Update

Ugh! I have not done a very good job of keeping this updated.

Things are going really awesome right now. We had our first preview service on June 15 at the Tiger Cat Gym in Anna. I was totally amazed at how our team worked and how they were able to convert the space into a worship center.

When you came in the door, we set up a cafe area with coffee and pastry bar and three cafe tables. It was super cool, and a really neat space for people to gather and greet each other. We also had our Welcome Center next to that.

The really neat thing was what we were able to do with the floor that we actually meet on. As many of you know, we are actually meeting on the tumbling floor of the gym. We were able to remove the thick foam matting, and meet on the plywood subfloor. There are still springs under this, so the floor still has some bounce to it, but that just really makes worship fun. We used a lot of black drapery and some lattice to convert the space to make it more our own.

Our worship band did an incredible job. Robby Thompson is our worship leader. We actually just found Robby about less than two weeks before our preview service, but he is an incredible musician. He is just what we had been praying for in a worship leader: a man who was humble, who understood what it means to bring people into God's presence, and who knew what it was like to be set free. Robby is all of those things, and he is a really gifted musician.

We used some of the mats from the gym to create an enclosed nursery. We had found folding rocking chairs at Target the week before. That was a really nice touch. We set up our children's ministry area, Kids' Cove, outside. From what I hear, that went really well.

Oh yeah, and the sermon was just awesome.

We had about 40-45 people in attendance, including all the children and workers.

Overall, it was an awesome day and a great practice for our team!