I just wanted to take a minute to share & celebrate with you what’s been going on in our church since the transition-over 7 months ago. (Can you believe it? We’re almost one year into Chapter 2 already!)
10 Things to Celebrate
1.One of the 1st things we needed to address was our mounting indebtedness which was just at $300,000. At the 1st of the year in an Encounter service, I asked you to pray that we would be able to sell the old fire escape teen center despite the down turn in the real estate market. Well, just this past week we sold the teen center for $550,000. So, I’m thrilled to announce that to date all of our accumulated back bills are now paid off, we are operating within our budget & we have put aside a small reserve!
2.Now that we’ve had some time to monitor Elim Café it is evident that it will pay off its loan of $25,000 sooner than expected-in under 3 years! Remember, once Elim Café is paid for, 100% of the proceeds will go to missions. Imagine…in just a few short years, Elim will be throwing off thousands of dollars into missions & outreach work every year! Now, that’s coffee on a mission!
3.2,517 people saw our production Stories 2 on Easter Sunday which is the largest attended Sunday in our history!
4.On the missions front-we raised $11,000 in one Sunday for Haiti (see NewMissions.org); we are sending a $12,000 John Deere Gator to Honduras (see Tree of Life Missions or tolm.org); we sent $5,000 to help Discover Church finish their 1st building (see DiscoverChurch.org) & our youth group raised $35,000, traveled to Peru & literally paid for & built San Benjamin’s 1st church (see http://vimeo.com/13809716 )!
5.Youth Sunday was amazing! We exceeded our goal of 1,500 in attendance as we celebrated our 20th year of Summer Camp (see TripleCRanchCamp.com). Also, my Michael Jackson impersonation-& Pastor Mike’s!-went viral! Check it out at: http://vimeo.com/13642233)
6.July is usually the lowest month for tithes & offerings. All churches suffer financially during July & ours is no exception…except this year. Get ready…brace yourself…for us, July has been our biggest financial month of the year…so far, and we still have 4 left!
7.We just completed our Back-to-School Love Project. Our church provided over 150 backpacks to families in need stuffed with all the supplies to get the school year stated off right. (see http://vimeo.com/14166662)
8.In May, Dr. Samuel Hossain was our guest speaker as we graduated & confirmed 20 students through our Discipleship 101 program. There are 40 more who will graduate & be confirmed in November. Plus, brand new classes-Pre-Discipleship, Discipleship 101 & Discipleship 201-begin in September.
9. 97 people have joined our church over our last 3 Discovery Classes, joined a Discovery Home Group & are in the process of being assimilated in to our church family…a life giving family!
10.We’ve also baptized 45 people (see: http://vimeo.com/11595465, http://vimeo.com/10954437, http://vimeo.com/9865428 and http://vimeo.com/9856594) and have seen many others take the beginning steps in their faith journey.
As I look over what God has been doing among us & through us, I’m so encouraged. Truly, our best days are yet to come.
Thank you for all your support, encouragement & real partnership. Jill & I love you dearly.
Onward!
Pastor Charlie
PS. Allow me to make a few announcements-
1.Have you noticed changes in our Narthex? You know that it’s a big part of our vision for this church to be the type of place that’s welcoming and inviting to your friends, co-workers and to the new families who are moving into our county all the time – the type of place you’d want to hang-out, so we plan to gradually sweep through our entire building giving her an ‘extreme makeover.’ Do you remember what Elim used to look like? & now how does she look? Likewise, we plan to eventually give our entire facility a more contemporary look. We plan to update our furniture, paint color, lighting, bathrooms, pictures, etc.
2.Staff/Position Changes: The Elders & I have promoted Pastor Mike to Executive Pastor, the position I used to hold for Dad. I’m very excited about this! Now, when something goes wrong, I have someone else to point too!! Jeff & Kristy Nicolette are assuming the role of Children’s Department Directors & Nathan Gamble is now overseeing our Senior & Junior high departments.
3.You may have noticed that we’ve been tweaking our 9:00 service. The truth is that our 10:45 service has been booming -so much so that we’re starting to get pretty tight on seats; often we have new people in service who are sitting in seats where it’s hard to hear and see. So, to give people another opportunity to be a part of this type of service we’ve decided to start applying what seems to be working in our 10:45 service to our 9:00 service- we believe that doing this will give us more room to grow and another opportunity for people to experience the type of worship service we’ve been offering only in the 10:45 service.
4.Wednesday nights are going to be our ‘Discipleship’ night…period. We are going to focus on that 1 thing. So, I’m asking you to do 1 of 2 things-1) either get into a discipleship program yourself or 2) help us disciple someone else. In other words, Wednesday nights will be about ‘being discipled or discipleling.’ Food will still be served at 6 pm. Elim Café will stay open the entire night for those that just want to hang out. & as always, there will be an entire discipleship program for our kids from high school down to infants. It’s going to be great.
PSS. If you have any questions or comments give them to Pastor Mike (mtaylor@thecommunitychurch.org), our new Executive Pastor!
