Written in Heaven

Well, today was the big day - the Grand Opening of the Pekin Campus of BridgeWay! Here are some reflections on an INCREDIBLE day!

• We started out the day in prayer, and pretty much never stopped praying.
• Set up went great as did runthrough. In fact, I think it was a BridgeWay first as the runthrough actually ended sooner than it was supposed to! That's always a good sign.
• The band was great today and big props to Jake for pulling it out. He's been really sick all week and was still feeling bad today. But he said as soon as the service started, he felt fine. Funny how that works right?
• As people started to come in, it was a really steady stream of folks from what I could tell. However, when I went into the main theater, it was pretty full - probably about 70% capacity, and it's a big room.
• Again the band was great and thanks to Brittany for joining us from the Morton campus to help us out on "Perfect People." What a perfect song for the series.
• I did a lot of talking setting up the video message, but I think it paid off.
• The video of Dale was solid, but the response was way better than I was anticipating. People were clapping, laughing, responding - it was like he was there!
• More than that, at the end of the message we gave a Gospel presentation and 21 people gave their lives to Jesus! How awesome is that? Umm, yeah, video works!
• Following the Gospel presentation, the band played Chris Tomlin's "Amazing Grace." Wow, what a move of God! During that song people were singing their guts out to Jesus as a testimony of what He's done in their lives. Confession: during that song I was smiling the biggest toothy smile from ear to ear because when God's moving, their's nothing better.
• Following the service, I was able to pray with some folks and had a lot of folks tell me they'd be back. I sure hope they do!
• All total, we had 250 people in the building and a whole lot of excited Launch Team members!
• Another cool part of the day was that Rev. Greg Mason, who is now a District Leader for the church of the Nazarene, were in attendance. Greg was the pastor of Pekin First Church of the Nazarene when they launched BridgeWay in Morton back in 2005. It was a real honor to have him there!
• I just want to thank our Launch Team and Prayer Teams for all the work they put in to make this day possible. But don't think we can take it easy now, we're only just beginning to see what God is going to do here!
• It was a special day for Brooke and I as God called us to plant a church about 4 1/2 years ago. It was great to see it come to fruition.
• Thanks to all of our friends from Ottawa who came down to support us today too!

Thanks again to everyone for your prayers and well wishes on this day. We would ask that you'd continue to pray for us as we keep up the work God has for us to do.