Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Evident Church has Launched!

Hey, it's official, we're running weekly now! It's crazy and I can't tell you all the feelings I'm feeling and we're feeling as a team as we let the Grand Opening sink in and look to next Sunday. We're riding the high of a great Grand Opening! Once again, God was faithful and so many people showed up. The spirit and life was great and we are seriously off to a great start. Grand Opening went great!

From what I can tell at least one more person accepted Christ (and there was no specific call for this!), and this is what we hope will happen! We hope that people will be coming to Christ on a weekly basis just as a natural outflow of Evident Church... and we're seeing that! Altogether we had 189-people at the Grand Opening and once again the kids had a blast and we worshipped God and we communicated about Christ and preached from the Bible in a way that people could understand. It was great and I'm loving where we are right now! It's tough, we have a lot of work ahead of us, but it's great.

We're hoping to push attendance up near 200 as soon as we can (this is important for stability at the level we're hoping to launch). We're also hoping for greater awareness and connection in the community. Pray for Matt our Connections Pastor as he works with his team about outreach. Pray for Tim our Creative Arts Pastor as he works to develop the worship teams. Pray for Rosalie our Kid's Team Leader who is working to recruit volunteers for the kid's areas. Pray for Jeni who handles Guest Services who have the tough and important task of welcoming and connecting with everyone as they check out Evident. And pray for Steve, our Portability Director, looking for drivers and setup/tear-down crew each week. These are real needs and real prayer requests we have. I sense that these first few weeks are critical and your prayers and financial support are critical as well.

Thanks for following what's going on. Praise God for all he's done and is going to do!



Monday, September 15, 2008

Grand Opening!

Words can't express all my thanks to everyone who has supported us and prayed for us so far in this church launch process. I am continually grateful to God, Raelyn (my wife), the pastors and leaders of Evident Church, the LEAD Team churches, and many other partners.

We're praying for an awesome weekend (Grand Opening, September 21, 2008, 10am)! I personally need your prayers more than ever. There is a lot of work to do and there is so much potential in this church and in this community. Pray for strength, pray for protection for me and our team, pray for direction and Godly momentum/influence, pray for God to provide, pray for many people to know and grow in Christ, pray for this to be the beginning of a movement not just the beginning of a new church.

It's time!