At the heart of the Crossgate Women’s Ministry is the desire to help our ladies deepen their walk with the Lord through in-depth study of God’s Word, worshiping together in church, and building encouraging relationships with one another.

We recently created a new Crossgate Ladies Facebook Group to facilitate consistent communication among the women involved in our ministry.  So many things can be shared within this private members-only group, including prayer requests, questions that may challenge or encourage our spiritual journeys, the joys and sorrows that make up our lives, as well as invitations and news about ministry events, photos, and snippets of personal information that help us get to know one another better!

Some Crossgate Ladies’ posts:

“Let’s keep sharing about ourselves! That was fun last night to learn who was once a former Firefighter, who once was a fighter pilot, and the former mule rider!!! Let’s keep adding our stories!…”

“Thank you everyone who had a part in planning this event. I truly enjoyed every minute with none of the self-consciousness that usually accompanies ‘mixers’!”

“We are thrilled to be part of a Church where people are seeking to follow Jesus and share the gospel with the community and the world.”

Our Focus Groups are what we refer to as “the church in homes.”  This small group ministry provides a unique opportunity for everyone at Crossgate to not only meet new people, but to develop some close, personal friendships with others in the body.  These are special times of fellowship around the Word, sharing and praying for one another, and just enjoying each other over some refreshments.     

Look at what some people have said about this ministry and how God has used it in their lives:

“Being in the focus group has helped me overcome my fear of praying in front of a group of people.”  (Note: you don’t have to pray out loud to be in a group.)

“I haven’t been involved in a ministry like Focus Group before.  It’s awesome to get to know people on a more personal level than you could ever do by just attending church on Sunday.  They really become part of your extended family.  Plus I have been apprehensive talking about my faith and this has been a great way for me to get used to asking questions and talking about what God means to me.”

“When we moved to the area three years ago, we found community by becoming a part of Crossgate, and committing to our Focus Group where we have made great friends, learned deeper spiritual truths, and shared our joys and heartaches with those we have come to know and love.” 

“Since we are relatively new to  Crossgate, the Focus Group has offered us an opportunity to get to know in a special way a smaller group of people from the church family in a short period of time.  These folks have been our “go to” people in our church life.  We have grown to love our Focus Group buddies and our Wednesday night get-togethers and miss it when we are unable to attend.”

Well, if you have looked around on Sunday morning, you can see that God is bringing more and more new folks to Crossgate and of course, we are thrilled to have each one.  What a blessing it is for us to be able to provide spiritual nurture and encouragement to more and more people – and to be able to provide a real church “family” for people to be a part of.  But as a result of this growth, things are beginning to get a little bit snug in our Worship Service.  We’ve definitely reached the 80% capacity mark – the point where the experts say, you will begin to lose folks because it will be more and more difficult for them to find parking and seating.

Well, the Session has looked at the situation and determined that if we are to continue growing, we need to take some steps to address this “problem.”  There are really only a couple of viable alternatives:   go to a second service and split up the congregation (which I don’t think anyone wants to do)  or  go to Phase 2 in our building master plan which entails building an educational/office building and knocking out the walls of our existing sanctuary (which would seat around 400-450).

The Session believes the latter alternative is the better of the two, and so we have put together a Building Committee that will be working with Signature Architects and Trehel Corp. (the designer and builder of our current facility) in order to ascertain our immediate needs and what steps we need to be taking next.  Michael Thorsland will be chairing this committee and Mike Benning, Scott Coffman, Teresa Bruce and Debra Andrews will serve on the committee with him.  Let’s be praying for them as they work on this – that God would give them great wisdom and discernment, and that it would be very clear what God would have us do next.

It is possible that before we are able to build we will have to go to a second service – at least temporarily.  Once we begin having 200 people come consistently on Sunday morning, we will need to look at this.  But our desire is that we be able to stay together and continue worshiping as one body.  So even if we have to go to two services, our goal will be to get back together as soon as possible.