Exhilaration, joy, pain, peace, anxiety, humbled, proud, fulfilled, desiring, exhausted, pumped… so many emotions…so little energy to process it. I know that it has been a while since I blogged and I would apologize but I was working diligently toward today and it paid off HUGE! I will get to that in a moment but some of those emotions I need to layout really quick for my own posterity.

I am exhilarated because it’s here! The day that we have been looking toward since early December of last year and planning for the past six months. I am als exhilarated because it is over. What an incredible amount of effort - mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually but it was SO worth it. (Don’t worry I’ll get to that!)

I have joy because we experienced victory today. Victory over the people that doubted, including myself at times. We had victory over the enemy that has been diligent in his efforts to keep us from this day. I have pain because I almost ripped my thumb nail off on a section of stage and sliced my fingers on a cart. That just means we had blood, sweat and tears. But it was worth every drop of each.

I have peace because I know that even though we couldn’t do everything, I know that we did all that we could do and brought glory to God’s name. I believe that we did Him proud today and really nothing else matters. I have anxiety because the day went amazingly smooth but I know we have to do it again. Not only do it again but I want to do it better.

I am humbled because God chose me to experience all of these emotions. I am humbled by the fact that God chose me to perform one of the most important roles in His earthly kingdom. I am proud of the effort that our volunteers put in and the spirit of excellence with which they did it. We turned Sagemont School into a great place to do church. The pictures taht are attached later don’t begin to do it justice.

I am fulfilled because we had a GREAT response with a lot of positive feedback our first time out of the trailer (box). I desire to accomplish so much more, to reach so many more, and to infect Weston with the love of Christ.

I am exhausted because there was an insane effort involved to pull it off. I am pumped because God met every need with volunteers to share the load at just the right time. We walked by faith, did all that we could do and as one of our core values states, we prayed like it depended on God and worked like it depended on us. In the end, as He always does, God came through BIG.

I know that everybody is expecting me to rattle off some statistics from our first service and tell you how many people were there, how we did in the offering, etc. Well to be honest God and I had a little conversation about that last night because I was pretty wrapped up in some of those things. I have some pretty good intentions because numbers have some value. Church is a business (one of the most important businesses in the world) that takes people and finances to operate. Without people, volunteers, staff to help carry out the vision, there really is no vision. Without the finances to do outreach, to market, to pay rent, etc. your ministry is dead in the water. God reminded me that there really is only one number that matters… that is the number that we increase heaven by.

I wish that I could say that we helped somebody become a Christ follower today, but I can’t. What I can tell you is that I think God is sending the right people so that I won’t have to give a 0 number every week. God is up to crazy stuff and I am just so in love with Him that I am sick. You know how you feel when you want to be with a person so bad that you just hurt. I know it could be the lack of sleep or the fact that we have been living on pizza, but that is not it. I just want to give you on example of God’s choreography from this past week…

I blogged a while back that I was going back to work to make some ends meet. So I found an Architectural Firm in Boca that hired me and I actually started this last Monday. Financially I needed to start last Monday even though I really would have liked to wait until next week. Here’s God’s plan: So because they are using a different CADD (Computer Aided Drafting & Design) program then I was using they wanted to send me to a refresher course. So Monday through Wednesday I was in this class and discovered that my instructor lived in Weston. So I intended to wait until Wednesday to give him an invitation to our Test Drive.

At lunch on Wednesday he brought up church and God allowed an open door to tell him while I was really here. He seemed interested but I wasn’t going to be too pushy. After lunch I gave him the invite and at the end of class the subject of our weekend schedule came up. I was telling about Church on Wheels coming Saturday and the training to set up and tear down. Out of the blue he says, what time are you starting and I can bring my son and we will help you. I did a little happy dance on the inside because I knew that five members of my team were not going to be able to make it.

So long story short… they came, worked like dogs all day, go home and invite all of their neighbors who are some wonderful people that seem extremely interested in doing ministry with us in Weston and were excited that we were starting this church. One family was so excited they took probably 100 invitations and is going to door hang her entire neighborhood. Can I get a YEAH GOD!

Can I tell you that I was discouraged to have to go work a secular job? In one sense I felt like a church planting failure because we couldn’t get started fast enough to enable me to maintain a salary and financially I had placed my family in a challenging position. I have always found that providing well for my family has been very important to me so to have to tell my wife that the end of the rope is very close and need this job otherwise…was incredibly painful for my ego. Even though my humanity hurt my spirit was incredibly calm. To be honest my wife and I actually laughed. This was just one more near calamity to add to the list and we knew that God would get glory we just were unsure at what expense.

So we made up our minds that whatever the cost… and as always God gets the glory. I think there will be much more to this story later and I can’t wait for the next turn to see how God is going to use this chain of events to lead to even greater things.

I know this blog was a book but I would love to tell you more because God is just that awesome and today God blew me away! If I didn’t have to get up and go to work… I have put in some pictures of what InDependence sanctuary looks like.
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By the way for any church planters out there who read this let me just tell you to do preview services a month apart because I can’t imagine trying to do this again next week…