get to steward the wonderful people God has sent our way and what a huge job that is...

Earthquakes in Peru

I was catching up on some blogs this morning, when I made it to Pastor Kerri Weems' blog - she and her husband are the lead Pastor's at Celebration Church in Jacksonville (I attended Celebration when I was in college & our pastors now - Pastors David & Taryn - are from Celebration), when I read about some Earthquakes in Peru last week...

Celebration has a church in Arequipa, Peru...Read the post from Pastor Kerri's blog below:

Some of you may have heard about the terrible earthquake that hit Peru recently. Others of you may not have. I found out about it from Pastor Dino Rizzo’s blog. It seems that the earthquake did not get much media coverage here in the States. We are in a unique position to help. While we will not be mobilizing a team from here, our church in Peru is ready to move forward with aid, as is our good friend in Lima, Pastor Robert Barringer. If you want to help, read the info below.

“Skilled contractors/carpenters are needed immediately in Pisco, Peru. This is one of the areas hardest hit by the recent earthquakes. Coordination of these efforts is being handled by Healing Place Church. If you or someone you know is willing to go and able to fund their own airfare (currently around $1000.00) please contact Marc Cleary at marc.clear@healingplacechurch.org. Food and housing in Peru will be provided when you arrive.”

Celebration Church, Arequipa is gathering basic needs, such as supplies of food, water and blankets to send in to the families in these areas. The Peruvian military has agreed to help us by transporting these supplies for us. Teams from our church in Peru will be traveling with the military to help distribute these items as well as to simply love on these precious people. Financial donations can be sent to:

Peru Outreach / P. O. Box 551475 / Jacksonville, FL 32255

100% of all donations go towards relief supplies

If anyone is interested or feels led to help in any way with this, please let me know. You can email me at smobley@dcmetrochurch.org or summermobley@gmail.com.

August E-Newsletter

Here's our E-Newsletter that went out today about DC Metro Church. It has some great pictures and information in about what we've been doing. Enjoy! If you are interested in receiving this newsletter monthly through email you can sign up here.

The Launch Team

It has been incredible watching God assemble the individuals that He desires be a part of DC Metro’s launch team. We have been praying for months, asking God for divine appointments with individuals who will be a part of the team that will help launch the church on September 9th. You never know when you are going to get that inner nudge from the Holy Spirit to share with someone about the vision of the church or to invite them to one of our vision nights - it has happened to me everywhere from standing in line at Best Buy to introducing myself to a family at the beach (yes, we found a quasi “beach” half an hour outside the city for fun family days with Taryn and Isaac). Matthew 28 reminds us to go into the world and make followers of Christ. A cool thing about this passage is that in the Greek the word for “go” is literally translated as “as you are going.” I believe this means as we are going about our normal daily activities (like going to Best Buy- There is not a man alive that does not like this store!), God will strategically place divine appointments in your path. All we have to do is stay in communication with Him, and He will show us the people He wants us talk to and will give us the words to say.

It has been encouraging to see how the Lord has placed the newly recruited members of the launch team in our path “as we have been going.” A tremendous praise report is that we now have 65 incredible members of the launch team! We are well on our way to our goal of 100 people to be on the launch team before our first service. Please join us in our prayers for the remaining 35 people who will be just the right fit for the DC Metro launch team. We count it an amazing privilege to be a part of this move of God in this DC metro area, and we want to invite as many people as possible to be a part of this high calling.

Vision Night

One of the most significant tools that the Lord has used to draw people to the launch team is our Vision Night. We have had three Vision Nights -one at the Stine House (that’s us!), one at the Mobley’s (Thanks Ray and Summer), and one at Regent University (Thanks again to Cheryl Gould). This is an opportunity for everyone on the launch team to invite anyone that might be interested in finding out more information about the church. After dessert and coffee are served and people have had a chance to visit, I typically share for twenty to thirty minutes about the vision that the Lord has given us to start a church that would be a significant force in “building a God-first culture in the DC metro area” (something I am very passionate about because it is a vision that Taryn and I have been carrying in our hearts for the past nine years!) I also share from the book of Nehemiah because just as Nehemiah was called by God to rebuild the a physical wall in the capitol city, DC Metro Church has been called by God to be a part of rebuilding the spiritual wall of a God-first culture to surround our capitol city. The most recent Vision Night Reception in the solarium at Regent was such a big success that we have decided to have another one in the same location (Diagonal Road right off King Street in Old Town Alexandria) Friday, August 24th at 6:30pm. If you know anyone in the DC area that might be interested in coming to this, please contact Summer at smobley@dcmetrochurch.org.

