Legacy Church Update - Growing Pains!

Over the course of the past few years I've read lots of books and articles on church health and growth. There are plenty of explanations from "the experts" as to how and why some churches grow and other's don't. Before you read this blogpost any further the bottom line is simple.

God is in charge of His church and He grows it how He pleases. 

Don't get me wrong. There is human responsibility AND strategy is vital to the health and growth of churches. Yet, at the end of the day God grows His church despite our inadequacies as people and leaders. That concept is simply fascinating!

Approximately six months ago Legacy Church really started to pick up steam. I have no plausible explanation for it. We didn't do anything different. God was simply building His church.

As Legacy Church continues to grow and make in-roads with our community it's exciting but not easy. Whenever there is growth lots of things need to change. The structure needs to change or at least be tweaked in order to properly and effectively minister to the spiritual needs of people. The pace of church life increases. Ministry gets messier as you deal with the hurts and struggles of people. Setup as a portable church becomes more complicated as we have to increase our capacity in different ways.

There is no way around it. Growth is painful. Yet, growth is necessary for life and is good.

As I look to the future of Legacy Church I see a foundational year of growth. One in which we as a church prepare ourselves spiritually for what God has for us in the future.

Here are just a few glimpses (all praise to Jesus) in which God is growing His church and how we must be ready:

1) Our nursery has more than doubled in a year. We are launching a pre-school room on Sunday, February 4th. We are also thinking strategically on how to use our children's Sunday space to maximize our capacity in reaching children and their families. New things are coming soon!
2) We are adding another Life Group this semester! Our people are genuinely growing and experiencing community within our church.
3) We will be launching ministries to provide better care to those in our church as well as in our community within the next month or so.
4) This Sunday I challenged our people to pray for their friends and family BY NAME and we gave out almost all of the notebooks we bought to encourage our people to consistently pray for people's names. We are also starting a Bible Reading Challenge on Monday, Jan 15 and people are chomping at the bit to get started.
5) Our youth ministry, which partners with the CREW, is seeing lots of new students. Many of the students are part of  'work crews' in which they are helping to completely remodel the building for future growth.

Now is the time. Jesus is the answer. We must be ready.