Thoughts for the 200th Post

This is the 200th post on the Church Insider (and the first in a while). My life has been crazy lately! My computer died and all kinds of other things that got be way behind. Unfortunately, the blog got pushed to the side for a while. But I wanted to just tell everyone about what has been going on at Church of the Suncoast and what I have been learning.

First we have been exploding with growth this summer. Over the past three weeks we have been averaging 127 people on the weekends with a high of 146 on July 4th weekend!!! Go figure, go God! That is a 54% increase over our first summer and a 19% increase over our second summer as a church. We also had a $12,000 offering and we baptized 3 people last Sunday. Here is what I am learning from all that. I don't know anything. I know we have been really improving our services, we put up a controversial billboard, we made some small changes to our assimilation process, but nothing really dramatic. There is no smoking gun for why things have blown up this summer, why God sees us more blessable now...

Second we are doing a new series called "TXT". The question we are asking is "If God sent you a text message would you read it?" From there we have been looking at why people should read God's text message to us the Bible and how they can get into it since many of our people have never explored the Bible on their own.

Click HERE for the podcast of TXT Part 1.

Another thing that has been weighing on me is the use of rented facilities for the weekend services. Don't get me wrong we have been blessed to meet at the best location in our area and we are grateful, but you are still at the mercy of the schools leadership. For instance a huge portion of our picnic got killed on Wednesday leaving us only a few days to make plan B up. Working with schools can be a great marriage. My friend Hal Mayer at Church at the Bay has amazing use of their middle school and in turn the school gets new lights, gifts for the teachers from time to time, extra CASH for the school... so it can work. I just don't know if it can work in Pasco County. The district gets all the money in Pasco, not the individual schools like in Hillsborough. So there is no benefit for the schools to let us in and no reason to help us out. I would like to get into Northpoint Villiage in some way. It would be nice to have something we could lease for 3 to 5 years and not have to be at the mercy of the school board.

SO... be praying about that.

Thanks for reading my thoughts and I hope I am around for another 200 posts and that people still care enough to read. God's best!