Wanted to give a shout out here on Monday morning and a quick update on the weekend.

In church life, except for Easter and Christmas, there are always two or three what I call “BIG” weekends. A weekend when you launch a new service, motivate everyone to bring their friends, start something new, refresh something existing, etc. If you can put everything together right, they can push you to a new level of momentum (or help you get some momentum if you’ve lost some). BIG weekends help the church see its potential. Everyone is buzzing because there are people everywhere, etc. Over the years we’ve done dozens of these days. I should do a week of posts on the power of big weekends and give some strategy. They really work.

This past weekend was a big weekend for us. Normally we would do it a little later in Aug, but we decided to try to bump the momentum as early as possible in the fall. We launched the Saturday night service because 2 of our 3 weekend services were full. At the same time we tweaked all of our service times a little to get everyone to choose again what service they wanted to attend and because we needed more time at our early service.

The weekend was a smashing success…

-The Saturday night service was completely full, parking lot was jammed, etc. We had 33 decisions for Christ just in that service.
-The early service, now at 8:45a was not impacted, pretty much the same attendance, but the energy was strong. Another 17 decisions.
-The 10:15a and 11:45a were completely full. In fact, I think we ran out of extra chairs in the 11:45a service.

We had a total of 166 salvation decisions! That’s phenomenal. To me that means that we touched a lot of new people this weekend and we grew the church. In fact, the attendance numbers were double of last year. God is definitely visiting us in a special way. I’m sure the numbers will settle back down, but the great thing about big weekends is they show you what the next level looks like. Typically for us, if all goes well we’ll be running those numbers as a norm in a few months. Thankfully we’re planning an expansion of our current facility. We definitely need it.

I had one of those moments in worship during the last service where I was just overwhelmed with gratitude that I didn’t quit back in the early days when it was hard going (real hard going), or that I didn’t compromise the style and spirit of the church to try to bring growth quicker. We kept true to our spirit-filled, passionate roots. And now, we have this amazingly passionate, next generation, multi-cultural, reaching people church that is truly making an impact in Memphis!

We’re on the countdown to what I believe will be one of the greatest weekends of 2008 for The Life Church. Nick and Chris Caine from Hillsong Church will be with us. They’ve become great friends of Leslie and I and great friends of our church. Christine is a dynamic speaker, powerful preacher and gives an incredible altar-call. I really believe God has used Nick and Chris more than anyone else to impact and influence our church.  

• New Service Times - don’t forget we’re adding the Saturday Night service and changing up Sunday morning service times. In Cordova, Sunday times will be 8:45a, 10:15a, and 11:45a. In Collierville, the service will start at 10:30a. 

• Saturday Night Service - at times this summer we’ve had overflowing crowds in 2 of our 3 weekend services in Cordova. Adding another service is the right step for us until the expansion of our Cordova campus is finished. We’re encouraging everyone to connect into our Saturday 5:00p and Sunday 8:45a services to make room for new guests at our 10:15a and 11:45a Sunday services. 

• Kingdom Partners - immediately after the Saturday night service, we have our second Kingdom Partners reception. Chris Caine will share and all Kingdom Partners will get a signed copy of Christine’s new book. I will also give some updates on the Cordova expansion (with hopefully some pics and diagrams). It will be an awesome reception. To register or find out more about Kingdom Partners visit our website. 

One of the coolest things we do at The Life Church is our Wide Open Leadership Nights. Its one of my favorite worship experiences because its all the passionate, radical, sold-out core leaders of our church gathering together to get into some pumped up worship, vision and prayer for the upcoming season in church life. We always meet in the Axis Auditorium - our middle school/high school venue. Coolest thing about last night was the updated/renovated look of room. And it was our largest Wide Open…it was jam packed.

I shared from my heart out of 1 Samuel - the story of that awesome woman of God, Hannah. I really believe that Hannah is a type and picture of the church - we’re called to birth and raise up the Samuels who will be dedicated to the things of God, dedicated to the House of God - from their youth, set apart to make a difference. I talked about some key catalysts that can help us fulfill this calling. It was an “off the chain” night!