Launched!

Just now recovering from Sunday morning. I am just stunned. There was definitely a sense of eagerness on Saturday night… The cleanup crew, who ISN’T supposed to set up all the tech, stage, and stuff ended up staying until TOO LATE because they were just excited and wanted to get stuff going. The band worked really hard and pulled it off really well. Those guys just rocked. The nursery and preschool groups were awesome. Everyone in front and behind the scenes just went after it and knocked it right out of the park!

Everyone told us to keep our expectations low, and not get disappointed when turnout wasn’t high. Your first official service, after all, will be pretty small. You have to build a crowd over time. We were hoping for 60… Praying for 80. When I was told that there were over 120 present, you could have knocked me down. A church-planting friend of mine emailed me when he heard that and said that 120 was a great number for a growing metropolitan area… He couldn’t believe we had that in little Ellijay!

We received great responses from people, saying things like “Ellijay needs this,” “we have been looking for you for so long… where have you been?” and my favorite, “I love my new church.” (thanks, Amy!) I was nearly in tears as people expressed their excitement about this NEW THING in Ellijay.

My favorite part of the service was when we sang “Wonderous Cross.” I love that line that goes “O the wonderful cross, bids me come and die and find that I may truly live.” It really summed up the message of Easter, and the reason we’ve come together to launch this church. I also really loved watching people leave with handfulls of seed packages. (you had to be there.) It was just another signal of the LIFE that we had been talking about all morning.

So it was a pretty incredible morning. We met lots of new friends. We caught back up with some old ones. God was with us, and it was good. There are some GREAT things in store! I can’t wait to see what happens next!