The Saturday Church launch is only hours away

What are some things I'm looking forward to about Saturday Church? (in no particular order)

1. Heading up a ministry that my family is a part of.
2. Working with such a theological solid, yet highly entrepreneurial leadership team.
3. Seeing men and women who would not normally go to church go to church.
4. Seeing people try new things for the sake of Christ.
5. Lifting up Christ and see him draw people to himself. I'm really looking forward to preaching today from Luke 15:1-10 about a welcoming God and a welcoming church.
6. Having Sunday mornings with my family.
   
7. Having more energy for Sunday Evening Church. Paradoxically (perhaps) I have been able to see things more clearly and have actually had more energy for people at Sunday night when I wasn't at church all day.
8. Seeing God's people show acts of kindness to each other and express real hospitality after church.
9. Already seeing Saturday Church to be a blessing to the other congregations.
10. Seeing prayers answered.

Saturday Church begins in 5 hours

I can't wait. At 5:30pm today we have our small launch of Saturday Church. I am blown away by the way that God's people have been pulling together to make this happen.

10 days to go

... until our soft launch of Saturday Church. 18 days until our hard launch. Bring it on. I'm really looking forward to it.

Exciting News

I had privilege of addressing our four church congregations yesterday about our very exciting news. Neil interviewed Cameron and me about the news and we called them to turn to prayer for God's wisdom and blessing.

So, what's the news?

The story so far
1. Our 10am and 7pm services have been getting pretty full.
2. We are about to launch a serious evangelistic campaign next year. We've got be prepared for God to bring more people into his kingdom and at the moment we're not really equipped to bring them into our church family.
3. We have been talking about church/congregation planting for the last year or so.
4. We have made a big investment by buying another on-site adjacent property earlier this year (Praise God for the generosity of everyone!). We've leant towards a on-site plant to start with.

So what's the plan
1. We (the whole church) are planning, under God, to plant a new Saturday evening congregation next year at 5:30pm - 6:45pm. I'll be leading it and Cameron will be coming as well. This is hot off the press. It will be an all ages and stages of life congregation. This may be one of it's strengths.
2. We will be starting this new church two weeks after Easter.
3. We will be asking people to commit at the end of February and we'll have meetings with that team.
4. We're hoping that the group will not be too big (sixty adults max) so we can reach and include more people from the community as well.
5. We're hoping to find some key roles: a. lay pastor (male) b. lay pastor (female) c. gifted evangelist d. music director e. technical ops f. lay meeting leader g. kids team leader h. someone look after cooking dinner for the kids
6. It was brand new news to most people at church yesterday. We did not ask people to indicate what they wanted to do. We just asked them to pray. I matters how we do this. If you're reading this blog and you're a Christian could you pray for us too. Thanks.

Exciting News

I just went to Parish Council as their guest tonight to put before them a proposal. They were really behind it! They are a very godly and gospel minded group.

I can't tell you what it is yet - but I can tell you after we tell all our church congregations this Sunday. All I can say is that it will need a lot of prayer.