Well today was moving day.  After a fast paced past month of preparation we finally got to see all our planning in action at Tremont High School.  Here are some of my quick thoughts on a pretty great day at BridgeWay!

• I love our volunteers!
• Tons of people showed up Saturday night at Tremont High School to get things set-up and ready for today's worship experiences.
• I love our staff!
• They all worked extra hours and took on a ton of extra work and meetings to make sure today came off as well as it did!
• I thought for our first time in the school, you could hardly tell we'd never met there before.  It felt like it was pretty natural to be at the school.
• I also forgot just how much I missed having a performing arts stage! (okay I didn't forget, but I tried not to let myself think about not having one)
• At the theater we had a 22foot X 10 foot stage (220 sq feet).
• At the High School we have a 45 foot X 50 foot stage (2,250 sq feet)!
• We also expanded our space for children's ministry and our lobby area by almost three times what we have at the theater.
• You could tell the difference with the bright lighting in the children's areas...it looked great!
• You could also really tell the difference having extra space in our lobby made as people were actually able to hang around after both services to hang out and talk with each other...very cool!
• Loved having our Next Steps Tables at the back of the worship space....at the end of the service people can walk straight to the back of the room and connect to a LifeGroup, our Student Ministry, or talk to a pastor and get more information about the church and how to get connected...awesome!
• Tons of new people today, and a lot of old faces we hadn't seen for awhile...really cool!
• We saw around 430 people worship with us today which is right at 100 more than the same weekend last year...great stuff!
• The band covered "Meant to Live" by Switchfoot to open both services...great job!
• Paul and Cassie and the rest of the band did a great job leading worship today...loved the closing song "Came to My Rescue" by Hillsong and the Tomlin tune "Our God"!
• I preached on our DNA as a church, and why we will always be about connecting people to Jesus!
• I thought it was pretty good stuff (and I don't usually say that about sermons I preach)...it just seemed to be timely stuff for our church.
• A couple of cool DNA facts...
• We all have 99.99999% identical DNA...if our lives were books, we'd be the same book, telling the same story, written by the same author.
• When disease attacks the body it does so on the DNA level.  Spiritually speaking we've all been compromised on the DNA level by sin, and the remedy is Jesus.  Also, when churches become diseased it happens first on the DNA level as they forget who they were created to be.
• While you can't make yourself grow spiritually, you can position yourself for spiritual growth by being in worship weekly, in community weekly, and in Scripture daily.
• Be praying for us as we evaluate if this move to Tremont High School should be a longer term solution for our facility needs...pray for wisdom for our team, strong finances, and for good relationship with the school.
• Looking forward to seeing some of the feedback from people when I get to the office tomorrow.
• Also, looking forward to next Sunday as we continue our DNA series by talking about the fact that we all need each other...bring a friend!