BBQ

I got to speak yesterday at First Baptist Church of Whitesboro. FBCW is one of our sponsor churches, and the pastor was out of town on a mission trip, so he asked me to fill in. I talked to the church about how they could partner in church planting.

FBCW is a terrific church. Their worship, in both their contemporary and traditional services, was genuine and moved by the Holy Spirit. The church also obviously has a heart for mission. While we were there, there were two groups away on mission trips, they had just had one missionary couple leave their missions house and another couple was getting ready to move in, and they are involved in supporting The Crossroads.

After the service, I was flooded by people from the congregation who wanted to volunteer their time, their talents, and their services to help out with The Crossroads. Several people volunteered to help with block parties. Others gave money. One lady was truly like the widow who gave two cents in the New Testament. She told me she was on disability and did not have a lot of income, but that she was going to commit to sending ten percent of her income to The Crossroads.

The one that really encouraged me was a woman who told me that she didn't really have a source of income, but that she was getting ready to have a cow butchered and that she was going to give a tithe of the beef to us. I know, that really sounds like the beginning of a funny story, but Wow! what an incredible gift to us. Psalm 50:10 says that God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. Apparently he decided to give us part of one of them.

BBQ anyone?

Wow!

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.

Impact

I had a really neat conversation with our landlord from Tiger Cat last week. Gina told me that she is inviting everyone she sees to come to The Crossroads. She was so impressed with our setup and our attitude that she is getting the word out about us. She has hundreds of parents come through her gym each week, and she is telling them all about us.

She also told me that she wanted us to know that we were already having an impact on her life. She said that the excitement and joy that we have and the love that we have for each other and that we have already shown to her has inspired her and that she wants to come check us out at one of our services! Yahooo!

Praise

Hagerman Church voted this Sunday to serve as our sponsor church. The vote passed by 100%. Amazing and incredible!

Thank You, God, and Thank You, Hagerman

Sunday night, Hagerman threw a launching party for my family and the families who are going with us to plant The Crossroads. We were truly blessed by them. I am so thankful for what God has done and is continuing to do at Hagerman. They are praying for us and want to be closely connected and involved with us in planting in Anna. Praise God!

Update

Lots of stuff going on right now with The Crossroads. Last week we secured a meeting place! Hurray and thank you, God! We will be meeting at the Tiger Cat Tumble and Cheer Gymnasium. It is located just west of US-75 and just south of FM 455. It is a really great location, and it comes at an awesome price. In addition, the owner has some build-out she wants to do and would be willing to allow us to help her with that and apply that toward the cost of the lease. Awesome!!

LaRissa has created a baby registry at Target for the nursery. If you are interested or you know of someone who is interested, this is a very real and practical way to help support The Crossroads.

I have been having several conversations with pastors trying to secure support for The Crossroads. So far, most of those conversations have been very positive and productive, although there have been no definite commitments yet. So please be very much in prayer for funding. If you know of anyone I need to talk to (churches, individuals, corporations) who might be interested in supporting The Crossroads, please let me know. I will be happy to talk to them and share the vision God has given us.

We are scheduling dates for pre-launch events right now. I will post those as soon as we have them in stone. If you would be interested in helping out with door-to-door surveys, service projects, block parties, or coming to a preview service, please let me know.

I have a friend who is working on a logo design for us, and I am working on getting our website up and running.

Please, please, be in prayer for our family. I will be without my current job at the end of this month. I'm kind of feeling like I can't breathe right now when I consider that. I'm serious. Pray for us. Stop what you are doing right now and pray for us.

Awesome Weekend

Some really neat things happened this weekend. Sam Douglass, my church planting coach, from Just Coach Me came up and spent the day with me on Friday. We had some God-ordained meetings with a couple of pastors in the area to talk about their churches' involvement in supporting The Crossroads.

One of those churches wants to be involved as our major church sponsor. (Praise God!!!) We are working out the details of that relationship and how they will specifically be involved, but I am so thankful they are going to be working with us. I love their pastor and the heart he has for Jesus, and look forward to furthering our relationship with each other.

The other church is considering how they might be involved, but I think in the end they will also play a significant role in what we are doing.

After we got through visiting with the pastors, I took Sam to The Boiler Room for a couple of raspberry truffle mochas (delicious and not on the diet) and so i could pick his brain about some planting stuff.

Then we hung out at my house. Sam played the piano and I sang. Really!

Our launch team came over at 6:30 for beans and cornbread and some cowboy candy. Mmmm! Good Texas food. Sam spent a couple of hours pumping up the launch team and training them for how to do door-to-door surveys. Sam was definitely on his A-game.

Saturday, we spent some time with friends saying good-bye to an incredible friend.

Sunday, we had some great Mexican food at a friend's house and went to a neat prayer and worship time at Legacy Bible Church.

All in all, an awesome weekend.

Thank God for The Springs

I had lunch yesterday with Joel Halpin, pastor of The Springs Church in Murphy, TX. It was truly a God-ordained meeting. Joel's church is a year old, and yet they are so committed to the vision of church planting that they would like to invest in a significant way in helping plant The Crossroads and other church plants. Thank God for The Springs. Their investment will truly give us an incredible step ahead in our planting The Crossroads.