I don’t know if I can think of a word to use for today. Not even an “Awesome” by Pastor Grant would suffice. (Although the General does say a pretty mean “Awesome”) What a day. It was a year ago on this Sunday that we went to two services. You can read my thoughts about that HERE. We thought that decision could cripple our two month old church. Oh ye of little faith. Crazy. Now one year later we open our new facility. Here are my Ruminations on the day.
— One year ago when we launched our second service we had 190 people. Today we had 574. I can’t wrap my brain around that.
— We have 263 chairs set up in the worship center. Another 27 are around the building in various places. We can easily add those to make 300 chairs and believe we can max 350 in there. That is 700 adults. We run about a 3 to 1 ratio in adults to kids which means at this location we can reach 1000 people with just 2 services. By the way, we’re already talking about what to do before it gets that full. Fun stuff.
— Don’t have an accurate count but around 10 people acknowledged that they received Jesus as Savior today. That is AWESOME!
— The last two weeks have been greuling. I can’t believe we got everything done. I won’t begin to try and thank all those who dedicated their time and service. Some of you worked 100′s of hours. LITERALLY! Thank you to everyone who helped get this completed.
— I am SO proud of our staff. Grant “Bob the Builder” took over as the quazi general contractor early hin the process. That dude may have put in more hours lately than Frito Lay ever called for. So proud of you Grant.
Terri…you name it she probably did it. Not only did she continue to keep the office and church running but was there WAY beyond the call of duty. Painting, cleaning, cleaning…cleaning…She probably cleaned the same areas 10 times. lol I think I even saw her hang some sheetrock.
Adam “Pitbull” also worked an insane amount of time. Not only did he NEVER let up on worship, creative stuff, web, etc. but he was there for every evening and Saturday of work. He and hi dad painted the whole place in one week. Proud of you bro!
Andy, all while working at the Walmart DC, doing youth and serving on Lead Team, was also at every Friday and Saturday work time we had. Proud of you Andy.
Curtis, continued to serve on Lead Team, lead The Shift and still with the commitment to the Air Force was able to serve at the building when available. Proud to have you on the team Big C.
Katie and my wife painted like mad fools. Not only did Katie take care of her own family with 5 kids as well as babysit another families two kids each week, she has done an incredible job leading ekidz and painting the rooms. I know my wife isn’t on staff, but she busted her butt in that building. Sometimes her and Katie until 2 or 3 AM. AWESOME job ladies. VERY proud of you.
Pam did a great job tracking all of the Climb money while continuing her regular financial and secretarial duties as well. She made sure through the week that we kept on track with appointments, phone calls, visitors while we were over on the other side of the building working.
My team did ALL this and continued to serve on Sunday mornings and make sure that church went off without a hitch. (Maybe a few hitches lol) You guys ROCK!
— I about pulled my little hairs out of my head during sound check today. We had MAJOR issues. It was literally minutes before church started and we had big issues to solve. One of our speakers cut in and out for no apparent reason. My mic wasn’t working with 5 minutes to go. I didn’t think we were going to make it. BUT, God pulled it all together and we had a great service.
— We combined our Exploreres and Elevate kids groups into one class and moved them to the old youth room on the other side of the buildling for this week since we din’t have any doors. Not having doors today actually turned out to not be that big of a deal. Didn’t seem like it anyway.
— We had 45 minutes in between services. I think all of us felt like we should have been doing something. Relax? What does that mean?
— After service was just weird. Flat out weird. I kept feeling like I needed to get back into the worship center to tear stuff down. WE LEFT EVERYTHING RIGHT WHERE IT WAS! Weird.
— I felt like I was preaching at someone elses church. Just didn’t feel like it was “ours” yet. Adam said he felt the same for worship.
— The lobby was filled with people, before and after service. SO COOL!
— We have SOLD OUT Rockin’ Around The Tree and added another service. We’ve given out 130 tickets to service #2 already. If you want to come to Rockin’ Around The Tree you better get tickets fast. Do we need to do three? Not this year. The concert is open to EVERYONE so invite whoever you want just make sure they have a ticket. And remember TICKETS ARE FREE but you MUST have a ticket.
— I mentioned my Grandmother and Sabrina’s Grandmother today in church. Neither are doing well at all. Sab’s Grandma (mom’s side) has cancer (15 tumors in her brain) and the doctors don’t think she’ll make it to Christmas. Your prayers for her and the family would be greatly appreciated. My Grandma (mom’s side) is 88 years old, has Diabetes and got some weird blood infection. From what I understand her diabetes complicates the issue greatly. Your prayers for her and the family are appreciated as well. My Grandparents just celebrated 60 years of marriage. Amazing! God has seen them through a lot and He will see them through this!
— Our volunteers ROCK. We had greeters on the street directing into the parking lot from what I hear.
— I better quit. Don’t forget to give to our Adopt A Mom project. Got a cool announcement coming this week for a great opportunity to serve as a family over Christmas.
— Below are some pictures of the facility. We had someone filming video and taking pictures all morning. We’ll get those up ASAP.
Following Christ,
Jeff
