Happy Anniversary!!

Today was our anniversary celebration of our church campus!  One year ago this week, we started this new little church and God has done great things and also challenged us a lot.  It's neat because we came with a launch team who committed one year to this work and about 85% of the people will be staying on with us!!  Praise God!!  We have 7 new believers who were not saved this time last year and I trust that God will use us to bring more to Him.  Here's a picture of our launch team from last year.  What a great group of friends and co-horts!  LOL

I pray that God will use us to bring His Name to the community of Holtsville and that there will be a great heritage left from this humble beginning.  God is so good!!

A new chapter in our lives

Well, I'm ready to announce a new chapter in our lives that has developed over the last month. We're really excited about it and know that God had to use something humbling to get us here but we're ready for the future.

DH and I will be planting a church. Technically, it will be another campus of our church but the style and staff will be a little different, although we'll have the infrastructure of our current church to back us up. So here's the story.

Our pastor has had a vision of a church plant for a number of years but it's just not been the time to do it yet. He told us after the fact that he was waiting for one of the staff to come and say "I would like to do this" instead of assigning it to someone because it's going to be a lot of work and really needs someone with a vision behind it. So it's been on the back burner for a number of years.

Just before vacation, my husband met with the senior and senior associate pastor and they basically took him off of being in charge of all the worship and instead would be taking that responsibility on themselves. This left my husband still leading one of the worship teams but not having a say in the direction or leadership of the worship ministry. It was a hard blow for him. It wasn't due to anything he had done so it was confusing to us as we went away the next day to go on vacation. Now basically, my husband's only responsibility was the computers and, honestly, if he was going to be a computer guy, he could do that in a regular job, make atleast twice as much money and no longer be struggling so with finances, and then volunteer to lead the worship team. When we went away on vacation, it seemed that would be the way we would go. But we left ready to pray about it and see what God would have us do. No one else knew about this but one other pastor who my husband had spoken to as a friend but not even our children knew.

While on vacation, my husband came to me and told me that he felt God leading him to think about the church plant and he was beginning to see that maybe taking away the worship would free him up to be willing/able to do the church plant as it's leader and maybe that's why God let this happen. As we prayed about it, we both began to feel strongly that this was the road we were to take but we weren't sure how it would be taken back at home (church). When we returned, DH went to lunch with the senior pastor and told him what happened while we were away and Pastor sat quietly. He told DH that he had been waiting for someone to take this vision and be the "man" in the lead yet no one had come to him about it until now. He got excited as DH spoke to him and, over the next few days, began to see that this just might be it. So, from my understanding, Pastor will announce tomorrow morning in services about the church plant to the whole congregation. Wow.

The basic plans are so far that we've found a location where there are no duplicate churches in the area (there are some other churches and some pseudo-churches as well, but none with the same stance on the basics as we have), and it's a youngish community. DH was just looking at the census information and that area has a high population of young families and it's a growing community. There's a lot of land there so for the future building, we will be able to build but for now, there are a number of hotels and a movie theater that we can look into as well as plenty of store-fronts. It is an area of the intersection of two main highways so it would be easy to get to from many areas and it's about 40 minutes away from our current home/church so we'd not have to move (unless we feel lead in the future to go out there, which is always a possibility). We would use the "simple church" model where we'd have Sunday services and home groups during the week, encouraging families to not be running all over for programs or separating to do their own things. Our home church has plenty of programs if people would like additional resources (kids' activities, youth group, classes for adults, support groups, etc.), but it would not be done at the new church. We have 9 pastors at our church and only 2 preach regularly (our senior pastor preaching to the congregation and our recovery pastor who preaches to the deaf) so that leaves 7 who would be able to cycle through the new church for possibly a few weeks at a time to do series of messages. We have a few worship teams who would be able to come through to assist in the worship and the area is one where we have atleast 25 families who are closer to the new location rather than our home church. So that would mean they could help "seed" the new church AND have someplace to bring their neighbors rather than a church 40 minutes away. We'd plan to have a great nursery/children's program set up for Sunday morning right from the start so families will feel comfortable coming.

So we're at the starting gate. We're ready to go and begin the planning and vision casting for this new chapter in our lives. God is so good and I so thank Him for leading us and giving us a great church home to be launched from. It's going to be an interesting next year as we pull this off with God's help and I pray that this church would lift high the name of Jesus on Long Island. How humbling to be able to be a part of it!

