What's the Update?

Here's the skinny on the past two months:

Dayton Circles has begun meeting at theNorthGate. 

I had a birthday and Whitney and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary.


...and we had a baby! Our daughter Eliana decided to join us on August 7th after what seemed like an eternity waiting for her the past nine months. She is happy, healthy, and an enormous blessing to us. We couldn't have asked for anything better. 

I could talk forever about Ellie and show you a thousand pictures, but I'll spare you. 



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In case you're wondering

"What's happening with Dayton Circles?"

After going through trainings, seminars, and many meetings to get to this point, we are excited to see the details and plans come to life. 

If you want to help end poverty or are looking to build authentic relationships within our city, Circles is the place for you! Come check it out if you're looking to get involved or just curious about it! We get together every Tuesday at theNorthGate from 6pm-8pm. 

Whitney and I are extremely excited to be part of a movement that we fully believe in. We have seen firsthand the results and benefits of Circles for everyone involved. 

As for specifics, Whitney is the Dayton Circles Coordinator and I am the Dayton Circles Coach. Our time right now consists of planning for the Circles Weekly Meetings, recruiting Circle Leaders and Circle Allies, continuing to train and learn from other Circles directors, and of course taking care of our daughter. 

If you have any questions at all, we'd love to hear from you. There are many ways to get involved! 

--Nathan 

Details about: Dayton Circles
More information about: National Circles Campaign

Full Circle

It's official!

We are so excited to share the news with all of you! After several conversations and discussions of a possible partnership with the board members of The National Circles Campaign, we have officially decided to move forward together. There are very few words to describe how visibly God-ordained this development has been, but we wanted to share some of the awesome details with you. In a recent e-mail from the CEO, she summed this process up well by saying,

"Considering this is only the third meeting that I have had with you, I know that God is in the midst.... only that kind of clarity and expectancy can come from human relationships that quickly if it is ordained directly from His plan."

We are very excited about this partnership for a multitude of reasons.

1. As we began the process of building the ministry of 4DM at theNorthgate, our pastor was approached by the leaders of Circles. They had heard what we were planning and felt that both our visions wholly aligned. They were right! Partnering with Circles has given us an enormous headstart in reaching the marginalized in our community. Circles has over six years of experience and expertise in working to eliminate the gap between social classes. To get to this point on our own, it could have taken months and months of networking, fundraising, program development, and trial-and-error implementation to get things fully up and running. By partnering with Circles, we can completely eliminate this step. God knew there was no need for us to "reinvent the wheel" here. He's so smart!

2. The timing is perfect! Circles is in a transition period where they have had to regroup and analyze their efforts in Dayton. Another church was formerly heading up Circles in the Dayton area, but has recently decided to end their partnership as the church wanted to focus in a different direction. This gave us the availabilty to step in at just the right time and help make any strategic revisions that are characteristic of downtown Dayton in order to keep the program alive and thriving. What timing!

3. We believe whole-heartedly in the vision and the methods Circles utilizes to bridge the gap between social classes in an effort to help eradicate poverty. God knows our hearts and longs to see our desires fulfilled!

Thank you to all of you who have made this a reality! It would not have been possible without your loving support! We appreciate it more than we can say.

--Nathan & Whitney 


How It Works 
More information:

About Circles

Circles Success Statistics and Testimony

VIDEOS:

Karin Van Zant speaks on Circles (She is the CEO of Circles and with whom we have been meeting regularly).

A Circle Leader's Story

The Ball Keeps Rolling

Yesterday, we had a follow-up meeting with the leaders of Circles. It went very well, ending with the decision that we will continue to explore what a partnership between our church and Circles could look like. We have another meeting with them in a couple weeks to strategize about what both of the partners' roles would specifically be and how to get Circles launched in Dayton. 

To get a better glimpse of what Circles is about, check out this thirty-second video below or click this link to watch it here:

At the heart of it, the main goal is to create community through relationships. One aspect that impacted us most is a training class that allies (committed volunteers) go through. It's a poverty level simulation that helps volunteers understand more of what impoverished individuals experience during daily life and decision-making, specifically when material and financial resources are severely limited. It's conducted in a way that helps break down barriers and create healthy relationships between people of the same community. 

Also, the individuals who take part in Circles can apply and go through a 13-week "dream" class. The course teaches on barriers that have prevented people from achieving their goals in the past, dreams they would like to pursue, and how to achieve those dreams in the context of a supportive community. 

These are just a few examples of what excites about this group and the possibilities together. 