The Outreaches

We had a great outreach last Monday night at the Screen on the Green Event on the National Mall. Every summer they show old movies on the lawn in front of the Capitol building (D.C. is a cool place to live). We tried to think of the most creative way to reach the 10,000 plus people who attend the event and came up with the idea of passing out trivia cards with random facts about the movie Casa Blanca such as “the difference in height changes between Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman throughout the film.” Overall, we handed out all 600 cards to various individuals and had a great response as we met what, at the time, was many people’s “felt need” (to be entertained and find out some fun interesting facts about the oldie but goodie movie they were about to watch). As DC Metro desires to reach out to the surrounding community with the amazing love of Christ, I have been prompted to be continually asking myself, “What are the felt needs of the unbelievers around me?”

The idea behind meeting the “felt need” has been a theme in all of our outreaches. The simple thought is that by meeting a person’s felt need, it will help them become more open to having their real need met. We all know what that real need is, and His name is Jesus! Jesus modeled this type of ministry when He would meet people’s physical needs (such as for healing or for food) to help open their hearts to be receptive to acknowledging their deepest need. Sometimes when we are meeting someone’s felt need, God has opened the opportunity to invite the person to the first DC Metro service (where many will meet Him!) or to have a good conversation with them, but even when it does not, we believe that every single time we can meet a person’s felt need, it is an act of worship to God because we are serving the person in His name. Matthew 10:42 says that the Lord will remember and reward every single cup of cold water handed out in His name.

Speaking of handing out cold water, we had a very successful water bottle outreach on Thursday August 2nd. We spoke to hundreds of people about the new church, and I think it is fair to say that we officially won over the children in this nighttime outreach. In order to do this, we gave away “Glow Bracelets” and let's just say, “It was a huge hit.”

On the following Saturday, we also handed out over 1100 water bottles at the Friendship Firehouse Festival Event. Handing out free cold bottled water on a hot day was definitely meeting a felt need in the community. People are shocked when you offer them something for free, and it often opens up an opportunity to talk with them. We successfully won over kids and parents with “Face Painting.” We painted over a hundred little faces with some pretty cool "face art." You can check out some of our face painting masterpieces at our new DC Metro Church Myspace Page. We felt that this was our most successful outreach yet. In fact, we got into the Alexandria Gazette Newspaper from our Friendship Firehouse Festival Outreach! The photo and information announced our service times as well as our location and our first Sunday, September 9th!!!

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We are very thankful for each one who is reading this newsletter. God has given us an amazing support team across the country to stand with us in this mission of building a God-first culture in the DC metro area. Your prayers are an incredible gift that we appreciate tremendously!

Please Pray For...

• God to lead us in the mission of building a God-first culture in the DC metro area
• Protection, provision, and guidance for each member of the DC Metro Launch Team
• 100 people on the Launch Team
• 400 people to attend first Sunday (including many non-believers) – September 9th @ 9am and 10:15!
• That DC Metro Church would become financially independent before we even start. (Thank You Jesus!)
• That God would continue to give us favor in the city and with the community
• That each member of the Launch Team would keep a vibrant personal relationship with the Lord and grow closer to Him in the midst of launching the church
• That DC Metro Church would continue to glorify Him in all that we do!

Thank you again for believing in what God has called us to do!

We love you guys,

David & Taryn Stine

Lead Pastors of DC Metro Church

Nehemiah 2:20 “The God of Heaven will give us success.”

