Smooth Changes

So here's the deal. I haven't blogged in quite a while. At least a while for me. I know other people who haven't posted a thing on their blog in over a month. But for me, a week is a very long time. Let me tell you why it's been a while for me.

We have made some big changes at Sojourn.

And am I excited about it! But these aren't changes we are making to the church. Just some changes to our strategy for our launch. And let me tell you. I'm excited about it! Bet you didn't see that coming.

Let me give you a little background...

We just finished having our official "Preview Services" at Sojourn. What these "Preview Services" provided were a great chance for us as a staff and a core/launch team to get a feel for our weekend gatherings. We got a feel for how to best set up the audio/visual elements, as well as how long that whole process would take. We got a chance to try out a bunch of different things for the space in the theater. Basically, it was a chance for us to feel out the theater. And boy did we need it! Fortunately, we learned a whole lot during our preview services. And God did some amazing things.

First off, we nearly doubled our core team! In just one and a half months we went from 12 people on our team to nearly 30! That's stinking awesome! And, best of all, 5 people gave their lives to Christ during those preview services! YES! I can't tell you how awesome that is. And what's great is that a couple of those people are now part of our core team. So it's been great to see God work in people's lives and draw them towards Sojourn.

But like I said, we learned a lot of stuff during the preview services. The biggest thing we realized is what is bringing on these changes I started talking about...

We aren't ready to launch weekly services.

At least not in the theater. We just aren't. We realized that we have a lot of missing pieces before we can start running in that direction. So that being said, what are we going to do?

We are going to keep meeting in the theater. But only on the first Sunday of the month from now until January. Part of this is so that we can just keep our contract on the theater. But also, we want people to be able to come into a larger gathering so that they can see what the vision is. Remember, let vision be vision. On the other 3 or 4 weekends a month, we will be meeting in a smaller area, like a conference room at a hotel. We are doing this because we have simply outgrown Toby's house, where we have been meeting on our off weekends during the preview services. I mean there's no way we can fit 30 people in one living room. So we are going to rent something like a conference room to fit 50 or so people to meet in other than the 1st Sunday of every month. This way, we get out of Toby's living room, which we can't fit in any more, and also, that's a bit of a high pressure environment for new people to come to. So the conference room will be much more confortable for them. And then the theater will again be a time to sort of cast the vision.

So this will happen until January 11th. That is our new tentative date for our official launch. So that is what is happening. I will write tomorrow about why we have decided to do this. Mainly because this is already way too long. I'm tired of typing so I know you're tired of reading.

So just know that this is what is happening, and every single one of those 30 people on our team is just as excited as I am about this. So tomorrow I will explain why we are doing this, and hopefully I can better explain. Till then...