In the past these forty-day experiments have been a mixed bag of blessing, stretching and grappling with the mystery of prayer and faith. But in the end everyone that has stuck to it reported a deepening of their relationship with God, even those whose prayers went unanswered.

Look out here for more resources as they’re available. It will include sign up for daily emails of the readings & other helpful tools.

Our 40 days of prayer & faith, called Leap of Faith, is on now through Easter Sunday. You will find all the materials you need to join in here.

We suggest taking a look at the User’s Manual, then sign up for daily email to get your readings & reflections via email every morning.

User’s Manual

Daily Study Guide (full 40 days)

Daily Readings

I call this the “post-leap blues” and it doesn’t have to get the best of you. Even though Leap Of Faith is over the good things we learned and experienced don’t have to end.

After the leap

The things about the Leap that made your spiritual life alive and exciting for 40 days are things you can continue to apply everyday. You don’t need a program for good things like committing to going after God in a big way together and putting faith to work together and taking risks together and talking about it in our groups together and encouraging one another to stick with it when it gets hard and of course celebrating it together to happen. Aren’t these the things we can normally expect to happen when we commit to showing up regularly and participating wholeheartedly in the faith-life of a good Jesus community? Aren’t these the very things we shoot for every week here in the NBV?

Continuing on

The Leap was a success. I believe something new was sown into the life of our church that will remain, maybe not at the same level as during The Leap but to a greater level than before it. It could be faith in answered prayer, awareness of God’s love, commitment to praying for your six, commitment to involvement in our community, or all of the above. These things can continue and even grow.

We don’t have any big, formal follow-up plan in mind right now. To be honest, programs can get old and religious real fast. But for those of you who were particularly inspired by the Leap and are asking what’s next, the answer is found in God himself. He’s gotten your attention so why not pray and ask him if there’s any specific next step he’d have you take to keep the momentum going in your life and see what happens. I’m sure he has a way for you to keep the fire burning and avoid those post-Leap blues. Let me know what you end up doing and how it goes.

If you’d like to listen to a few more of my thoughts on life after the Leap, listen here: Post Leap of Faith

We plan on getting feedback from you  at our upcoming Core meeing in May so we can continue to build off of this and get the most out of this wonderful community experience we shared together. Plan on attending. We’d sure like to hear from you.

See you Sunday
Mike T

Well the votes are all in and the results show that Leap Of Faith was a big success. You might say it was a “sleeper”. A number of our folks said that when our 40 day prayer experiment first began back in March they were less than enthusiastic.  They admitted that they were rather skeptical that it would catch on and doubtful it would make a whole lot of difference in their lives and in our church. Rather than a leap you could say they started off by taking a crawl of faith.

But something happened along the way to Easter Sunday. It began to catch on. Like a seed planted in good soil, watered each day by God’s words  from the gospel of Mark and by prayer, faith started to grow. At first you could only sense it slightly, but then as the jar began to fill up with jelly beans and beer can tabs you could see that God was showing up in all sorts of ways; ways we never expected. Jobs, finances, healings, discoveries, changed lives, God-coincidences and divine appointments, little things, big things, unexpected surprises, lot’s of God-things.

And then last Sunday on Easter there it was in plain sight – the experiment was a success! Our crawl had become a leap and we all knew that somehow God had changed us. We celebrated it together, telling stories and singing songs about it. We had taken a leap together into the arms of God and ended up with a lot more faith and confidence in his love than when we began 6 weeks ago! You could feel it. You could see it!

What’s next?

Since Sunday I’ve talked to several of you that told me you’re bummed that Leap Of Faith is over. You’re afraid you’re going to lose the faith-momentum that you have. You asked, “Where do they go from here?”

I can only answer you this way: We’re not the same community we were 6 weeks ago. Look at  Leap Of Faith as a springboard. We now have more faith and confidence that God loves us and has plans to bless us and use us to help him make a better world. We have momentum and an opportunity to build on it. Just how, I’m not exactly sure? What I do know is that this doesn’t have to end. It can be a beginning of something new for us. Leap Of Faith can become a lifestyle, like it was for Paul who said, “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” (Gal. 2:20)

This coming Saturday I’ll be meeting with the Advisory Team to take a look at the results of Leap Of Faith and discuss and pray about what our next steps should be. Our objective will be to see how we can continue to build on this momentum so that leaps of faith become a normal part of our culture here at the NBV. Please be praying for us. Then we’ll report on our progress and work on  next steps together at our upcoming Core meeting on May 19th.
I’m looking forward to it. I hope you will too.

God bless and keep on leapin’
Mike T

If you’d like to receive our every-other-week Community Update, add your email address on our home page.

Our community faith experiment through (during Lent) starts Wed, February 17 & will be 40 days of putting ourselves out there & asking God to do things in our lives.

Download the Leap of Faith User’s Manual (PDF) for detailed info on how this works.

Be sure to report in on any prayers that God answers, or other cool things that happen via our Facebook page or emailing info@northbrooklynvineyard.org.

Download the full daily Bible Study here:

Full Bible Study (all 40 days) (PDF)
Full Bible Study (all 40 days) (DOC)

Or download each week:

Week 1 (PDF)
Week 1 (DOC)

Week 2 (PDF)
Week 2 (DOC)

Week 3 (PDF)
Week 3 (DOC)

Week 4 (PDF)
Week 4 (DOC)

Week 5 (PDF)
Week 5 (DOC)

Week 6 (PDF)
Week 6 (DOC)

Call it a corporate jump into the deep end of God’s pool. Leap Of Faith is a faith experiment that we here in the North Brooklyn Vineyard will be undertaking throughout the six weeks leading up to Easter.

These 40 days are Lent, the traditional time the Church prepares for Good Friday. What better way to jump-start our faith, hope and joy, that a very tough year has managed to wear down, than to experience God’s amazing love again.

Our theme will be Growing In The Love and will include daily exercises that we’ll engage in individually and together as a unified community in hopes of going deeper into God’s love and seeing it work in unexpected ways in our lives, the lives of those we care about, and in our church as a whole.

Read the full Community Update here >