PS – If you know of individuals in the DC Metro Area who would like to be a part of our launch team, please email us and let us know the best way to get in touch with them…

Papa Gooch

David Goochee is one of terrific launch team dudes...his birthday was yesterday, so a cake was made for him...

Now, it is no ordinary cake...seeing as how most of our launch team has been fasting (we're on the final stretch of a 21 day fast)...David cannot eat an ordinary cake. Granted, this cake he's been given is not a cake that can be eaten either...it's just mainly for fun...

Happy Birthday David!

News & Hurricane Dean

News...what's that? Ray and I decided that we would not get cable when we moved. It's just an expense that we felt we didn't need...knowing how busy we would be once we got up here. That's has become very true - we've had no time to watch any TV. However, the downside is that I have no idea what's going on in the world.

Great example...I got an email from my mom today with pictures of Hurricane Dean showing that it's track is headed right to them...(My parents are still living their fabulous life in Roatan, Honduras...)


You can see another track here.

Please be praying that Hurrican Dean would stay far away from Honduras...it's a crazy place to be when something like this is becoming a threat...especially when their ways of communicating would be broken down...

Screen on the Green

Last night a group of us went into DC to watch Casablanca on a huge screen at the National Mall. We went a few weeks ago and did the same thing (HBO & Comcast does this every year on Monday nights through July and August), but we saw The Thing (From Another World).

Last night there had to be over 10,000 people there. It was absolutely insane to see how many people can cram themselves into the rectangular area of grass between the Capital and the Washington Monument...all to sit and watch an old movie. It's unbelievable.

We went last night to do two things - 1. to watch the movie, and 2. to pass out the card you see above. A couple of the guys on our team put this together...we passed out over 600 of these cards to various people as they sat and waited for the movie to start. We weren't pushing to preach to people or get them saved, but more simply to provide them with some fun trivia and hope for an open door to talk about DC Metro Church.

I would say we are getting very good at doing things like this - Pastor David refers to it at meeting people's felt needs. The big reason we do things like passing out water bottles (on really hot days) is because it's a felt or physical need they have...by meeting this need, it allows a door to open that allows us to talk about our passion and DC Metro Church...God gets to take it from there. It's the same idea about handing out the cards last night. No one wants some pushy 'christian' to come up to them (while they are relaxing with friends and family, eating food or playing with their dog) and interrupt them to share something about God...it's pushy and I think many times inconsiderate to do things like that. (Granted there's a time and a place for it, but often times it's the wrong time and wrong place). So, instead we meet people where they are with the need they have and let divine intervention interceed.

Aside from passing out Trivia cards...we had a great time watching the movie. I really love being able to just jump on the Metro and ride 5 minutes and be in the heart of the most influencial city in the world. There's so much to do and so much to see...

Hmm, that makes me wonder what we might do this weekend...

Vision Night Numero Dos

Just a few pictures from our second vision night which was held in our backyard...I can't believe the incredible atmosphere we were able to create in our backyard...it was absolutely perfect! We had a great turn out where everyone was able to just hang out. Some of the guys even broke out the guitars and sang us some songs...

First Thursday on the Avenue

Dogs, Biscuts, Water, Kids, Glow Bracelets, and more...

Pastor David with Issac and one of the neighborhood dogs.

The glow bracelets were a hit...

Andy with his new talent...

Our spot on the street...

Friendship Firehouse Festival

Our booth from across the street at the top of the Frienship Firehouse Museum.

It's Nemo! (I did this one...)

Pastor David tried out his hand at painting a two-headed snake.

Doing what we do best...meeting people...

The Enthusiastic John Lee!

One of the many dogs who enjoyed our yummy dog biscuts.

There was a lot going on at our booth.

Face painting...

Our live advertisement for FREE face painting.

More face painting...even the adults watned their faces painted!

Aww...she was absolutely adorable...and the thing she wanted on her cheek was our teal DC Metro Bullseye!

It did get quite crowed at some points of the day...

It was a major success...we were able to love on the people of Alexandria and just have a good 'ole time in the heat...

50 and Counting...

