Rise Above & Weigh-In!

Sept. 11, 2009 - PRLog -- What: Rise Above & Weigh-In!

Who: Rise Above Ministries (RiseAboveMinistries.org)

When: Saturday September 19, 2009 at 10am. OPEN TO SPECTATORS!

Where: Armstrong Moving & Storage, 4679 Walzem Rd., San Antonio, TX.

Why: When our church’s Senior Pastor Richard “Skip” Brooks suffered a heart attack this
summer, the leadership staff and congregation at Rise Above Ministries chose to do something about it. Rise Above & Weigh-In is a fitness challenge designed to motivate San Antonio into taking a pro-active stance on raising awareness and combating health problems in our city. Additionally, Rise Above is seeking financial aid for our under-funded church composed of several in-house and outreach ministries specifically catering to the needs of families, men, women, children and toddlers. Our church is also committed to helping and ministering to the homeless population of San Antonio. But perhaps Rise Above Ministries is best known for uniquely reaching out to a national demographic often ignored by the church community as a whole: alternative music scenes and youth-oriented subcultures. For nearly a decade, Rise Above has been ministering God’s love to thousands of people immersed in self-destructive “underground” music cultures, a calling that enables our church to take a true message of hope to a hope-less generation of outcasts, misfits and disenfranchised youth in general.

Details: Statistically, San Antonio rules the upper echelon of obese populations in the United States. This fact is often treated jokingly among our city’s inhabitants but when a serious health issue hits home, momentum can be created to address the indifferent and undisciplined attitudes many people hold regarding health consciousness. Rise Above Ministries is seeking to create just such momentum with our fitness challenge. In the process, we seek to raise financial aid as members of our own church commit to lose unnecessary weight through a six week program. Health-conscious local business WHOLE FOODS has already stepped up and sponsored the Rise Above & Weigh In event. Our challenge has also developed into an exclusive TV news story set to be covered for the entire six weeks by Emmy award-winning anchor Deborah Knapp and her team from San Antonio’s KENS 5 news station. The public is encouraged to come out and be filmed watching the event on September 19th at 10am.

How: Using a massive truck scale at Armstrong Moving & Storage, the participants from our
church will be weighed together (as a whole) and then during a following six week period, Rise Above will hold the participants accountable for attending fitness and nutrition classes at our church and other designated sites around the city. Fortunately, our church leadership team includes a certified fitness instructor and nutritional expert who will head the strategic six week challenge. During the fitness challenge participants will be collecting pledges from family, friends, co-workers and local businesses for each pound the church loses as a whole. At the conclusion of the six weeks, the participants will again weigh-in (as a whole) using the same truck scale to gauge the overall weight loss.

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Rise Above is a ministry devoted to reaching the lost and those who have never felt comfortable in a traditional church environment. As a body, we feel responsible for continuing the ministry of Jesus Christ by serving the lost and outcast believers using sub-cultural dress and music styles to create an accessible and unique church experience. We teach all who attend to worship in spirit and in truth, to disciple and raise disciples, to utilize spiritual gifts to serve God and the body of Christ. We believe the Holy Spirit has equipped us to be a light in the darkest parts of the San Antonio music scene. We challenge our ministers not to see themselves as "second class Christians", but to walk in their calling with confidence in the Holy Spirit.