Wednesday Night Highlights And Church Update (as promised!)

• Before I get to the “meat” of today’s post, I wanted to post a video of our worship team playing Everlasting God last night. I am so blessed to have a faithful team that is not only committed to leading in worship every week, but they are also really good!
• Our set list last night was All We Need by Charlie Hall, How Can I Keep From Singing by Chris Tomlin, My Drink by Charlie Hall, Majesty by Charlie Hall, Everlasting God by Brenton Brown/Chris Tomlin, and Forever King by Todd Fields. I just realized we had a very Charlie Hall-heavy set list last  night. That’s interesting, because we don’t play that much Charlie Hall stuff.
• My message last night was called Together. I talked about the importance and Biblical example of walking through life and the Christian journey “Together” in a small group.
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• And now, the reason you’re really here. As mentioned yeaterday, it’s been a LONG week. Since I’ve been at First Baptist, I’ve been on 3 staff retreats. We’ve gone away and talked about the health of our church, and things we needed to improve on. And to be honest, we’ve never really done anything about it. That all changed several weeks ago when our staff went to the Drive Conference at NorthPoint Community Church in Alpharetta. My comment to Katie when I got home was, “I think we’ve finally been knocked on the fence.” God began to move among our staff and give us clarity.
• By that, I mean God made us painfully aware of our shortcomings. The biggest shortcoming being we are not reaching the unchurched, hurting, and disconnected. And because of that, we are not seeing families joining our church. We are not seeing baptisms. We are doing what the church was created to do. Once we had clarity in that area, then God was able to give us clarity of vision.
• Our staff met Thursday night. After many prayers and discussions, the staff reached an uninanimous decision on the next page in the history of our church. One that hopefully will make an huge impact on the spiritual climate of our city. The Thursday night meeting lasted 3 1/2 hours, by the way. 🙂
• The staff took the proposal to the deacons on Monday night. Our pastor umcompromisingly shared with the deacons what he thought God’s direction for our church was. And they responded. The positivity and excitement was great. They really seemed to embrace the true Biblical concept of what being a deacon is all about: following the staff’s vision and making ministry happen.
• There are many proposed changes in this plan. The biggest is adding a third worship service specifically designed to welcome the unchurched and disconnected. I’ll give more detials about the service after Sunday. Dr. Baxter is sharing the vision with the church Sunday morning, so you definitely want to be here. But just know this service is gonna stinkin’ ROCK.
• According to Thom Rainer in The Bridger Generation, 96% of 13-30 year olds are unchurched. I want to change that. I want you to be a part too- be here Sunday!

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