02/18/08 UPDATE

So we show up at church yesterday and people just keep coming in. I didn't recognize most of them. Almost all of them have at least one child in tow (one family had 5 kids and two others had 3 each!). Last week, they filled up the chairs we put out. This week, we added 22 more and they filled those up too. We ended up with 74 people (50 adults/24 children).

Several cool things happened:

I prayed that God would use every means that we had attempted to draw people. We had one family that indicated that they came because they had seen the signs out by the road and had seen our ad on the back of the grocery store receipt. Several came because of the mailers.

Two in particular surprised me - one lady came because of a flier we put in her door this summer. We were advertising a block party. She came and talked to me then. That was June of 2007 and they just came this Sunday! I hadn't even been praying for fruit from that work - I had given up on it a long time ago.

The other surprise was due to the weather. It was not good. It was cold and windy and the morning began with a glaze of ice on everything. On top of that, it started to snow. (FYI, it only seems to snow on Sunday in NE.) I was irritated because people usually don't come out if its snowing. Anyway, we had a family who came this Sunday because the weather was bad and they didn't want to drive across town to another church where they planned to go.

In addition to all the new people, we had several who are "upping their commitment." One family expressed that they really want to get involved. The husband even asked how he could help set up in the mornings. We are also seeing how God is putting the Body together with all the gifts it needs. For example, Sunday demonstrated that we have a huge, tremendous, gaping need for children's workers. We only have children's classes for Kindergarten and under and they were overwhelmed (and most of the kids stayed in the service with their parents). I started asking a few of our regulars if they would be interested in helping and found one that used to work in a Day Care (and loves kids), another couple who used to teach 4 and 5 year old boys (and love working with kids), and another lady who teaches pre-K at a Day Care in town. It is amazing to see God orchestrate His plan.

Please pray for:

- God to give wisdom to those who visited. Many are looking for a new church. Pray that they will be led to Redeemer if that is where they are to belong (and elsewhere if they are not).

- God to continue drawing new people and establishing those who have already come.

- God to give wisdom as we try to put infrastructure together to handle these new people.

- God to send someone to lead worship for us on a permanent basis.