This is an odd day for me today. I guess I should say that I'm coming off a very odd day at church yesterday. On one hand, it was one of the best days we've ever had. We had a good # of first time-guests (six, I think), one person started a new relationship with Jesus and five people were baptized in water. That was all wonderful.
The part that is troubling is that despite the guests and all the great things happening, we are in a very scary 5-week trend of declining attendance and declining giving. While that's never good, this was the exact time I was anticipating both of those to be going upward. We had a better-than-expected summer a pretty strong grand opening day on Sep 12, but things have declined some since then and, frankly, I'm kind of baffled by it all.
I love our church and get great feedback from most people about it. I know that a lot of people have come to know Jesus and have restarted a relationship with church in general in the last year. I also feel like we're just on the tip of doing some much greater things in our community and reaching many more people with the freedom Jesus offers. There are so many positives. But the reality is, our church does not have the size, history or bank account to endure this trend forever. We really do need a God-kind of breakthrough.
The good news in all of this is that God is bigger than any setbacks or temporary negative trends we're seeing. I'm asking Him to move in a big way - to increase our momentum in people and finances. If you would pray that prayer with me this week, I would be so grateful.
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