The Next 154

When my mother visited our church in Scotland she would sit near the back and would often have her fingers pretty close to her ears while the worship team was in action. Truth is, she didn't really like our style of church and wouldn't have been there were it not for the fact that she was with us. But she was always happy that things were going well and the church was developing, even if it was not quite her thing.

My mother would not have approved of our plans for Grace's seventh anniversary, but she's not here now and if you promise not to tell her, I think I can get away it.

On October 4th 1998, 154 people crowded into the function room of The Inn At Medford for our very first service. Today I threw out the challenge to have the next group of 154 new people there with us when we celebrate our birthday on October 2nd.

To make it easier to get folks there for the first time, there will be no service that day. We're just serving breakfast all morning from 9.30 to 10.30. This won't be the normal continental spread with bagels juice and other healthy stuff, this will be cholesterol on a plate - eggs, sausage, bacon, home fries, french toast, etc. It's all the things your cardiologist said you should cut down on and you really need to promise yourself you will - at 12.00 noon on the 2nd.

We want you to bring all the people you can. We'll have the theater set up so you can show them how we do church there. We'll even be showing an anniversary video. But it's a low-key outreach morning that we believe will lead us into the next season of the church's life with considerable momentum.

So start inviting guests and plan to celebrate with us. By the way, there will be a special sermon CD available for you on the day too.

It's definitely not my mother's church. She wouldn't have understood it. She would have wondered why, but she would have loved to see it all happen!