Yesterday Church of the Suncoast celebrated only it's second Easter. Last year we launched around Easter time so really last weekend and this weekend marks our 1 year birthday. If you missed the 1 year video from last week just scroll down this page and you will see it.
Some of the numbers from yesterday:
146 - Total Attendance
2 - Received Christ
26 - First Time Guests
My honest reflections...
The service ran a little longer than I would have liked. We try to keep things right at an hour, but we had a video at the end that pushed us over and I might have talked a few minutes too long. All in all the service went well. We had some neat moments and only one that made me cringe (if you are a church planter then I'm sure you can relate). As always I was thrilled that God worked in the hearts of people that came and two of them took their first step with Him Sunday. A cool story from Easter was that our school's employee (we meet in an elementary school) that has to be there each week to let us in and so on came to the service and really loved it!
But, the "holy discontentment" that Bill Hybels talks about was (and still is) on the top of my mind. This past week we did a 40,000 piece postcard which was our largest to date and I don't think we got much of a return at all on it. We might have had 3 families from it. The rest were from drive by yard signs we put up all week or from invites. Part of it might have been that our county was on Spring Break all week. Some people might not have even looked at the card until Saturday as they were going through their stack of mail. Who knows? Maybe the series doesn't have enough of a hook to it? We will see if we have some residual bounce this week for "Bomb Sunday." You have Palm Sunday, Easter then Bomb Sunday (church planting humor).
I was personally hoping for 200 people. The service and the message was totally geared towards people far from God and I wanted to see as many as we could seat hearing and experiencing it. My prayer now is that we will be able to connect a huge percentage of those first time guests as we finish out this ministry season and then hit summer.
With all that being said it was a great day at the Suncoast. It is still something special that a one year old church has 113 and 146 people in the last week of it's first year and it's first week of it's second year. Our best days are still ahead of us and I know they are for your church too!
