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Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Card Ministry Samples for Sept 08




Ok, as promised, I got some good daylight today and managed to take a photo of the cards we made last night at our Card Ministry meeting. They are simple but I thought they turned out nice and there were several "new stampers" in attendance so overall we were very pleased with our progress AND enjoyed our stamping fellowship time.

Some of you may be wondering, "what in the world is a card ministry???" so I will answer that for you. Using the talents that God gave us (and in my case, using the stamps that others with far more artistic skills created!) we make up a variety of cards to encourage members of our congregation at New Creation Presbyterian Church in O'Fallon, IL.

This month we made birthday, anniversary and thinking of you cards which lend themselves well to general encouragement to get well/sympathy cards and anything in between. Sometimes we make sympathy cards as well but naturally, we hope never to need any of those! We also make cards for our pastor to use when he would like to send out a card.

How did this get started? Well...it grew out of my obsession for stamping, of course! I figured it was a natural progression and I have several friends who participate in similar programs on a much larger scale at their home churches so I figured, "why not?" They say to find your passion and use it....stamping is MY passion so I love this ministry! If we had a Chocolate Ministry, I would join that one, too. ;-)

I started stamping when my youngest son (now in college) was in 2nd grade...after a few years I networked with some like minded friends at church who were interested and we started making birthday cards for our members. While I taught the 5th and 6th grade Sunday school class (a long time ago...at that point my "baby" was in 5th grade!) and the kids wanted to do a service project so they took over the card ministry. The cards became far more creative at that point and since it was right after 9-11-2001, we switched to sending post cards rather than cards in envelopes.

Eventually, the church we were attending merged with our current church, New Creation Presbyterian and it took a little while but after a few months one of my friends there asked me why we weren't doing a card ministry....well, that's all it took! Thanks to my friend, Carol, we started up again and have been sending cards ever since. Until last night, I was the only stamper in the group who actually had stamps so I have designed and prepped the cards for our meetings and we all pitch in and share the load while doing the cards.

I know there are many other people out there doing card ministries in a variety of ways, but this is how our group operates. We are not formal....we begin with a prayer that God will use our talents to encourage others and then we stamp! Naturally, we enjoy each others' company while we work and the time flies by. We plan to meet monthly and branch out to include our stamping for some other support ministry programs.

If you are intersted in more information about card ministry programs, please drop me a private e-mail at inkerzaway@aol.com and I will try to answer any questions you might have. If you live in the area, you are more than welcome to come and stamp with us. Our next meeting will be Oct 20th at 7 PM. Of course, you would also be more than welcome to join us at church any Sunday morning at 10:30 at the Community Center in the O'Fallon Park. At New Creation, we worship in a casual contemporary (but not "far out") style and we welcome visitors any time.

2 comments:

LaunchingProjectH said...

Your cars are lovely! Simple is the best way to go!

Lisa Page said...

I do like those cards, especially the one with the "Wow Flowers" stamp set. I love simple cards that really make a statement and yours definitely do!

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