This past Friday night we had our third Vision Night. Vision Night is a party/reception type deal where we have invited people who we think might be interested or have shown interest in learning more about DC Metro Church. Our first Vision Night was back in July - we had a fabulous turn out and practically doubled the number of people on our launch team. Our second vision night was on August 3rd with our third following this past Friday night. We are now up to 60 people on our launch team...we are quickly arriving to the "100 people" we have been praying for...

Our last few weeks have been very busy and packed with lots of excitement. On August 1st we began a 21 day fast. Now, this looks different to many people on our launch team...some (mostly the guys) are doing a full fast where they are only drinking fluids, others are doing fruit/veggies/juices (like me) and others are fasting from sweets or one meal a day. It has been very exciting to see how God is moving due to our sacrifices of our physical need for food...but it's also been very draining. It is highly recommended that when you are fasting (especially for a long period of time) that you limit your physical activities...duh, because you are not taking in a normal amount of food...you don't have a "normal" amount of energy. Well...let's just say I think our amount of physical activities may have increased for the first week of our fast instead of decreased...

Let me see if I can put this into perspective...

• August 1st (first day of fast)...not so bad, typical day working in the "office" (which right now is whatever coffee shop has free internet); ended the day with a prayer meeting
• August 2nd (Thursday)...First Thursday on the Avenue (The street Ray & I live on is perpendicular to a street called Mt. Vernon Avenue. The area we are in has this "small town" sort of feel...on Mt. Vernon there are a bunch of small shops, businesses, restaurants, ect...it's the ideal description of a small town "main street".) Anyways...all of the businesses join together on the first thursday of the month (throughout the summer) and have a street party. We (DC Metro Church) have joined with this group of businesses and we were able to set up a table on the Avenue and participate in First Thursday. We did our ever famous FREE water bottle hand-out. We also gave away glow bracelets & lolipops to the kids and dog biscuts to the dogs (and some people who asked) because EVERYONE and their mom up here owns a dog...
• August 3rd (Friday)...2nd Vision Night (this required the entire day to prepare for...preparing food (which is the WORST thing in the world to have to do when you are fasting), baking cookies, setting up tables, cleaning the house...all to get ready to love on people for about 4 hours in the evening and then cleaning up and breaking everything day afterwards (last person left after 11pm that night).
• August 4th (Saturday) - 5:00am...time for me (Summer) & friend Angie to wake up and go reserve our spot at the Annual Friendship Firehouse Festival in Old Town. We set up a tent, table, chairs, coolers and face painting stations. We again passed out FREE water bottles (we handed out OVER 1,100 in 4 hours), gave our dog biscuits and painted hundreds of awesome little faces with flowers, butterflies, two-headed snakes, lizards and even dalmatian puppies (go Angie!).
• August 4th (Saturday evening)...we moved our lovely friend Julie Reams in to her new apartment...
• August 5th (Sunday)...rest...finally!
• August 6th & 7th...catch up days in the office at St. Elmo's Coffee Shop
• August 8th & 9th (Wednesday & Thursday)...Ray and I took 1.5 days off to drive 3 hours to Ocean City, MD to visit with his mom, grandma and aunt. We had a great time, but had to turn around and come back on Thursday to make it to Worship Band Practice that evening.
• August 10th (Friday)...Vision Night prep...shopping, set-up, same as before...
• August 11th (Saturday)...rest in the morning...visit to the Potomac Yards Regal Cinema (this is where we will be having services) for a walk through (oh yea...we did watch a movie there somewhere in the 5 hours we spent at the theatre)...
• August 12th (Sunday)...move, move, move...yep, it's becoming a weekly occurance, but we moved another couple in to their new place in Fairfax today...

Wow, that's exhausting to look back at the past two weeks. I don't feel like we have stopped yet since we got here...it's been truly great though...we might be tired (and hungry), but we wouldn't trade it for anything...well, I might trade it for a coke, friend chicken and some chocolate chip cookies right now...

Just some cool things...

