Rechurch has Launched!

Needless to say, it has been a busy month leading up to the launch of Rechurch! It feels great to have launched and to be meeting weekly. Routine is slowly setting in...just in time for our baby to get here! I've officially neglected the blog and hope to keep you a little more updated in the next few months.

Launch Sunday was amazing! Thanks for all of your well wishes, prayers, emails, and support! It was a bit like a dream to have made it to that point and to see our hard work over the last few years pay off! We had a great turnout, around 80 people, and we felt like people really started to connect with the church and each other.

Some exciting points:

- The cinemas are turning out to be a fantastic venue! People enjoy coming in to such a comfortable atmosphere!

- We are seeing lots of people who are unchurched and de-churched give church a chance! This is our goal.

- Our attendance has been steadily above what we had during preview services.

Some Challenges:

- It's hard to get people to fill the seats each week. Though attendeance isn't bad, many people who are committed to coming, just aren't committed to coming weekly yet.

- We need more volunteers! We start setting up before 6am each Sunday and have a very rushed pack down in order to be out of the cinemas on time. We need more people to jump in and help.

In addition to meeting weekly, Joe preached on community this week and we will begin two different Bible Studies. One more of an introduction and exploration for faith and one is a more in depth Bible Study.

We are also trying out "Meet and Eat" to introduce and connect people in the church with each other to help facilitate community outside the church.

Below are a couple of pictures from Launch! Check back in soon to hear about our new and finished offices and to hear about when this little baby is born!

Offices

There are so many new developments happening weekly with Rechurch that it is hard to keep everyone updated with it! We have had a lot of exciting things happening, but one of the things we are most excited about right now are our new (to us) offices.

For almost three years now, we haven’t really had an office. We have worked out of the spare bedroom, our kitchen, coffee shops, and our colleagues’ houses. Working from home has been a challenge at times because of the distractions and the constant shuffling of space when it needed to be used for something else. Perhaps the biggest issue, however, was that it is so difficult to shut off from “work mode.” Since we worked from home, there was always another email to respond to or task that we could work on – our minds never shifted gears from “work” to “home”. Needless to say, Amy and I, along with the rest of the staff from rechurch, have been looking forward in eager anticipation for the day when we would have an office. Now that day has come, and we finally have an office! (Well, we almost have an office).

On Friday we got approved to move into an old house as the official rechurch office. We had been praying about finding one in a great location and for it to be a good price. It seems that God answered those two prayer requests, because it is in the prime location, directly across the street from the mall where our church meets and on a main road. The cost was also better than we could expect. There is just one small caveat – the building is run down and looks pretty terrible on the inside (so maybe it isn’t that small of a caveat, actually).

For the last few days we have been in the office, trying to renovate it and get it up to a workable quality. We have been cleaning, sanding, jib-stopping (spackling) and painting. Several people from the church have joined in and tonight we hope to finish painting. The next step will be to fix some broken floor boards, and then sand and refinish some of the hardwood floors that have been covered by carpet for many years. We will still have to rip out an old, unusable fireplace and completely renovate a defunct bathroom as time and funds allow.

Even with all the work still to be done, we are so thankful that our prayers for an office have been answered. We look forward to rechurch using this building for effective ministry for years to come.

NYE 09

Happy New Year! New Zealand is the first place in the world to celebrate the new year and we had a great time doing so this year.

As you may know, rechurch decided to throw a huge community New Year's Eve party this year. We could not have done so without the help of the wonderful mission team that was here from Wadsworth, Ohio. We had a fantastic night and consider the evening a HUGE success. We were able to hire out a sports hall and a park right next to each other to have both indoor and outdoor activities.

We were prepared to make a fun evening with all kinds of entertaining activities ranging from bouncy castles, face painting, a giant Twister board, live music, candy floss (cotton candy) and poporn machines, Nintendo Wii, Playstation 2, movies, sausages, an ice cream truck, family games, sports games, relay races and more.

We had no clue what to expect but had advertised a good amount in order to prepare for the event. We didn't want to push rechurch, but we did want people to see rechurch as a church that cares for the community and as a church who is able to have a good time. Every family who came received a rechurch bag with information about the event and also about rechurch. We prayed that the people who came would ask questions or be interested in rechurch, but that it would be on their terms.

We are excited to report that we had over 300 people show up to our Family Friendly New Year's Eve party! We had a beautiful evening and a great time! We received heaps of great feedback from families who attended, and even an email from a family the next day saying how great the party was. We had many conversations with families about what rechurch is and are hopeful to see some of them at our next preview service. We feel that God totally blessed the event and are so excited about how great it went. We have already started planning for NYE10 as many people were asking for the party to happen again next year!

Enjoy some pictures from the evening:

A young boy grabbing a sausage after having his face painted

Hamish and Amy in front of the bouncy castles

Playstation 2 was a hit and was busy all night long

Playing Giant Twister

The mission team, rechurch staff, and a few other rechurch people after ringing in the New Year and cleaning up from a great party

Hope your 2010 is off to a great start as well!!