Sickie Sunday

Well, it seems that the fall colds have hit our house. DH wasn't feeling well last night (went to bed early and felt lousy) and I think he'll end up at the doctor's tomorrow with a possible bronchitis. That's not good because of his severe asthma so he's back on his inhaler. Oh - and today is his birthday. :(

But this morning, he got up and got himself ready for church after I had told the woman who is kind of the "producer" of the Sunday service (bad term but she makes sure the lights are being done right, runs the projector in the first service and generally makes sure that the service runs smoothly - she does this all at the behest of the senior pastor) that Bob is not sure what he's doing this morning. Fortunately there's another worship team playing today and he had no other responsibilities so if he had to stay home, today would have been the day to do it. But he got up, showered and made it for the first service. I had taken the teens up earlier since their DOZ worship team is dancing in the service and they have to be there at 8 for a 9AM service start.

So now it was me and the littles home. DS got up early as he usually does and I hopped in the shower. Usually DD gets up a little later - she's not as much of an early bird as DS but at 9:45, I finally went in to wake her up since we need to leave at 10:15 or so. She had a hard time waking up but that's OK. But then she coughed. Croup. Great. Suddenly the phone rang and it just happened to be DH calling to ask if I could bring him a granola bar or something - but I told him that I think I'll just keep the kids home. I know DD just has a cold but she's run down (you can see it in her face) and there's no reason to get everyone else sick if I don't need to. So he'll tell the service "producer" that I can't make it in today to run the projector for the second service. That means I lose 2 hours of work time this week but that's OK. We'll just take it easy, I'll do my own Bible study this morning and I'll do a little lesson with the kids in a little while.

Gotta love kids. They make sure that the best laid plans get creamed every once-in-a-while. LOL

MOVING DAY!!!

So, 2 years ago, our church embarked on a building project. We had seriously run out of office space (8 offices for a staff of about 17 full time workers and a bunch more part timers), had only a small icky kitchen for our handicapped ministry to meet, no elevator for the handicapped and not enough classroom space for larger classes to meet. So it was decided to seek God and see if we could do this. As usual, this project was going to be undertaken without debt since we feel debt is a curse, so this would be interesting.

Well, now it's 2 years later (about 3 or 4 years since we started collecting for the project), and today is moving day! The office is closed and everyone is in their grubbies. Staff are moving out of their old offices into new offices, or else the staff that had NO office are now moving into space for themselves. There is a room with workstations for part timers (each one will get their own file cabinet that they can roll to the open workstation), and there are such nice spaces now! DH will no longer be sharing his office with the business pastor so he can get some privacy to work on music and his messages for the college ministry.

It's so amazing to see this entire project coming to an end. It was a real labor of love and was a great vehicle to actually minister to the workers who entered our doors. In addition, the congregation not only gave of their wallets but of their time and sweat because much of the work that could be done by us WAS done by us. From putting up sheetrock and putting down subflooring to wallpapering and painting - we saved a tremendous amount of money by picking up bagels and BBQing burgers and dogs to feed the workers who put their sweat equity into the building. In a week and a half, we will have the building dedication - one large service to give this building to the Lord as an offering of our labors - and to dedicate it to His service. I do pray that this new building will not only physically enlarge our territory as Jabez prayed, but that it would enlarge our ministry territory. That it would free us up to be able to grow our Friendship Unlimited ministry (the ministry to the disabled), which is such an amazing outreach to a portion of the population that is often forgotten by the church. That the work of the staff will be made more efficient and in doing so, reach more for the Lord. May God be glorified in all that happens in this new addition. :)

Record setting church budget meeting

So our church is a relatively large church (for this area). We have about 1000 attending each Sunday. Our budget is over two million dollars. We have a budget meeting each year to go over the budget and if anyone has questions, it's the time to ask. All staff is expected to be there and tonight here's what happened. Staff was there, one member of the finance committee (a deacon), and one other church member. We opened in prayer at 7:35PM. Budget was presented and explained. "Any questions?"......silence. We closed in prayer at 7:45PM. I think this is a record for a Baptist church budget meeting. LOL!! We were home in less than an hour and that's with a detour on the way home and forgetting to go to the supermarket for milk and having to turn around and go back. :) I have to say, I love our church!