FROM THE LAY DIRECTOR "It Takes A Village"

Greetings LVCCM Community!

I hope and pray that this message finds you well and that your 4th day walk with Christ is moving you to serve and trust Him more and more each day.

It won’t be long and we’ll be experiencing our 103rd LVCCM weekend! Another amazing opportunity to continue to support our Christian churches in nurturing and developing Christian leaders. As you may know, God has faithfully provided us with over 5,300 cursillistas over our past 102 weekends and I have no doubt His faithfulness will continue! To Him alone be the glory!

We’re very blessed to have our weekends again at Midland Reformed Church in Midland. We sincerely thank them for opening up their church home to us. The Men’s weekend will be held September 24 – 27 and the Women’s weekend will be held October 8 – 11.

It truly takes a village to put on our weekends. Your Secretariat gets the ball rolling to secure a church and dates for the weekend and then seeks out the leaders God would have us call to begin assembling a team to organize and plan the weekend details. Key positions must be filled. The Secretariat prayerfully establishes a list of nominees and then determines a call list for Rector and Rectora. God has faithfully provided Mike Denno and Laura Hollingsworth as our Weekend 103 Rector and Rectora and they have called their Head Chas and Head Servers. Head Chas are Jeff Walk and Sue Browning while the Head Servers are Kris Zastrow and Chris Pashby. Our Head Trainer, Dennis Browning has called our Head Cooks. They are Ray Clement and Lori Periard. The calling then continues to fill out the rest of the positions required on team.   

When the 103 teams were established, I went to our community database to explore the leadership experience on weekend 103. On average, Team 103 members have served on 5 teams. We have 16 former Rector/Rectoras, 14 former Head Chas, 25 former Head Servers and 10 former Head Cooks. Wow! But what I was most excited to learn was we have 19 first time team members with 12 of them being new cursillistas from weekend 102! They will certainly be in good hands with all the experienced leadership on team.

I praise God for all those who have faithfully answered the call to serve on Team 103!  Please visit https://www.lvccm.org/ and hover over the “LVCCM Weekends” tab where you will be able to view our weekend 103 team members and the positions God has called them to. The Teams held their first meeting on Sunday, July 26.

It does take a village and we certainly need to support our teams as they prepare for the weekend. 5,300 past cursillistas needed almost the same number of sponsors. No sponsors, no weekends. It’s truly amazing how our community steps up and obeys the Holy Spirit’s nudge to  invite a friend or family member to attend a weekend. Please ask God who He would ask you to sponsor and then provide the invitation. God will do the rest! Don’t be discouraged with a “no”. Ask the Lord for another name but don’t forget about the one who said no. Ask them again for the next weekend.

You can also help in so many other ways. Please consider donating to the food needs for the weekend. Our Head Servers will be sending out our Sign-Up Genius for you to donate needed items or you can provide financial support by connecting to our PayPal account or by writing a check to LVCCM and mailing it to LVCCM, PO Box 1092, Midland, MI 48641.

Please consider attending the Sendoff or the Closing Ceremony. Consider showing up for set-up or teardown. Write palanca to the candidates and/or the team members. Serve food during the weekend, attend chapel or sing at the serenade. The most important need is for you to be a prayer warrior over this upcoming weekend. Your efforts mean the world to the teams and the candidates!

I have a couple of updates from your Secretariat. We’re in the process of producing two videos. One is a video to introduce our Weekend 103 Rector and Rectora, Mike and Laura, and the other video is a testimonial video from six of our community members. These community members will share their weekend experience and how the Lord is moving in their lives. 

We also have two new Secretariat members. A special welcome and thank you to Travis Jones who is now our Leaders Chair (taking over for Pat Harder) and Andy Welch who is taking the reins of our Community Outreach Coordinator position (taking over for Corey Gillespie). A special thank you goes out to Pat and Corey for their leadership in serving our LVCCM community!

Thank you for your past support of our weekends and I look forward to seeing you at Midland Reformed Church for Weekend 103!

God Loves You and So Do I!

Brian Pickelman

LVCCM Lay Director