The Big Idea

I am in the middle of reading The Big Idea by Dave Ferguson. Dave is the pastor of Community Christian Church in Naperville, Ill. They have something like 8 campuses with over 20 services each weekend reaching close to 5000 people. The whole premise of the book is to present one idea throughout all of the ministries. This means that before they do a sermon series at their church they coordinate with all campus pastors, small group leaders, and children’s ministries to make sure they are all teaching the same message each week.

I am impressed with this approach but have questions as to how it would play out with a brand new church plant with limited staff and resources. Besides that Dave is a cutting edge pastor who has a heart to reach out through the multi-site church method. I would recommend buying this book

Pro Presenter 3

Took a cue from Ben and purchased Pro Presenter from Renewed Vision and it was the best decision. The learning curve was about 30 seconds and I was able to teach a 16 year old how to use it on our first Sunday Service in about 2 minutes. Oh, by the way, he had never done anything like this before. This thing kicks butt on Power Point and Media Shout and the moving backgrounds they send you are top notch. It is worth the money to buy it.

Debt Free

Yesterday we paid off our last debt hanging over our heads. About a year ago when God started to move on our hearts to do something new we had a deep conviction to pay off all of our debt. We read Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey and started our debt snowball. Well yesterday we paid off my truck a couple of months early and now we are completely debt free.

This was really important to us because we didn’t want to do ministry with a cloud of debt that might influence our decisions. It is a totally freeing feeling. I recommend this book highly because Dave is straight forward and clear in his approach. Now we are on track to prepare for our future and advance the Kingdom of God through our service and finances.

Sunday Photo’s Online

Yvonne just got me here pictures of our first Sunday so I thought I would post them online. You can see them here or you can click on the photos on the right of the column.

Sunday’s Message is online

Just uploaded yesterday’s message. You can listen to it here or you can get it in iTunes here. Enjoy!

Houston, We have lift off!

We launched our Sunday Services for The Village Chapel today and it exceeded expectations. We knew we were going to have around 110 people total but we ended up having 140 adults and about 50 kids. Of course that is only part of the story. I arrived at the Hotel at 8:05 am and the trailer was already empty and most of the place was set up. I think our set up team spent the night there. By 9:15am the place was packed with our core group and then the people started coming.

Once the service started there was standing room only which I thought would be resolved once the kids went to KIDs Church. It wasn’t we still had 20 people standing through the whole message. Wow! The worship team rocked. I thought Joe did a great job. The Children’s team worked like a well oiled machine and the Welcome team had our foyer looking like open bar at Starbucks. Major props to those ladies. It was a half hour after service and people were still lingering.

I was very pleased with today and am glad it is over to a certain extent. In all I didn’t know about 1/3 of the people there. It was great so many of them and I am looking forward to building some new relationships. Thanks to everyone who made this day possible.

Ever Wonder

Ever wonder how pastors deal with stress and anxiety the night before their very first message at a brand new church? Well here you go. It’s called Mr. Potato Head therapy. Pretty cool huh?

A Good Run Through

We did our last run through today. It was nice because we had the Hotel to ourselves and we took advantage of it. The worker there likes us and she was actually helping us out. A couple of things stuck out. One we have an awesome team of people! I can’t say enough about this group. They were amazing this morning and needed little instruction. Two, our worship teams rocks. Joe and Joyce have been working hard and they got the team dialed in. Looking forward to worshiping tomorrow. Lastly, our people can pray. We had a time of prayer this morning before everything and it was incredible. The men led the way taking up the mantle of praying for the church, the community, and my family (Jen is really sick). They set the tone for the morning and the women followed suit.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for tomorrow! If just the core team showed up for church I wouldn’t blink. I know a lot more people are going to show up but what a great feeling to know that you have these people behind you.

Start Up Funds

We did a fundraiser right around Christmas time for some of the items we needed to do church. If you totaled all of the things together that we asked for it came to around $9000. If you count every dollar that has come in for The Village Chapel since we announced the church we have raised just shy of $35,000! Our people stepped up big time. Thank you so much. You have allowed us to get the things necessary to hold church and more. You have also given us a firm foundation for several months or if we need to do construction at our prospective place.

A lot of people believe in this church and what God has in store. Gets me pumped up. Can’t wait till Sunday.

Ready To Go

On Thursday night we had a practice service at the hotel. While we didn’t go through the motions of an actual service we did get a handle on how set up and tear down was going to go. The turnout was excellent. In total we had about 50 people working on areas such as sound, children’s, worship, and hospitality. Everybody keeps gushing about how excited they are.

Overall we are ready to go. I am amazed at how the people have stepped up. Some real good stories starting to unfold in the lives of these people. Stay tuned.