Blog : Life Development

When you need to pull a group of people together for a meeting, how do you do that? When you are a family of families, you do it like you do everything else--as a family! At the beginning of the summer, our two Antioch School cohorts met together to discuss why we are going through this training, and what to expect during the summer, and the whole family was invited. We invite you to take a peak inside our meeting.

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Every Monday and Thursday evening this past summer, five young adults gathered with a group from the Ames-Des Moines CityChurch to soak up knowledge and mature in their faith. These individuals were a part of our network’s summer program, Immerse, which is designed to help young adults prepare for life by building strong, biblical foundations.

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There’s something to be said about camping with your own family. You’ve seen each other at your worst, at your most dirty. Sweaty. Now include about eight other families and the barriers of being at your best inside your own home are torn down. There is no escaping the realness of being with people when you see them when they first wake up--before coffee. That’s when you feel like a family.

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The Des Moines cluster of Ames-Des Moines CityChurch has embraced a unique opportunity in its offering of ordered learning classes. What began five years ago with Des Moines church leaders plus a couple leaders from Crossway Community Church in Altoona has expanded to include emerging leaders from the CityChurch network, leaders’ wives, and even some teenagers.

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In 2003, Curt and Terri’s marriage was nearly finished. Although they were done with each other, God was not done with them. For many years they had both been alcoholics. Their marriage, while not ideal, had at least been a shared experience. Recently though, Terri had changed her ways, gotten involved in AA, and tried to reform her life. Curt, however, did not share her conviction and made no serious effort to change. His alcoholism became worse than ever. Terri was fed up with her marriage and

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Mix the elements of music, food and families together in a local park and you’d think what resulted would be an ordinary church picnic. However, last Sunday’s gathering of the Ames-Des Moines CityChurch was anything but ordinary.

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Tom and Kelsie Olsen recently joined Yuma church as part of a strategic move initiated by their church cluster's leadership team. One of the first things that Tom noticed when they got there was the lack of quality music. Yuma Church’s music time mainly consisted of singing to worship videos on YouTube, and without live music, it felt like something was missing. Tom had played the guitar in high school, but hadn't picked it up much in recent years. He knew, though, that if he applied himself, he

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On a Sunday evening a few weeks back, North Campus Church gathered round to focus on two of their youngest members, Bryce and Bre Van Dyke. Bryce and Bre, ages 15 and 13, are transitioning from childhood to adulthood, and North Campus wanted to take a moment to recognize the significance of that transition.

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At a meeting of Boone Church, the adults are usually outnumbered by the kids. To Dan and Tamara Law, Max and Heather Cook, Keith Cook, and Jordan Cook, one of the church’s most important responsibilities is successfully passing on their faith to those kids. Max lays out their vision: “The goal should be for the faith of each generation to go beyond the last. We are hoping that our kids at their current ages will go beyond where we were at those same ages.”

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Our network’s summer Immerse program has drawn to a close. Randy Beckett says the group this summer approached the program exactly how he hoped they would. “I was encouraged by the seriousness they brought to the summer. The whole group came obviously ready to invest themselves in the process. They were ready to play ball.”

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Yuma Church has been hit hard with difficult situations the last few months. In turn, almost every family in Yuma Church has come to a point where they needed help. In these situations it would have been easy for them to drift away from each other and set church aside. On the contrary, though, the church as a whole has experienced a profound deepening in their sense of being there for each other as a family.

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Rick and Crissy Masonbrink started coming to North Campus Church in the fall of 2013. They moved to Ames in the preceding year and had been “church shopping” for a while. Joining the Ames–Des Moines CityChurch network was exciting to both of them, but for different reasons.

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Every summer our church network puts on a summer program called Immerse. It is led by Randy Beckett, a leader on our apostolic team. Immerse is geared towards young adults – college students and post college – who are trying to figure out what course to set their lives on.

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