Go. Gather. Give. Grow!

At our church, we've started an annual tradition: Whenever church celebrates a birthday, I make a cake. The 'birthday' of church is recognised by the month we launched in a new building.

As with any that I make, each year, the church birthday cake is thought out with much strategy and planning, and occasional craziness.

The first birthday cake was a number #1 (for obvious reasons), marbled with blue and green cake inside, and decorated with chocolate & white icing, and blue & green M 'n' Ms. Heads up: blue, green, black/chocolate and white are recurring colours in this post!

The second birthday cake was actually two cakes. One blue inside, one green inside, and both having the church logo on top (made with M 'n' Ms) and coloured fondant 'ribbon' around the bases. These were the first big cakes I'd attempted to cover in fondant! A great excuse to try and learn new things.

Earlier this year in May, Ropes Crossing Church celebrated it's 3rd birthday. Over the years, my baking and cake decorating skills may have developed and improved, but I still wanted to use this opportunity to practice new techniques (and what better time to do that, right?).

Well, in my planning for this cake, it also turned into multiple cakes! I wanted to do something that I've missed on the previous two birthdays - include the mission statement, which is to:

Go.

Go with the good news of Jesus.

(Matthew 28:18-20)

Gather.

Gather people to Jesus by the Word of God.

(Luke 8:19-21)

Give.

See people give their lives to Jesus in worship and service.

(Titus 2:11-14)

Grow.

Grow God's kingdom locally to maturity in Jesus.

(Colossians 1:28)

Husband suggested that I have 4 cakes, with each part of the mission statement on each cake. But that wouldn't work, because that would mean four cakes!! And that does not match. There needed to be just three cakes for a third birthday! (a good idea for next year's cakes, though!)

Since the RCC logo is square, the cakes were going to be square. That much was sorted. I then decided that on one of the tiers, each part of the mission statement would wrap around each side of the cake.

One thing I did want to try and learn, was ruffles. Except, I wanted to learn them the lazy way - so when I found a tutorial for ruffles using buttercream, I was so happy! Hehe. The rest I just made up as I went along - some ribbon here, some royal icing there, and the buttercream everywhere else...

The cakes, as they were stacked, also (in my mind) symbolised the growth of the church, with each tier (and each year of church) getting bigger and bigger :)

And here it is all set up on the table at the birthday party, ready to be cut and eaten. This time, though, I did go with Husband's suggestion of making it chocolate, his favourite.

So I know it's late, but...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROPES CROSSING CHURCH! :)