Soft Launch Away

I know, I know, Iknow…I know what you are going to say before you say it…so let me put it to rest before I begin…I KNOW THAT IT MIGHT GET REALLY REALLY OLD AND REALLY REALLY MUNDANE AS THE TIME WEARS ON(particularly on those cold days in February). But man, after meeting together for our soft launch (or pre-view service or pre-launch service or practice service…however you want to say it) I am ready to sell our building and property and go to a portable church every week. It was awesome…whatta HOOT! It was great working with all the Warren Campus Core Team people who had the same focus, the same mindset, the same purpose in mind. We didn’t know exactly what we were doing but within an hour and half we had transformed a school building into a place to worship God through song, communion, giving, and teaching.

Dale Taylor had his sound equipment ready to go(what a blessing for him to let us use his sound and light equipment), Ramona and her K-town workers (Kids department) were ready to rock and roll, the worship team had a bit of a last minute major change (the lead singer, Ben Baumann called in and could not make it due to illness in the family…hope all is doing well dude!) and James Bruebach and Rod Taylor stepped up and did a great acoustic set, the whole Core Team was excited, Tim Adornetto did a great communion and offering meditation, Jeni and Phil Jones were “on it” with the video set up (thanks also to all the efforts of Jeff Volz did on the preparing the video and all the video equipment), Scott Lindemann with his trailor full of equipment, and Mike Foster was coordinating it all. There were so many people who help out and I was just absolutely jazzed to see all these people dedicating themselves to this effort.

And here is the coolest thing of all…without this even being advertised that we were starting Sunday, we had nine new people come and check us out.

God is working in the lives of people in the Warren Township area…I pray that we will endeavor to hear and heed His calling in the life of NPC…for people to come to an understanding of what it means for Jesus to be the Lord of thier lives.

Here We Go!!!!

And here we go. Last night was the last core meeting before we have our soft launch this coming Sunday. It was a good meeting to just check out the different areas of ministry to make sure we had our “ducks in a row”.

We have a great bunch of people who are willing to be used by God in this effort and are spending a great deal of time and resources to accomplish this task…and I praise God for all these people.

Yet, there are still those out there that can’t quite get why we are undertaking this new venture of multi-site. They give various reasoning and logic as to why we should not be doing this. I was reading in a book earlier this year, “the multi-site church revolution”, about comments people were making about their mutli-site move. Here were some of the comments…”why do we want to replicate ministries that we do poorly at the original campus? We don’t have enough leaders, volunteers, and musicians for the services we are already doing, how can we do more? Budgets are stretched tight, how can we spend money on additional campuses?” I had to laugh when I read these, for these are some of the same questions and comments that have been made at NPC. The serious side of the coin though is that they are right…we are stretched very tight in all areas of our resources.

But here is the deal, I have seen in my life (time and time again), in the life of others, and clear through the scriptures…that God works in ways and in people’s lives that sometimes just don’t make sense to us. God uses people that we may not even consider qualified or even useful, God uses situations that to us seem impossible, God uses life situations that we just as soon not deal with for His good…WHY? Because there is no greater way to show God’s power, might, love, foreknowledge, supremacy and ultimately His glory than to use the unusable…to make possible the impossible…utilize the unlikely. It is in these cases where God does His work…to make the blind to see, the lame to walk, those with leprosy to be cured, the deaf to hear, the dead to rise…God reaches to poor to show His Greatness.

The same is true with this effort of the new Warren Campus that begins this week. No matter what will take place…what we perceive to be wins or failures…our job is to surrender to God’s will and let Him be glorified through it all.

Time with a couple…God and Mindy

Last week Mindy and I were able to; I believe for the first time, take a week long Sabbath rest. This was an absolute fantastic time to spend with both God and my wife. We spend the week at Cerdarly in Delafield WI, about an hour drive north from where we live. It was much like a bed and breakfast only it is designated for pastors and ministers from all denominations. The interesting thing was that we spent the week with 5 other couples and never really discussed what “denomination” or “non-denomination” each was from.

Again this was a time of refreshment and listening to God. It was a great reminder that God can speak to us in so many fantastic ways if we will only slow down to take the time to listen. The first day there the Cedarly host asked everyone two questions; “why Cedarly” and “why now”? The first was easy to answer the second not so much. The first answer was simply we had heard a lot about Cedarly and decided to go on the week of Mindy’s birthday. The second was a bit tougher to answer but I gave it shot and said, “Right now makes absolutely no sense. We are within two weks of launching a new campus, there has been transitions of staff recently, and there is a tremendous amount of things that need to get done between now and then…so right now makes now sense at all…..paused for effect….yet I know that God has other plans for this week and I can’t wait to see what they are.”

This was very true, God spoke in a tremendous way that cut me to the quick. I can’t share it all right now as some things are still being revealed. But what I can share is this…there was a renewed feeling of excitement and anticipation for the things that are taking place in my life, in the life of my family and in the life of the church. God has set a vision for us that I am sure will glorify Him and His Kingdom if we will just get out of the way and let Him do His thing through us.

We are on the countdown week to our soft launch and there is much to do…let me put it another way…I am not sure how we are going to get everything don that needs to be done in the next six days. But this I know…this I am confident of God is directing this thing…we need to do our part and be diligent to this effort…but God is in control…so tie a knot in the end of the rope and hang on…we’re going for a ride!