Kickoff of The Crossroads

Well, I promised you earlier in the week an update on the church plant, so here's some of the highlights of the last couple of months.

We had our official Kickoff Sunday for The Crossroads on September 7, and we are now having services every Sunday. We have been waiting for this day for so long, it is hard to believe it has finally come.

For our Kickoff Service we had 75 people in attendance, and three people gave their lives to Christ. Praise God!

Our whole team worked really hard this summer in preparation for Kickoff Sunday. Throughout the summer, we have been meeting once a month in Summer Preview Services. These services were a chance for people from the Anna community to come check out what the church is about, and where we could identify areas that we needed to work on to prepare for Kickoff. These were really beneficial in helping us figure out our setup and takedown, elements of our services, and who would take responsibility for what jobs.

Our Preview Services also were a great time of growth for us. With each Preview Service, our congregation grew. There were about 35 people at our first Preview Service. By the second one, we had grown to 46 people, and by the third, there were 68 people in attendance. During these Preview Services, a mother who had just gone through a difficult divorce gave her life to Christ.

We have also been using community block parties this summer as a way to reach out to people. We have hosted four block parties at which we gave away door prizes and free food, had inflatable games for the kids, and showed a family-friendly movie on a 12-foot, inflatable, outdoor movie screen. These were very successful since so many families in Anna are looking for something they can do together.

At each of these block parties, we had families register for door prizes by filling out a brief survey. These surveys are helping us to better understand the people we are trying to reach and adjust our methods accordingly.

We have also been doing these same surveys door-to-door in our target communities. One of the women we visited while doing these surveys was in our Kickoff Service. She had grown up Catholic, but had not been to church in a long time. She said she had never experienced anything like our services. At the conclusion of the Kickoff Service, she gave her life to Christ.

Finally, one of the members of our team had been praying for his father and step-mom for a long time. On the morning of our Kickoff Service, he came to me and excitedly told me that they were coming to our service.
At the conclusion of the service, as I was looking through the decision cards, I discovered that both his dad and stepmom had given their lives to Christ that morning.

That is why we are doing what we are doing. We are so thankful for the four people who have already come to know Jesus because of The Crossroads. Four people will never, ever spend even a second in hell because of what we are doing. Praise God!