This is an exciting Sunday for me.
New Passion turns 6 months old this weekend! Wow, how time flies.
These last 6 months have been incredible, its been complete with our set of difficulties as well as many successes.
We started the church with a launch team of 21 adults and 14 children. Trust me I heard the “concern” for the size of our launch team and I experienced the push back from the so-called experts who happened to never launch a church, and I even wonder if they’ve ever even heard from God. I saw the perplexed looks I got and felt the doubt surrounding me.
It is a good thing we have Jesus on our side and what Steven Furtick would call a “Crack Smoking” launch team, because all we had was a call from God and a vision to lead people to a passionate relationship with Jesus. We had very little equipment (and the majority of what we are using is borrowed), we had very little money (we even had to get a loan), but we had a people who love Jesus passionately and love people.
In 6 months we’ve seen many people begin a relationship with Jesus, many people who have signed up to be baptized (Coming Soon!), our launch team has grown from 35 people to a church averaging 80-85 every week. More than just seeing visitors come check us out, we are seeing them hang around, and several have plugged in to serve in a ministry environment. Our finances have been trending up, the best news is, we’ve never done without, in fact, we have totally paid off our loan. Our new, small church provided Thanksgiving meals for over 20 families and provided a complete Christmas for 4 families, and recently helped pack a local mission’s food pantry with non-perishable foods. I see this as a sign that our people are embracing the vision of our church. We’ve heard stories of life transformation and experienced some amazing things from God. Just this past Sunday, we had a family offer our church .4 acres with a house on the property to help move New Passion towards a new home once our school lease is up. I can list story after story of how God has blown my mind in these last 6 months, no man or organization can take credit for New Passion. God is building it in such a way that only he can receive the glory.
I was checking out what one could expect from a 6 month old baby…because that’s basically what we are, check these 7 things out:
- Developing New Skills & a Desire to Use Them – Like a baby, we are pretty uncoordinated with some stuff. However, every week we are improving and as we improve and develop our skills, you’ll see vast improvement in what we offer to our community and our people.
- Exploration – A baby likes to touch, taste, and see new things. They are curious little rug rats. I have said before, we are an experimental church. We want what we do to fit us like a glove, we don’t want to try and be someone else. Sure someone may look at us and say how they would never do it that way…Awesome! That’s why we are doing that way.
- Ready to Crawl (Not Walk) – Although a baby at 6 months may be able to stand or sit up straight, they are not ready to walk. Although some of our natural abilities may allow us to be strong in some areas, as a church, we are keeping it simple on purpose. We don’t have the structure or the finances to do too much too soon. We are okay with taking it slow.
- Stimulation Through New Activity – A baby is stimulated through lights and color and sound. We want to make things different and provide different experiences for our people. This goes back to experimenting, but also in unleashing new avenues to live out our HEART in the community and around the world. This does not mean a bunch of programs, but new and different experiences in what we are already doing!
- New Strategies – As a baby gets older, there comes a time to change strategies for eating and sleeping, to help adapt with how they are changing. As we grow there will come a place to start new strategies or adjust the ones we already have.
- Try new foods – A baby cannot drink milk all of its life. Baby books encourage trying new foods while avoiding others. We always need to be aware of what we can handle and what will hurt us in this stage of our church. We can get new ideas from other places, but we must filter it to make sure it is healthy for our city, our people, and our vision.
- Teeth – Some 6 month old babies have them and some don’t! If a 6 month old has teeth, its time to make sure they are properly taken care of. There are some things that we do well and we need give extra attention to those areas. We need to make sure they are funded properly with a solid team of volunteers.
A lot of these areas build on each other and are connected. Personally, I have to pace myself and remind myself that we are only several months old and there are things we need to improve on and with time, we’ll perfect them. We must crawl before we walk, but while we are crawling, I challenge our people to be passionate about what Jesus is calling us to and to give our all to his plan. I cannot wait to see what happens in these next 6 months!
