Tuesday, March 11, 2008

somthing big came UP



Never before have we endeavored to pull off four major events in the space of ten days here at Grace Church. But starting this Friday night with the Women’s “At The Hop” outreach event, we are hoping to touch up to 10,000 people in our community and to take each of them another step closer to connecting with Grace Church and ultimately to a personal relationship with the Lord.

As soon as the women’s event is over Friday night, staff and volunteer teams will immediately begin the all-night transformation to clean up from the hundreds and hundreds of ladies and prepare for the thousands who will be on our campus Saturday morning for our Easter Egg and Candy Hunt. The very next weekend will then be our Good Friday Night of Worship and our three Easter Sunday Morning Celebrations.

I doubt there are many who are reading this that can even come close to understanding the stress our church staff is under right now with these four events now just days away. And it will only get worse these next two weeks. Satan cannot be happy with our efforts so we expect the spiritual battles to heat up. As a result, Pastor Tim and I came up with a unique and unusual plan to start these two key weeks with an opportunity to surprise our church staff with something unique that would allow them a couple of hours to “let their hair down” and enjoy each other without any work related stress, while at the same time being inspired

As a result, I sent out an e-mail to the staff announcing an emergency staff meeting for last Monday morning at 9am. I simply said that something had come UP. When they arrived at the meeting we loaded them all up in the church vans and headed down to the Lancaster Airport where a wonderful man who attends Grace Church and is also a pilot was waiting with his Bonanza plane. We split them into groups and four at a time we took them UP in his plane and flew them over the community of Lititz. While one group was flying, another group was getting some pre-flight orientation and the other groups were taken up to Starbucks for the beverage of their choice. We cycled the groups through until everyone had their time in the air and their Starbucks in hand.

But here is the icing on the cake! As soon as we left the church, Rick Bernhardt, our Senior Administrator at our school/daycare, took out some very large letters made out of blue tarps by some of our students and staked them down on the soccer field so that when the plane flew over our property everyone could look out the window and see the words “MEETING…MOVING” standing out to them from the field below! This was our way of reminding our staff that everything we are doing and all the stress we are feeling is worth it because for thousands of people represented by the many homes and business they saw from the air, we will have the opportunity to MEET them where they are and help MOVE them to where God wants them to be!

Our staff is now set and ready for the homestretch, but let’s all remember this one thing…nothing of eternal importance happens apart from payer. Are you praying?

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