Sunday Night Reflections

Another one bites the dust...here are some thoughts from the day:

• SPECIAL THANKS TO PEACHTREE CORNERS BAPTIST CHURCH and MONTE NICHOLS! Thanks for buying us our new chairs. They look great. We are praying that many people will sit in these chairs being transformed by the Gospel.

• This was my second Sunday off...in regards to preaching the Word. It was nice to come a little late this morning. Great job volunteer teams! And Page did another amazing job preaching the Word. I feel incredibly blessed to have such a gifted teacher and friend on our crew. Listen to his messages at www.vintagenola.org/podcast.
  
• God's Spirit was extremely rich in both gatherings today. It was a calming and healing atmosphere. The music and teaching was solid and the crowd was excited.
• The band was amazing today. Probably because Wendy was singing. Andrew has done a great job mixing and matching a bunch of our people into a few bands. I never get tired of hearing Drew sing. Even when he is sick.
• I shared tonight during the welcome that I spent most of the afternoon with Bolt napping in my arms. As I watched him sleep, God painted a great picture in my soul. He reminded me that for many people, our Vintage worship gatherings are a time when people can cuddle up in our Father's arms. This city can be really tough to live in. I pray that our church will always be a place of refuge for the tired and weary.
• We have a Family Meeting this next week (Sunday Night 10/19 @ 7:30pm). I am extremely grateful to God for all that He has done through our church, but we have so much more to do. Our Family Meeting will be a time of prayer and vision casting. We will also update the church on our current status. Let me offer this little disclaimer...we won't only hug and kiss at this meeting. We are going to lay out our expectations upon our membership. A lot of our members have stepped it up big time, but a lot haven't. That won't be accepted or allowed at Vintage. There are plenty of other churches that would happily welcome consumers. Not our church.
  
• Little moment of encouragement. One of our faithful guests came to me at the end of the service in tears. After some small discussion she shared with me that she felt like Vintage had come to Uptown just for her. She told me that she felt incredibly blessed by the fact that Christ would place our church in her community. Thank you Jesus for your church and vision.
• We spent some time praying for our LIFEgroup leaders. We have 13 LIFEgroups meeting all over NOLA. I am hearing some great stories from these groups as they study Vintage Jesus.
• Our attendance has remained pretty much the same with around 100 total for the day. During the last two weeks our evening numbers have really dropped. Not sure why...but we are going to challenge some of our members to come at night. There are quite a few people that can't come in the mornings, so we are going to press on.

• As I have shared before, we are on a marathon not a sprint. I am excited to see where Christ is taking us into the future. One of my leaders reminded me of how far we have come since February. He told me to look on our website tonight of our pics. Here is a pic from February:
  

• Here is a pic from a couple of weeks ago at our baptism service:

Jesus, keep growing your church.

Goodnight people.