WHO'LL COME BACK?
Busy day today, most of it out of the office for meetings with a number of different people that took me from Medford to Farmingdale to Manhasset and then to Ronkonkoma - nice day for a tour of the Island!
In the course of my travels I was thinking that some things never change. Eight years ago today, after an outstanding launch day, I was wondering how many of the folks at our first service would come back the next Sunday. What was weird when I think back was that we started in the Inn At Medford fully aware they had a prior booking for the next Sunday and we had to go elsewhere. So our second Sunday we had service in the Radisson Hotel at Exit 63 of the LIE. Good job I hadn't read any books on planting - that was a move no writer would have endorsed!
I guess it was a prophetic statement that we would be a very mobile mobile church!
Strange thing is that I'm here today thinking about new people who were with us last Sunday and I'm doing what I was doing back in 1998, wondering who among them will come back. Of course, not everyone does - and that's okay. We're definitely not eveyone's flavor and we don't try to be. After all, you can't please all the people all the time, so you set your course and see who wants to come along. If you try to change to meet the whim of everyone who shows interest, you're gonna sink.
I guess one thing that's different in '06 is that back when we started I was thinking towards the next weekend, still wondering if we would have enough people return so that the new church could get established. (By the way our numbers were up by a few on that second Sunday even though we had a lot of people in Week 1 who were there as a one-off to wish us well and had no intention of joining us).
Nowadays I'm not wondering if we'll make it, I just want to see us continue drawing as many people into God's kingdom as we can.
500 in worship is our next goal.
In the course of my travels I was thinking that some things never change. Eight years ago today, after an outstanding launch day, I was wondering how many of the folks at our first service would come back the next Sunday. What was weird when I think back was that we started in the Inn At Medford fully aware they had a prior booking for the next Sunday and we had to go elsewhere. So our second Sunday we had service in the Radisson Hotel at Exit 63 of the LIE. Good job I hadn't read any books on planting - that was a move no writer would have endorsed!
I guess it was a prophetic statement that we would be a very mobile mobile church!
Strange thing is that I'm here today thinking about new people who were with us last Sunday and I'm doing what I was doing back in 1998, wondering who among them will come back. Of course, not everyone does - and that's okay. We're definitely not eveyone's flavor and we don't try to be. After all, you can't please all the people all the time, so you set your course and see who wants to come along. If you try to change to meet the whim of everyone who shows interest, you're gonna sink.
I guess one thing that's different in '06 is that back when we started I was thinking towards the next weekend, still wondering if we would have enough people return so that the new church could get established. (By the way our numbers were up by a few on that second Sunday even though we had a lot of people in Week 1 who were there as a one-off to wish us well and had no intention of joining us).
Nowadays I'm not wondering if we'll make it, I just want to see us continue drawing as many people into God's kingdom as we can.
500 in worship is our next goal.
posted by Roger Blackmore | 6:58 PM
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