• We (DC Metro) made the Alexandria Gazette. I have a copy of it in which I need to scan because it's just a local newspaper that doesn't get put on the internet. Once I scan it I will post it. It's not anything huge, but it's a one page spread about the Friendship Firehouse Festival we attended...Pastor David had his picture taken as he passed out some water bottles and we got a little bleep in the article about who we are and about our upcoming launch in September!
• Celebration Church (our sister church back in Jacksonville, FL) was featured on the Channel 4 news in Jax. It was really a great segment about Celebration. Click here to watch the story.
• Pastor David and Taryn found out that they are having a...
  
  Well, that's all for now...I still can't find the cable for my camera, but I do have some pictures from our last few events that a great friend sent so I can post some pics...
  
  
  
  
  
  

We Are Alive..

It's been a long month...but 800+ miles we have finally arrived in Alexandria, VA. This past Monday we picked up our 22 foot Penske moving truck and packed it as full as possible...yep, we filled the entire truck...it's amazing how much stuff you can accumulate over the years (and even after throwing away A LOT of stuff, we still had A LOT of stuff). Tuesday we spent the day saying good-bye (or see you later) to friends and ending the night with a dinner at Ray's parents with friends and family joining us. We pulled away around 8pm Tuesday night to embark on a very long 13.5 hour drive (Ray drove the entire way while his brother Craig and I attempted to sleep and eat and fight...). We pulled into a friends' house in Dumfries, VA around 9:30am on Wednesday morning to take our pick-up truck off of the trailer, rest for a little, and finish our drive of 45 more minutes into Alexandria.

We met our WONDERFUL landlords on Wednesday around lunch time to receive our keys and sign our lease and then the fun began. We unpacked the whole truck and began to set up house on Wednesday. It was a really long day, but God managed to give us the grace and energy to make it thru the day. Thursday we dropped Ray's brother off at the Reagan National Airport to head back to Florida and headed back to the house to finish unpacking and organizing.

It's really been great so far. God has really blessed us with the place we are living in right now...it's absolutely beautiful and it is so much more than we could have ever hoped or dreamed of. The neighborhood that we are living in is great...we've met all of our surrounding neighbors (who have been very generous) as well as Mr. Max who is the neighborhood cat (he's already been inside our house to check things out and I have bought treats to bribe him to be my friend...). Ray won't really appreciate this much, but everyone has asked us if we have kids or a dog...and of course our response is no to both...without fail the response we get back is..."Well you better get one or the other or both"...EVERYONE is the neighborhood seriously has kids or a dog. And when I say EVERYONE...that's what I mean. It's a truly fabulous neighborhood and we really hope that our stay here is long.

I have lots of pictures, but I have been unable to find the cable that connects my camera to my computer (it's in an unpacked box somewhere...). As soon as I find a cable or get a new one I will get our pictures posted.

Please be praying for us as we continue to get settled in and things with my job really get into full swing. We have a lot coming up with the church...meetings, dinners, outreaches and so much more as we are less than 2 months out from our first service on Sept. 9th.

Keep checking the blog because there will be lots more to come (we have no TV, so is there a better way to spend my time in the evenings than blogging?...Nope, don't think so...)

I Need Words

I need words as wide as sky

I need language as large as the longing inside

And I need a voice bigger than mine

And I need a song to sing you, that I've yet to find

~David Crowder "I Need Words"

More Pics from Our Anniversary

Ray and I went to SeaWorld to celebrate our Anniversary. As Florida school teachers we get in free all year long - so it was a great, cheap way to celebrate.

This was at the dolphin tank.

Penguins...Brrr....

Clyde & Seamore - This is by far my favorite show at SeaWorld.

This guy cracks me up everytime.

JUMP!

What a huge animal?!

One of my other favorite things to do while at SeaWorld is to go feed the seals and sea lions. I seriuosly spend like $20.00 feeding them. These little guys are two that I got to feed!

Beluga Whales...this one was really curios. Everytime someone's flash on their camera went off, he would swim right up to the window.

BELIEVE!

It's a bird, it's a plane....no it's SHAMU!

BRAVO!