After tracking your expenses for one month, you should have a good idea of where your money is going. Here are some resources that are helpful in creating a budget for planning your expenses.

Dave Ramsey’s Gazelle Budget Lite – This is an online calculator that helps create a budget based on net monthly income.

Crown Financial offers free Percentage Guides that gives you an idea of what categories to budget for and approximately what percentage of your income should be assigned to each category. Use the one that fits your context the closest:

• Singles
• Single Parent
• Married Couple (no kids)
• Family of Four
• Family of Six

They also offer a Budget Analysis Form to help compare the difference between what you’re currently spending and the new monthly guideline budget you chose from the above resources.

On Sunday Nic Cox talked about Moolah, covering some very practical insights regarding how we can handle our finances well. Nic made the point that we can’t manage our money if we don’t know where it’s going. He challenged all of us to track our expenses for one month.  Here are some useful resources that can help:
 
 
The 30 Day Diary on Crown’s Website can help track expenses in a ledger format.

Mint.com is a free online resource that will track all of your debit and credit card expenses. Mint will automatically categorize them, but you can create your own subcategories and tags as well. At any point you can see a pie chart showing the breakdown of where your money is going.

We are excited to have Alathea (the Greek word for truth), with us this Sunday, March 21. If you haven’t seen them live just yet you may have heard their Appalachian-style folk tunes around CCC in videos or in the music that plays before services get started. It’s definitely shaping up to be the highlight of your week once again. Not only do we have Alathea trekking north from Tennessee to join us again, but we’re also starting a brand new sermon series! We look forward to seeing you on Sunday at 9:30 or 11:00.

This Sunday is Daylight Saving Time.  Be sure to set your clocks forward Saturday night if they don’t take care of that on their own.  Did you know that Daylight Saving Time apparently results in less traffic fatalities?  So, set your clocks forward, possibly save some lives in the process, and join us at 9:30AM or 11:00AM for what is hopefully the highlight of your week.

Hey Friends,

I trust you’re all relishing in the break of warm weather we’re enjoying over the last several days. (Maybe the snow piles will fully disappear before June after all!)

I thoroughly enjoyed our time together this past Sunday at CCC as we celebrated our 4 year anniversary. It’s hard to believe 4 years have passed since the first day we started meeting at 8094 Sandpiper Circle. As I’ve said many times, it’s been a fantastic start, especially considering that 80% of new churches never make it past year 3. So as we say goodbye to year 4 and start in on year 5, I am overwhelmingly grateful to God for his goodness and grace that has been evident in countless ways since March 5, 2006. And I’m grateful to God for all of you who are committed to seeking and serving Jesus through the life of this new church.

As we inch closer to this year’s Easter celebration, I am excited to see how the same power that raised Christ Jesus from the dead some 2,000 years ago, will be at work in each of our lives in the coming months and years together.

Speaking of Easter, you’ll want to be aware that we’re adding a third service for that particular Sunday, April 4. This will slightly shift our typical service times. We’ll have three identical services at 8:30am, 10am, and 11:30am on Easter Sunday. Children’s Ministry Programming (Discovery Island, Kid’s Kove, and Baby Bay) will be unaffected by the time change, but note that KidStuf (where kids take their parents to learn) will take place during the 10am service.

To help balance out the services, we’re asking everyone to pick up place holders for whichever service they plan to attend. The place holders are free and are not tickets, but they will help us prepare well for one of the most important Sundays of the year. (You can begin picking up place holders on Sunday in the lobby at CCC.)

This coming Sunday, March 14 is the final week of our current series called “Why”. It’s also a baptism celebration Sunday, which means we get to celebrate together with folks who are taking the important and crucial step of being baptized into Christ Jesus. We love participating alongside people who are being baptized. It’s one of our favorite things. You don’t want to miss it.

So be sure and set your clocks ahead this Saturday evening (That’s right, Daylight Savings Time begins) and make your way on over to CCC at either 9:30am or 11am.

I hope to see you all then.

David Robinson

If you’ve been around Community Christian Church, you may have noticed we don’t exactly look like other churches. This might have you wondering about some things. How did CCC get started? Who’s on staff at CCC? What does CCC believe? What’s my next step at CCC?

There is a place to get these and other questions addressed: Starting Point. Starting Point is a two-hour gathering in a fun, casual environment where we take a closer look at who CCC is and where we’re going. It is our hope that everyone, whether Sunday is your first week or if you’ve been coming to CCC since the doors opened, will find his or her way to Starting Point.

Everyone has to start somewhere, and at CCC a great place to start is at Starting Point. If you haven’t been to Starting Point before, it might be the next step for you at CCC.

Our next Starting Point is Sunday, March 14th from 10:45 – 12:45.  Click here to sign up online or by calling the church office at 410.933.8330

Through his sacrifice on the cross, Jesus offers us a fresh, new beginning. He offers us a new life. The Bible teaches that in Christ we are a new creation. We don’t deserve a second chance or a new life, but he extends to us the opportunity nonetheless through his grace. We haven’t earned it. We don’t deserve it. What we do is accept the gift of his grace.

Baptism is a part of the acceptance process. When we get baptized, we are accepting the free gift of God’s grace and declaring that we want to follow him with our whole life. This is a major decision that we should not take lightly, but it is also the most fulfilling and life-giving decision we can ever make.

On Sunday, March 14, we are having a baptism celebration at CCC for all those who would like to get baptized and begin a new life in Jesus Christ. If you would like more information please contact Joey Keck at joey@communitycc.net or call 443.810.9465.

Dive In is a unique 45 minute presentation where parents and children (grades K-5) can learn what it means to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Dive in is a one time event (not a series of classes) developed to give parents the tools necessary to have a meaningful dialogue with their kids about how to begin their spiritual journey. Dive In will be Sunday, March 28, in room 108. You can sign up in the lobby at CCC or email Nick Blevins if you have any questions.

Hey Friends,

I hope all is well with you this week. I’m looking forward to this coming Sunday as we will be celebrating CCC’s four year anniversary. We launched Community Christian Church on March 5, 2006, and it’s been quite a ride since. I am grateful to God for the start we have had and am incredibly optimistic about the future that is before us. Most of all I’m thankful for all of you who call CCC your church home and gather regularly at 8094 Sandpiper Circle to celebrate what God has done, is doing, and will do. It’s a privilege to journey with you and serve God alongside of you.

So make your way out to one of CCC’s services at either 9:30am or 11am this coming Sunday, March 7th, as we continue our series “Why”. (I hear there will be lots of food to help our stomachs enjoy the day!)

It’s also a Kidstuf Sunday, which is one of our Children’s Ministry environments where kids take their parents to learn. Kidstuf takes place at 11am in rooms 108-109. For those of you wanting to take part in Kidstuf, come on out to the 9:30 service and then make your way across the hall at 11am.

I look forward to seeing you all on Sunday.

David Robinson

Our next CCC Baptism Celebration is scheduled for Sunday, March 14th. If you’ve been thinking about this important step of baptism, consider signing up for this day to be the occasion. (You can sign up in the lobby at CCC or email info@communitycc.net) This is a chance to go public with your faith by being baptized into Christ Jesus. It’s one of our favorite things to celebrate when we gather together. (Plus, we baptize people in a hot tub. How fun is that?) If you still have some questions surrounding baptism, you might want to pick up a copy of a DVD we created called “Baptism 411″. Or grab a CD series we have called “2″, where we spent a recent Sunday morning dealing with some common questions about baptism. You can pick either of those up in the lobby on Sunday.