Q. What is Mañan Today?
A: It s a six month public awareness event. We want Athens and our surrounding community to hear a very specific message. We believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ creates a new community. This community is made up of all the nations. The great commission teaches us that we are to go to all the nations. Abraham was called to bless all the nations. Jesus pictures the future as all the nations gathered at his feet. The phrase Mañana Today tries to bridge two gaps the gap between what we know today and what the heavenly community will look like. The second gap is a language gap, we love the juxtaposition between the English and the Spanish words that says, everyone is welcome here.
Q. What prompted launching Mañan Today now?
A. Three things energized our launch. One, we have expanded our service to included a weekly bilingual service. There are lots of people in town who do not know that we are offering this service each week at 11 and we wanted the community to be invited. Two, The rise of racial ideas, that many people thought we had left in the past, caused us to want to differentiate ourselves from faith communities where racism seemed to be tolerated. We wanted to tell the world that we believe that Jesus tore down all of those distinctions and that our church is welcoming to all people. Three, with our renovation many people think that our church is just taking a break, but we wanted the process to be a true refreshing of our hearts and minds. This is the exact right moment to ask people to join a movement more than a building.
Q. Are there more events that will make up the Mañan Today Campaign?
A. Yes. We have five major outreach events planned for the campaign. North Pole- Dec 3; Three Kings Day - Jan 6; Wildflower Planting Day - Feb. 11; Easter Butterfly release - April 1, Dia Del Nino - April 28.
Q. Where will the Wildflower Planting happen?
A. We are developing a meditative garden that will be a place of beauty, prayer and pictures that will be a open to the community. We intend for the multitude of flowers to be a visual representation of the Mañana Today idea-all people dwelling together in harmony?
Q. Is this just a spillover of the agenda from the world?
A. No. In 2014, our church adopted the "Closer-Broader-Younger" strategic ministry plan. Over a year of prayer and planning went into the goals developed through that process and then adopted by the church. We set the goal of reaching 18% diversity in our congregation, which represents the diversity in Athens. Since that time, we have blended our staff, our children's ministry, our youth ministry and our Sunday morning worship services. We think this is the leading of God. We are holding firmly to the core essentials of the Gospel and trying to live more deeply in the implications of God's future community.
Q. What has been the response?
A. We have had 11,892 people view the video we posted. 1,211 people have clicked on it to find out more information. ∑e have had incredible comments, "This is MY church...and I love it! Come join us!", "Awesome!!", "love our church!!!." We even had some calls from people in San Antonio who watched the video and wanted us to know how proud they were of our church.