Childlike Faith

This weekend as we closed our service I shared a story about a conversation I had just had that week with my youngest daughter, Kelsey.  She is 4, and had made a cross as a craft in her class at school.  She was telling me all about the cross.  Here she shares what she knows about Jesus, the cross, and sin.

The Way it Should Be

We moved out of the school and into our storefront facility just over a month ago.  The excitement has been building and growing ever since.  On the first or second Sunday in our new building, I noticed a couple of greeters having a conversation with a man just outside.  Next thing I knew, they had brought him in and helped him find a seat in the auditorium.  After the service I was introduced to Joel.  Joel is a homeless man who was walking by our church that morning.  The greeters had stopped him and started talking to him.  They had invited him to stay for church.

The next week, Joel was back.  And then the next.  I've seen Joel around.  He's got it pretty tough (he doesn't have a home).  He lives meal to meal.  In this time of recession, many of us are complaining because we can't eat out as often.  Joel is happy just to eat.

Yesterday we celebrated the Grand Opening of our new campus.  We talked for several weeks about inviting a friend.  If everyone brings one friend, we could double our attendance.  So we prayed for people to invite, we invited, and we prayed.  Over 300 people came.  It was awesome!  But one of the most awesome stories was Joel.  Joel invited friends too.  And one of his friends came!  Daryl is also homeless, but he was happy to be at church with us. 

Joel is the perfect example of what every Christian should be.  He took the challenge to bring a friend to church.  And he did.  And that's the way it should be.

An Evening of Thanks

Last night we hosted a thank you dinner for the guys and girls who put in a lot of volunteer time this past year, those who worked to make the Monroe Campus a reality. Several of these gave every Saturday and Wednesday evening for an entire year to work on getting the campus ready: demolition, framing, painting, cleaning, and much, much more.

I Corinthians 12 deals with a few of the spiritual gifts. One of the gifts is the gift of helping others. Those who possess this gift are the ones who come up and say "What can I do? I'll do whatever needs to be done." I love people with this gift. Not only do they ask, they actually do it! Without complaining! And they do it above and beyond what could have been expected.

Last night we fed a room full of people with the gift of helping others a nice steak dinner as a thank you for their thankless service to the Lord. Our staff came out and did the serving - we thought it appropriate that the staff serve the volunteers for a change. It was great to see everyone so excited and enjoying a nice evening together.

Thank you again to all of you who worked so hard to get our beautiful campus to where it is today.

Missions in Mexico

We have a missions team that left yesterday to travel to Mexico. They will be there for the next week working in partnership with Samaritan's Purse passing out Operation Christmas Child shoe boxes to children in several villages.

Wanna see something cool? You can see exactly where they are by clicking here. You'll see a map where you can follow their movements during their trip. Check it out.

As you watch their progress, remember to pray for them. They have a lot to do over the next week. They would appreciate your prayer support.

Sunday @ Southbrook:Monroe 02/15/2009

Today was our big day before our Big Day. Next Sunday we celebrate our Grand Opening. We spent some time today in prayer, we took invite cards, we were all challenged to go out and invite people to join us next week.

We're going to have all kinds of fun going on. Our service will start at 11am. Afterward we will have BBQ and jumpy houses in the parking lot. The police and fire departments will be there. Several local ministries and local organizations will be there. It's going to be a lot of fun.

We're praying for God to double our size next week. We've had just over 100 the last two weeks. Our prayer is for 200+. I can't wait!

Have a great week...

Grand Opening This Sunday!

Sunday @ Southbrook:Monroe 02/08/2009

God continues to do amazing things and blow me away week after week.

This Sunday we had 10 more than we had last week. Every week more people, every week new people checkin' us out. Our First Impressions team has done a great job helping everyone feel at home. This past Sunday a couple of our greeters stopped a homeless man who was going to pass on by. They talked to him and invited him in. Welcome to Southbrook Joel!

Our Children's ministry rooms are getting very full. What are we going to do? We just moved in and now we're out of space?

After the service we had a volunteer lunch and training time. We had 70 volunteers stick around for that. Awesome! It was so great to see the eagerness, to hear the hearts of our out of this world volunteers. I'll share more about the results of our training later this week.

Thanks Southbrook volunteers for making our church such an awesome experience!

Wow...what a night!

Our little girl has picked up a bit of a cough (again). I woke up to the sound of coughing in my ear at 3:30 this morning. <*yawn*> So I picker her up and took her back to her bed. I got back in my bed and slept...until I heard a loud BANG! It was Kelsey...she had tripped on the dog. She climbed back into our bed at 5:15am. <*yawn*> Sooo, instead of moving her again, I decided to get in her bad.

I laid there - in and out of sleep. I started to notice a strange smell...so I felt around...nothing wet. Back to sleep.

I woke up again, crawled out of Kelsey's bed and went into my bathroom. Kelsey was taking a bath. A few minutes later Nancy walked in and said "Kelsey, did you wet your bed last night?"

She looked up from her bath...and said..."yeah."

Sunday @ Southbrook: 02/01/2009

I was overcome with a strange feeling of uncertainty yesterday as I prepared for church. I just felt like something was up. I prayed about it. I gave the day to the Lord. I asked Him to let His will be done.

And He did. Looking back over the day, here is how I see it. In three weeks we are having our grand opening. We have a lot to do in preparation for that. We are planning some training, we have big plans for that day, and we simply need a lot of people to step up and take part. So I announced in the service that we would be hanging around for a few minutes after the service to get some people plugged in to help. We had about 40 people at that meeting. To put it into perspective - we had 104 in attendance. So yes-God did have His way.

Our service was awesome - worship went great - Pastor Rob's message was right on. I am looking forward to this week. I can't wait to see how God is going to continue to put this thing together - all for His glory!