one year ago//one year from now
One year ago at this time I walked into my office here at 409 River St. after spending some time with Aimee's family for the holidays. I was greeted by a wall high pile of boxes holding all of my books that I had moved up a week earlier from old office at the church I had recently resigned from. I had no desk, though I did have bookshelves. A file cabinet had been delivered while I was away in between Christmas and New Year's. I spent the next few days setting everything up as Ed, Scott and I figured out what it meant to occupy the same space.
A year has passed and I can hardly believe it. I'm a skeptic, and a bit of a pessimist. So a year ago, as I set up my books and my desk and organized my files, there was a part of me that was thinking "this could all be over in a couple of years--if this doesn’t work out, if this church never really takes off, then I'm out of a job in a couple of years when the money runs dry." And I was ok with that reality; I had worked through those issues and decided that it was worth the risk and that at the very least, it would be an amazing experience.
I just ran the numbers comparing Dec. 05' with Dec. 06'. Our average attendance has gone up by 120% in 12 months. 120%!! We cracked the 200 mark a few weeks back. What a shock to find 50 people sitting upstairs because the main floor was packed out. We have made very good progress towards being a self supporting church financially. And it doesn’t seem like we are slowing down. I meet new people constantly on Sundays. Many of them coming back and eventually making this their church. People are growing in their faith. People are coming to faith for the first time.
In short, my pessimism and skepticism was ill placed. For whatever reason, God has chosen to grow this church. We have tried to be faithful with what he has given us as the spiritual leaders of this growing community. Personally, I find myself ricocheting back and forth between extreme humbleness at what God is doing and the sinful sort of pride that so wants to take credit.
What does 2007 hold for Terra Nova? Will we need to add a second service this year? How many tribes will it take to meet the needs of people wanting to be connected? Will we become self sustaining a year before we planned? Who will claim Jesus as their God at this time next year that is today still trying to do it all on their own? What segments of our culture will Terra Nova make inroads where the church may have never been before? In what way will we collectively and individually better incarnate Christ to those around us?
More than anything else, I hope and pray that in 2007, we are more fully yielded to Christ than ever before.
A year has passed and I can hardly believe it. I'm a skeptic, and a bit of a pessimist. So a year ago, as I set up my books and my desk and organized my files, there was a part of me that was thinking "this could all be over in a couple of years--if this doesn’t work out, if this church never really takes off, then I'm out of a job in a couple of years when the money runs dry." And I was ok with that reality; I had worked through those issues and decided that it was worth the risk and that at the very least, it would be an amazing experience.
I just ran the numbers comparing Dec. 05' with Dec. 06'. Our average attendance has gone up by 120% in 12 months. 120%!! We cracked the 200 mark a few weeks back. What a shock to find 50 people sitting upstairs because the main floor was packed out. We have made very good progress towards being a self supporting church financially. And it doesn’t seem like we are slowing down. I meet new people constantly on Sundays. Many of them coming back and eventually making this their church. People are growing in their faith. People are coming to faith for the first time.
In short, my pessimism and skepticism was ill placed. For whatever reason, God has chosen to grow this church. We have tried to be faithful with what he has given us as the spiritual leaders of this growing community. Personally, I find myself ricocheting back and forth between extreme humbleness at what God is doing and the sinful sort of pride that so wants to take credit.
What does 2007 hold for Terra Nova? Will we need to add a second service this year? How many tribes will it take to meet the needs of people wanting to be connected? Will we become self sustaining a year before we planned? Who will claim Jesus as their God at this time next year that is today still trying to do it all on their own? What segments of our culture will Terra Nova make inroads where the church may have never been before? In what way will we collectively and individually better incarnate Christ to those around us?
More than anything else, I hope and pray that in 2007, we are more fully yielded to Christ than ever before.
posted by Phil Taylor at 8:58 AM
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