Easter Weekend Recap

What a fantastic weekend! Here were some of the highlights for me:

• Good Friday - At our two services (noon & 7:00pm) I could feel the spiritual vibrancy in our church family. Although many of us were exhausted with hunger (fasting is definitely fatiguing), worshiping together was an electrified experience. I shared from 1 Peter 4 about how suffering loosens the grip that sin has in our lives. I am believing that a wonderful process was initiated and / or continued for many people. Specifically we prayed against confusion, addiction, and futility.
• Pancake Breakfast and Easter Egg Hunt (look for a photo album and/or summary video on our website in the next few days) - We sold 604 breakfasts and parked 452 cars. Tough to get a precise number on how many people were here... But if we guess that the average car had 3 people in it, that would be 1,356.
  
• Many thanks to the hundreds of volunteers from our church family who helped provide this wonderful time for all those kids and their families. I was so proud of the way that our church family interacted with the hundreds of guests that we had on our campus. It's always a challenge to leave the comfort of a conversation with somebody that you know to go and connect with somebody that you don't know. But I felt like we engaged better than ever this year. My guess is that this was largely due to the way that so many people gave themselves to fasting & prayer on Friday. Kind of a spiritual overflow...
• Many families have begun to make our Egg Hunt an annual tradition with their families. Fun to see grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins all getting in on the fun...
• No Services Saturday Night - Kinda weird to say that this was a highlight. But it's true. I really enjoyed having a Saturday night off...
  
• Easter Sunday - We had two services, 9:00am & 11:00am.
  
• I was blown away by our worship team. They did an incredible job both musically and spiritually. I really felt led into the presence of our risen Savior!
  
• For the sermon, I took on a big chunk of text from Romans 1:18-25. We had a lot of fun tearing it apart... I really wanted to give everyone the gift of a message that would give them something to consider for awhile.
• My only regret was that it was a little long. I really wanted to have a slightly shorter service. That's something I've been really focused on this year. They say that good writing is condensed and to the point. Getting good at writing means saying more with less. I think the same is true with speaking... and I've got lots of room for growth. *smile*