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.