Will you pray with us as we continue taking steps forward together?

What's New and Good

The past few weeks have been filled with planning, meetings, and strategies about how 4-Dimensional Ministries will run and what it will look like. For that reason, we haven’t had as many blog updates just yet. But as part of the planning process, we took part in a wonderful training seminar last weekend.

We had the opportunity to go to a Christian Community Development Conference (CCDA) in Cleveland, Ohio. Do you want me to describe it in one word? Amazing! 

We attended various sessions led by local leaders and heard from the author of Toxic Charity Bob Lupton. It was a great experience to hear from someone with such wisdom on community development and how to get involved. For Whitney and me, the conference brought things full circle. We first heard about and read Toxic Charity when we were in Mexico. Now, having the chance to hear directly from the author and be a part of an organization that uses healthy models of community development is incredible!

God has been putting the pieces in place in perfect timing. The book When Helping Hurts is another one that really opened our eyes to healthy models of community development and working with the poor. We recently had a meeting with the leaders of Circles, a community-development program ran by Think Tank Inc. There is an entire chapter in When Helping Hurts about Circles! God has been leading us closer and closer to our passion with each moment.

We hope to take what we learned there and continue developing things here in Dayton. Please pray for insight and direction as to what God’s plan is for this city and what role we are all to play.

Calling All...

Today's post is about you. 

If you are in or near the Dayton area, involved in our church or not, we need you. 

As 4DM continues to progress and we develop more of its structure, we're going to need people and volunteers to help make it happen. So, we're asking you: what are you good at? What skills do you have? What are you passionate or excited about? 

If you're like me and just thought "Eh, I don't really have anything super special to offer," then you would be wrong. We can use you! 

There will be many ways to get involved. To name a few--we'll need people to help with GED training classes, parenting classes, and reading classes. We'll need those people who can teach others how to play instruments, paint, or create something artistically. We can use people that will help teach nutrition and fitness classes. Don't forget about other life skills classes and discipleship activities as well.  And this is just a sample of aspects we'll be carrying out.  

If any of those areas sound like something you would like to be part of, please let us know! Don't worry--you don't have to commit to certain times or areas right now--we're just getting the word out there so we can build a base of volunteers and connections for when 4DM is fully up and running. 

Also, if you have another idea that's not listed, feel free to share that with us so we can add it in. 

If you are interested, you can comment on here, send us an e-mail or text, or Facebook message us. We look forward to hearing from you! 

--Nathan & Whitney 

Contact info:

nathan.reiter2@gmail.com or whitney.reiter2@gmail.com

937.999.8722 or 937.999.8779

Settling In.

We haven't even been here two full weeks yet;

and we can already see how God is blessing us and this ministry. Here are three ways: 

• We had another meeting this past weekend with our core team to plan more of 4DM. There are always more details to figure out, but fortunately, we have a team of high-capacity people who are each able to help with dream-casting, strategizing, and praying for the ministry. 

• A friend blessed us like crazy by bringing us a carload of groceries. It was completely unexpected and came at just the right time. The day before, Whitney and I had been discussing groceries and our budget and trying to decide what to do with certain things. We got a text the next morning from our friend letting us know she had something for us. It was exactly what we needed--crazy how God does that! It was a way for our friend to be a huge blessing and for God to remind us that "He's got this!" 

• We've already seen changes in our first participant since his arrival. Going from not having a goal or vision for the future to "I want to do ________ with my life" is a huge accomplishment! Setting a goal is a crucial first step in actually getting there. 

There are more stories, but we wanted to share these three as a quick snapshot of what's going on. Thank you to everyone for all your support, prayers, and encouragement. 

--Nathan

It's the City Life

We have a home! 

It's been a crazy past couple of days, but I can now say we have officially moved to downtown Dayton. Our second floor view over the traffic and the street lights outside our window prove that we're city-folk now. 

Now we feel it's time to start hosting people at our home since everyone has been so generous over the past several months in allowing us to stay with them in their homes. 
So, if you're in the Dayton area, come on over! 

As a quick program update, we plan to start the "beta test" of 4DM with our first participant this week. During this time, we'll be testing all aspects of the program such as spiritual development, exercise, nutrition, creative therapy, life skills, and time management. If you have any insight or want to get involved in any way, please let us know! Seriously, we can use you. 

After meeting the first participant today, we are excited to see God's transformative power. Through conversation today, we're seeing more and more how we all have things to mutually learn from each other. 

On another note, only 7 more days until we find out if we're having a baby boy or girl!