Element Church Insider

Here are some highlights from this past weekend (and earlier).

— Thursday we (Grant, Adam and I) went to lunch with Brandon from the Wyoming Tribune Eagle newspaper. Brandon is the religion and military reporter for the paper hear in town. He has come to all three of our September previews and will be doing a feature piece on us, our launch, as well as other faith based groups trying to engage the younger generation. Brandon wanted to get with us to ask some in depth questions about our church. Although “I believe” the paper is doing this simply as a news story about this new church, I also believe God is behind the entire thing as a way to help promote what we are doing. Please pray that disconnected people will be drawn to our church because of this article. Brandon is a GREAT guy so I would never expect anything BUT good, but please pray that we will be portrayed positively to the community.

— Saturday we received our issue of the “Around Cheyenne Magazine”. I would say all Cheyenne residents get a copy but for some reason Terri and Adam have never received one. I know most residents get one. They have a feature article each month called “Where to Worship?” We are that featured church this month. We are portrayed in a GREAT way and gives the dates of our remaining previews and launch Sunday. I’ll try to scan the article in so you can download it and view it.

— Sunday: 67 people in attendance. We had 49 in the e:worship auditorium. Our e:kidz volunteers and children made up the remainder of that number. Our offering yesterday was $904.80. I think we are seeing the bi-weekly tithe pandemic. LOL Most people get paid every 2 weeks so we see a BIG offering and a smaller offering. BUT let me say this. I AM ECSTATIC THAT WE HAVE ANY OFFERING! We have committed givers and that blows me away. People believe in what we are doing enough to give. WOW!

— Sunday: I love our church service. I love the way it flows, the way it feels, the way it sets up the Word. Our worship time was phenomenal yesterday. Just totally sets up the Word. We had some fun in the sermon showed some funny videos, I told a few funny stories. Just was an all around GREAT service.

— Sunday: We had I think 4 new families in the service yesterday. One family seemed VERY excited that we were in town. I’m going to try and connect with them this week. We had one return guest (couple) who came back from one of our September previews. Our prayer every week is that we have new faces. God has yet to say “No!” to that prayer request.

— Sunday: I gave an invitation at the end of the service yesterday. I asked if anyone knew they weren’t following Christ but wanted to to raise their hand. Two people raised their hand and then we turned the lights out so I couldn’t see (due to stage lights) anyone to know if they would respond by raising hand again that they prayed to receive Jesus in their hearts. I trust that God’s Spirit is speaking to them and working in their hearts today.

That’s about it. Thanks for following along. I’ll post the Sunday Gameplan later.

Another good weekend at Element Church. One more preview under our belt. Hard to believe we have 2 more previews left and then it’s launch time. Here are bits, pieces, highlights and wrapups of the weekend.

— Got a severe case of the Mondays right now. We only had 44 people yesterday. We did have one new family from Cheyenne. Two of our core families were out sick totaling 12 people just from those two families gone.

— With those 44 people we did have a GREAT offering. We got $2592 given yesterday. That is awesome. WOW! Way to go Element peeps.

— I felt yesterday was our best day yet for setting up, tearing down, transitions and overall production. The band sounded great!

— Dont Miss It is starting off good. We’ve had 189 unique visits to our site. Please pray, PRAY, PRAY AND PRAY some more that our people will see our billboards, invite cards and/or t-shirts and go to the web-site. We really wanted to keep the church name off this portion of our promotions because many folks will see the word “church” and automatically cancel it out of their mind. If they see “Dont miss it. coming 10-07-07″ They might be more intrigued to check it out. We are doing other promotions with our name on it to inform the community that this new church is starting.

— A reporter from the newspaper has been at our last 2 preview services. He will be featuring us in an article about churches reaching young people in Cheyenne AND (as we understand it) an article specifically about us starting this new church. Please pray that people see this and will come check us out.

— We’ve had LOTS of new faces at our previews and people who have been really impressed and drawn to us, HOWEVER, we need them to come back. lol In fact, excluding our launch team, we have had totally different people at all the previews. Please pray that these people who are drawn to what is happening will return and be a part of this new church.

— Yesterday we had a flag football game. We played another church team. We won by the way. One of the other team members asked who the pastor was and I told him it was me. He knew we were a new church and his first question was “Are you guy’s growing fast?” Why is that always peoples first question? When someone asks about your church’s numbers do they want to hear you say “YES! We’re growing like crazy!” Which we should ALL want for EVERY church. Or are they wanting to hear “No, man we’re really not!” Which means you’re not “out doing them” I don’t know. I try never to ask someone how many they are running. How fast they are growing. I hope to be able to tell that by what they are doing in and around the community. I don’t know if we’re growing fast. We started in March with 6 of us in a basement. Now we are running over 60. If my math is right that is a 600% growth rate in 6 months. 10 times as many people in 6 months. Now, if we did that the next 6 months we’d be at 600 people. That’s pretty fast growth I guess. I didn’t say that to that guy. I just said “Well, we’re a brand new church but things are going great.” Anyway, didn’t mean to ramble on like that.

— Thanks for those of you who are following along. Please keep praying for us. Looking forward to Sunday already.

Following Christ,

Jeff