Very Cool Christmas

Our church, New Covenant Comminuty Church, had great services - on Christmas Eve AND on Christmas morning.

Just Charlie had this to say about their services:

OK, so our church wasn't among the "cool" churches. OK, so my staff probably won't think I'm all that great of a boss. OK, so we didn't have setup/teardown issues. OK, so we didn't make a fancy-schmancy DVD to give out to our folks so they could worship at home. All that stuff is great - and I truly mean that. All I know is we had three - count 'em - three families who came to "our place" on Christmas morning, because some other places had closed for the day. Will we ever see them again? I don't know. Did they have an opportunity to hear about Jesus? You bet! Was it a hassle to do the Saturday night Christmas Eve thing and then get up and do something else Sunday morning Christmas Day? Yep! Am I any better than those who did it differently? Nope!

Like Charlie, we had our "usual" Christmas Eve services (tow of them... at 4 and 5:30 p.m.). Our 4:30 service was slammin'! We had about 800 people in a room that normally seats 800. I was not leading worship that weekend, so I just backed up our tech team and helped put down chairs liek crazy. Our second service was also great, with about 500 people in attendace.

Also like Charlie, we had a service on Christmas. For us, it was a no-brainer. It's Sunday. It's church. I'm not judging the churches in town or around the country/world that did somethings else... that just wasn't for us.

Going in, I figured we would have about the same as the 2nd service the night before - about 500. But people came.. .and came... and came... and kept coming! We put down chairs until we ran out. We filled up the overflow rooms to overflowing until people we standing at the doors looking through the overflow windows. We had people sitting two to a seat and 3 people for every two seats.

At the end of the morning we had close to 1,000 people (best guess). Unbelieveable. Again, I spent my time putting down chairs in every available space (almost considered seating people on stage) and spent most of the service outside with the rest of the staff who gave up their seats to make space. Yep, it was incredible.

But the coolest thing happened at the end of the service. We did a "retiring communion," where people take communion as they exit the building. A lady had brought a friend to the service. They both left teh service crying. They came up to our Children's Ministry Director, Mary. The lady said her friend wanted to accept Christ and could Mary help.

Awesome. That's what it's all about. Numbers are cool becuase numbers are people - people that we can minister to - people that need Jesus. And because we were there and available, because of the goodness of God and the sacrifice of His Son, Jesus, there is another lady going to heaven.

SWEET!