Monday Morning Update

Yet another amazing weekend at The Crossroads. This is supposed to be the time of year when attendance dips, and church growth really is not substantial. People are gone on vacation, spending time at the lake, doing things with their family. It's hot, and people just like sleeping in during the summer months. So, typically, in church life, you just try to survive through the summer.

That seemed like it was going to be the pattern for us during the month of June. Attendance took a dip, and it was kind of discouraging. But something has happened during July. We kicked off a new message series called "God at the Movies" in which we are exploring blockbuster movies from this summer and seeing the greater story of God's love written in them. We have done a couple of block parties in the community and gave away helium balloons at the city's 4th of July celebration.

So, I don't know if those things are an explanation, but for some reason our attendance has taken off in July. In fact, it's the highest average attendance we've had for any month so far. We baptized four people this month, and have at least one more coming up next week. We are really excited, but this definitely represents a challenge for us. Looks like we will have to be moving into a new meeting space very soon. Please pray for us. This will represent a significant increase in our costs. We need at least ten people to commit to giving $200 a month to cover the cost of new facilities. We would love for you to partner with us in this way.

My wife did an awesome job with her Monday Morning Update, so I'm just going to modify it to give you the rest of the details on this weekend. Saturday we did another movie night/block party. This time we used Slater Creek Park, the local city park. It's new and a great location, but we had a very low attendance at this movie night. In our evaluation we came up with a few possibilities. 1. The park is not easily visible from the highway - no drive-by stoppers. 2. Have to do more marketing if we use the park - We advertised on a mailer that primarily focused on the sermon series. In communities, it is a lot easier to gather a crowd. Not so much so in the city park. In the future, if we do stuff in the park, we will be sure to get something in the newspaper. 3. It was one of the hottest days we have had in quite a while. However, we enjoyed meeting the people who turned out for the event and are already planning and looking forward to one more summer block party in August. We will be collecting school supplies to give away in a needy community at that block party.

Our Sunday worship celebration was really incredible. Robby and the band did a great job leading us. We had a new drummer sit in with us, and he did a really good job. We also had our bass player back with us this week. He's been out a lot this summer as he has been working at a church camp. It was great to have him back.

For the message, today's movie in "God at the Movies" was Terminator: Salvation. The movie is an illustration of sacrifice, and second chances. I talked about how to make your life count and pointed out that the answer to that question both in Terminator and in the Bible is sacrifice. The way to meaning in life is giving your life away for God and giving your life away for other people. The message will soon be online at www.welcometothecrossroads.com Be sure to download and listen to it soon.

We had several new families stop by to check us out. One of the coolest stories is that a lady who had never been to church - ever in her 41 years- came. And loved it.... wept through the whole service. A couple of our ladies got to spend some time sharing with her and praying for her after the service. It is so beautiful to see God at work. We also had the opportunity to pray over a new believer in our congregation who will be leaving tomorrow for basic training for the army. We have another baptism coming up August 2. I love this part of church planting - seeing God drastically and dramatically change people's lives.

Continue praying for a meeting place for us. We are in immediate need of space. We are now consistently running about 20 in children's church. We do not have space for them inside. Meeting outside with them works as long as it doesn't rain. When colder weather arrives, we will have to be in a larger space. Please pray for our workers. As we grow, we will have to pull in more workers and right now we are pretty maxed out on volunteers. Pray that those of us who volunteer will be very flexible during this time of growth. We need grace for the journey as we work with children who have not been to church before. We want to provide opportunities for them to hear about Jesus and learn how He can become their Savior. Pray that we will never lose sight of why we do what we do in children's.

Also pray that we will be able to increase Robby's salary. Our goal is to eventually bring him on as a full-time staff member. Every week many of you read about the incredible job he is doing with The Crossroads. What you may not be aware of is that he works a full time job in Dallas to support his family. We would love to be able to bring Robby on full time, but we need several more monthly sponsors in order to do that. If you are not currently giving, please pray about helping us meet this goal. Feel free to share this need with others in your congregations who are praying for us so that they will ask the God of the universe to meet this need abundantly.