We had an incredible day yesterday with The Crossroads Community Church. Yesterday was our second Summer Preview Service. We had 46 people in attendance, and 25 of those were guests. So, over half our attendants were guests. We had an awesome worship service, and the preacher was pretty good!
We have had a lot of activity going on over the last month in preparation for the service. We sent out a saturation mailer to all of Anna advertising our community block party and our Preview Service. I have been making lots of good connections in Anna through the Greater Anna Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber hosted Anna's first citywide 4th of July celebration, and they asked us to help out with the children's area. We brought a bounce house and we gave away a weekend getaway on Lake Texoma. We made a lot of good connections, and really got our name out in the community through that event.
We also hosted a Family Movie Night in one of the communities in Anna. That idea was "money in the bank". We had come upon the idea as we thought through how to do a better block party. The problem with typical block parties is that you have a limited window of opportunity to connect with people (15-20 minutes, max). People come, get a snack, let their kids play games and they are gone. So, we decided we would try showing a movie, and see if that gave us longer to connect with people. We bought a giant, outdoor inflatable movie screen and showed Alvin and the Chipmunks. We did an abbreviated block party before the movie, and we had concessions both before and after the movie. It worked wonderfully. People came and stayed. Some of them were there for three hours. It was a great way for us to connect with people.
We've also been doing a lot of door to door surveying in the community, and we have done some service projects around town. Another great idea we had was we bought all the medium drinks at The Malt Shop one day, and gave away free drinks from 2 to 4. That gave us some great connections as well.
We are continuing to get an awareness about us in the community, and it is beginning it bear fruit.
Pray for strength for our team. Set up and take down is a lot of hard work, but it is definitely worth it. Also, pray for strength for my voice. I have been hoarse for about the last month. Four years ago, I was having a similar problem, and it turned out I had a cyst on my vocal cords. I really hope that is not the case this time. The last time, I had to have surgery and was out of commission for a while.
