Dear SRPC Family,

The summer at SRPC has been over-the-top good. Great camps for middle and high school students, missions trips to New Orleans, Japan, and Montgomery, Alabama (50+ from SRPC going next week), the awesome Camp Seven Rivers (here’s a cute video the camp kids made), and the grand finale has been the Summer Conference. Attendance has been through the roof, great teaching on the Old Testament, rich testimonies from Robyn Shipes, Sam Jones, Chelsea Ebert, and Marie Gigliotti, fun bluegrass music, and unhurried time to visit with really good eats after each evening!

• I’ll be gone this weekend, giving a sermon at Chad Robison’s wedding in Birmingham (and playing golf with a great pastor friend!).

• Great shout-out to the nursery ministry from Kristen Turner. “Hi, Ray! Wanted to share something Blaise told me this morning about the Seven Rivers nursery. Blaise got a boo boo on his foot yesterday and he told me he knew someone else who had boo boos on his feet. He told me that Jesus has boo boos because he loves mama, papa, Blaise, and Knock (Knox)…he proceeded to show me where Jesus’ boo boos were by pointing, and I asked him where he learned all that and he said ‘Nursery.’ I am so thankful!”

• Nancy Glessner is a great mom and SRCS sixth-grade teacher. Her daughter, Nina is 18-years-old and severely afflicted with cerebral palsy and confined to a wheelchair. Nancy’s caregiver for Nina is retiring this year and she needs to fill this part-time position with a caring person. There is no heavy lifting required. This position will preferably be filled by a female. Please contact the church office if you or someone you know would like to meet Nina and talk to Nancy about this.

• What books are you reading this summer? I hope to have some summer reading recommendations for you just about the time summer is over! I did watch a great movie this week – Express–The Ernie Davis Story. I highly recommend it!

• At the end of this letter, I wanted to share a thank you letter from Jamie Richard and a testimony Jean Carland sent upon their departure from SRPC. How our church has been blessed with quality staff who become dear friends.

• This weekend we’ll be preaching on the omnipresence of God. Hope you’re enjoying the “Knowing God” series as much as I am.

I love you dearly, Seven Rivers Church,

Ray


Dear Seven Rivers Family,

From the whole Richard family, we want to say thank you. Over the past 10 years you have given us so much.

• You have loved, disciplined, educated, and played with my children. Thank you.
• You have been dear friends to Angel and me, walking together on the gospel journey. Thank you.
• You have allowed us to teach and lead you, opening your hearts to our ideas and initiatives. Thank you.
• You have provided for us financially so that we can do our work with confidence. Thank you.

But you have also taught us much.
• I learned to be a pastor here—not by doing everything right but by making mistakes, and taking risks, and watching you care for each other. I’m not the same person I was ten years ago-and that’s a good thing.
• I learned that it takes many people with different gifts and abilities to accomplish God’s purposes—I don’t have what it takes to get it done alone, and that’s O.K. God’s design is for us to do it together.
• I learned how the grace of the gospel can actually impact relationships that are tough, ministry assignments that are difficult, and goals that are lofty. The gospel is not something we simply preach but something that we live, or rather that lives out in us.
• And I have learned the value and treasure of staff relationships and team chemistry. Getting your work done is important but enjoying working together and working well together is really a sweet thing when it happens-and it happens often here.

Thank you so much. We will miss you because of the role you played on our lives and the impact you had on us all.

Love,

Jamie Richard and the whole Richard family



Dear Ray,
Now that I have been gone several weeks from Seven Rivers, I wanted to take the time to write a note to you and let you know how much the 5 years I spent as part of the church staff have impacted me and my family.

I remember the first international conference I went to for children’s ministry staff. There were so many broken, weary children’s ministry workers attending. The most common burden these sweet people shared was that their senior pastor and church leadership didn’t support them and didn’t fully support children’s ministry. There was great strife between many of these children’s ministry leaders and their church leadership.

I am so grateful to have been part of a church staff that allowed me to “dream big dreams” for ministry and instead of listing the reasons they could not be accomplished, cheered and encouraged the seemingly impossible. I know that this is not because all of my ideas are sound – unicycling, fishing in the fountain, etc…. there have been some seriously questionable ones – but it’s because Seven Rivers believes in children and children’s ministry.

One of the things that I am so grateful for is that Seven Rivers cares not just about “its own” children, but that the church has an unwavering commitment to the kids of the community. As I look at the Facebook pictures of Camp Seven Rivers and see the diversity of the kids who are attending this year, I see God’s faithfulness. The ministry done during those five weeks of Camp Seven Rivers has changed the trajectory many lives. The ability to create ministries such as Camp Seven Rivers which reach outside the church walls and bring in kids who don’t look like us, don’t act like us and make us just a bit uncomfortable was priceless to me. I love, love, love Camp Seven Rivers and the potential it has to help us grow and know Jesus better.

Above all else I’m grateful for the patience you and Adam showed in helping me to begin to understand the Gospel. I remember asking if you guys could just put it into two sentences for me so it wouldn’t be so vague. Your response was to keep reading, keep learning, keep listening. Well, five years later I am still reading, still learning, still listening and I still don’t fully understand the Gospel, but I do understand my great need for it. Paul and I know that the reason we were brought to Citrus County had nothing to do with jobs or promotions or schools or family. It was the Gospel – and even though we don’t fully understand it, we are radically transformed by it.

Thank you for the opportunity to mentor students. My time at Seven Rivers was so much sweeter because of the middle school and high school students I was able to love and mentor. Even though ministry was sometimes “messy” there is such value in training the next generation to love Jesus and be passionate about sharing their faith.

I want you to know personally that working on staff somehow healed some very deep wounds that I have carried since childhood. I’m really not sure how or when, it just happened. I grew up with a father who was a raging alcoholic. He never gave me his blessing as a child – he never attended anything I did, he never showed pride in my accomplishments, etc. As an adult, I went to counseling to resolve the feelings I had toward my father and it certainly helped me forgive him. But forgiveness doesn’t always mean complete freedom.

Although you and Adam are neither one old enough to be my dad, somehow having those years for you to mentor me, love my family, cheer my accomplishments, and love me even when I fail healed something that was so very broken. I didn’t even realize it was broken until I left Seven Rivers and figured out it was all finally okay.
Thanks for taking a chance on me when you had no idea who I was or what kind of craziness I was going to add to the church staff. :) I miss you guys terribly and am already bored. I have a great idea brewing already for a project. Praying for you guys to find the perfect staff!

Much Love,

Jean