First Sunday!

First of all, thank you for your prayers and support! Yesterday we successfully launched our first Antioch Norman church service! How do you measure a "success" when it comes to church services? Well, you would not believe all the things that had to come together in order to get a weekly service set up. Successfully, by the grace of God, we had everything we needed in order to launch on Sunday.

When we moved here, it was not our goal to find a church building and begin having people meet weekly. We fully intended to corporately meet together eventually on Sundays, but our desire and ultimate purpose was to share the love of God with the people of Norman. It was not our purpose to "do" church, but to "be the church".

We have only been in Norman all together as a team for about a month, which scarcely seems like enough time to start a Sunday morning service. The to-do list seemed endless! Can I just tell you about the things God provided to accomplish this task:

Right off the bat, we found a building to meet in, which was formerly rented by a church (thus was set up with "church-like" accommodations). There was a lot to do to get it ready, but we were never lacking in cheerful volunteers to paint, clean, run errands, etc.

We would have been fine with just basic amenities to do a Sunday morning service, but the way we were provided for made it seem as though God wanted it everything to be good. By good, I mean more than just adequate. He wanted excellence. Above and beyond. What I mean is people, without being asked, donated their time, talents, finances, top of the line projection equipment, skills as graphic designers, expertise at setting up sound equipment, etc. to make this launch a success. It almost goes without saying, but none of these things are necessary to make a church a church. The church is God's people meeting together to corporately live as His body on earth. You do not need expert sound equipment to do that! However, it has seemed as if God had put all the resources and people in Norman to be a part of His body here.

All of this provision has been leading me to ask, "God, what do you have in store for Norman?" In my opinion, I think God must really love Norman! He loves the people here in Norman so much that He "disrupted" the lives of ordinary people on our team living in Norman, had us move to Waco, trained us, discipled us, shook us up, changed our hearts, lives and agendas, and sent us back with extra laborers to the very place we came from! That seems like a lot of work... unless He really loves this place and the people who live here!