It's Happening

What? What's happening? After almost four years of praying and dreaming and envisioning and working and pushing and getting discouraged and believing, we are seeing a healthy, growing, excited church being born. Growing a church is much like having a baby. Ok, so all the women out there are like, "you have no idea!" Ok, so I'm not a woman, but I do understand the pains of giving birth to something. I've often wondered why God has allowed us to grow at what seems like a slower pace than other churches I've read about. I've learned three reasons. First, we weren't ready for it yet. If we started growing by 20-30 people in a few weeks we would have imploded into ourselves. We didn't have the workers or structure put into place for that kind of growth; now we do. Second, slower growth is often healthier growth. Relationships take time to develop and grow and church is about relationships not how many we can pack in on a given Sunday morning. I use the example of someone who does body building (good term); those who workout and slowly grow muscle mass naturally will end up being more healthy than those who use steroids and drugs to accomplish their goals more quickly. And third, an instant-church out of the box will never learn to appreciate the struggle and pains of growing a church. We don't appreciate those things that cost us nothing. But a healthy, growing, loving church takes blood, sweat and tears to build... and it's worth every bit!

Yesterday we had an anniversary celebration. 20x4x4x1 What does that all mean? 20 years for Solid Rock (the name of the older church before our merger) 4 years for Calvary Faith Center. 4 years for me (Pastor Glen) preaching. And 1 year together as a merged church! That's a whole lot of reasons to celebrate! And we did! With a new record attendance we celebrated like never before! And the guest of honor - the Holy Spirit - showed up and everyone felt His presence. I took just a moment to pause in the middle of a packed out fellowship hall and look around at the children laughing and families eating and people just enjoying the moment and I whispered a prayer that went like this, "Thank you. Thanks for letting me be a part of what You're doing. Thank you."

Making a Difference!
Pastor Glen