Preview Service # 3

We have officially completed three of our five preview services for Rechurch. Our third service was held last Sunday and we are all very excited about how it went.

As a church staff, we were all a bit apprehensive about Sunday. Between our first service and this one, we have come up against many obstacles and road blocks, nothing huge, just many things that have been discouraging to us. We spent many hours preparing, extended many invitations, to both new people and people that we have been talking to for months, spent a lot of time in prayer, and knew we just needed to trust that God would do what only he can do, work in the hearts of people.

Sunday morning came around and set up went very smoothly. About ten minutes before the service was to start, people started pouring in- both people that we knew and people that were just responding to our advertisements. Our attendance was up 50% from the last two services and the 'buzz' that accompanied the morning was incredible.

Rechurch felt like a community on Sunday morning. It was exciting to see people connecting with one another. The service was a great one and people stuck around to hang out afterwards.

We made an appeal for people who are interested to join our launch team. Please pray that people respond to this appeal and join us at the launch team meeting this Sunday night. Our launch team is the group of people who are joining in our vision to officially launch Rechurch in February.

Thank you for your prayers for Rechurch. We are so excited to see how God is working in our lives, in our friends lives, and in Christchurch, New Zealand!

Faith Exploration Event

Tomorrow night Rechurch is hosting a Faith Exploration Event. Actually we aren’t quite sure what to call it, but we feel like this best describes what we are doing.

Each of us has come across people who are interested in what Rechurch is doing but doesn’t think that church is for them. Others have said they would like to check out what’s happening but have to work on Sunday mornings and therefore can’t make it to church.

We have decided to try something different in order to try to possibly reach out to this group of people. Tomorrow night (Sunday 15 Nov) we are able to use one of the rooms at our venue to host this event. We will be watching a Rob Bell Nooma Video and having an open time of discussion afterwards.

We’ll have some appetizers that the Fox and Ferret offers and hope to have a relaxed atmosphere where people feel comfortable talking and sharing questions and thoughts about faith. We also hope that this opens more doors with the people we have invited. Maybe they will come to our next preview service (22 Nov) or maybe this will open up our personal conversations more.

Will you please join us in praying for the people we have invited to this event? Please pray for openness on their part and for us to be able to clearly communicate God’s love to these people, our friends.