I’m a little late on this, but wanted to blog about New Passion’s launch last Sunday, September 13. I wanted to get a post up last week, but I am quickly finding out that serving in the role of “Bi-Vocational” pastor is not that time friendly, so we’ll see how it affects my blogging in the near future.
Here are some of my thoughts and highlights from our first week as a new church:
- We kicked off with a series entitled “Re-Discover Church” with the idea that whether people had been in church before or whether New Passion is their first experience, everyone has preconceived ideas about “church.” We don’t want preconceived ideas to be a barrier for people to check us out at New Passion, so we are laying the foundation of who we are as a church.
- We pointed out that we want to be about a Life Altering Message and a Focus Altering Movement. Our Vision is to lead people to a passionate relationship with Jesus, that starts with a Life Altering Message, and He will lead them to a Focus Altering Movement. We used Paul as an example…immediately after his conversion, his focus changed.
- We had 1 person put their faith in Jesus Christ at the launch service.
- We experienced some challenges on the first week: Technical difficulties with our video monitors and no A/C in the hallways (where our birth – K4 meet), but it shows from the beginning we are not perfect and have some stuff to work on!
- We have an amazing team. It is awesome how God led our team together. We are a small launch team of 23 people, but I could not ask for a better group to launch a church with.
- Sunday are a lot of work, a lot of stress, and long. But putting it into perspective of Hebrews 11:35-37, the 4 hours of sacrifice and hard work are nothing compared to what God called some to (being killed by the sword, stoned to death, imprisoned, sawed in half, etc.) – The life change that we will see happen in Grovetown is all worth the sweat, the sore muscles from setting up, breaking down, and reloading the trailer every week, and anything else that comes with it.
- We are proud to be friends with and serving along side a Kingdom minded church in Stevens Creek Church. They launched a new campus in Grovetown on the other side of the city on September 13th as well. Their pastor Marty Baker stopped by on our launch Sunday and gave us a card and a gift to our church. Very classy!
- We kicked off our first service with 108 people in attendance, 15 of which we knew would not be back. This week we had 97, several of which were brand new faces and the others returned from our launch week. I am so proud of our team, because we started with Nicki; my wife, Gavin, Tristan, and Hailey; my kids. God took us from 5 people to a first service of 108, I am blown away and amazed.
- Now the work begins. Satan hates us, especially since he knows we will unashamedly preach the Gospel of Jesus to the world. I can’t wait to see what God does with New Passion Church in Grovetown and around the world!
