We also have a new "ImpactSite" for our upcoming Easter Kick-off. We're doing a big postcard mailing to all of Yorkville and most of the nearby communities. We'll be holding our first meeting outside of our home on Saturday, April 15.
For those of you who have been wondering how the church plant is going, the answer is very well, too fast, and not fast enough. :)
We've been meeting every other week on Saturday nights since late January, and our times together have been great. I really feel like our group is developing well. We've planned Saturday nights to be a time of fellowship, group study and worship. We started these gatherings in January with 16 people and since then we've grown to 22 at our last gathering.
However, none of these thus far have been new families from Yorkville. Our entire group to this point is composed of people from LifeSpring or people from the Wheaton area. We'll be really excited when we start attracting newcomers from around here. We've been doing "Cookie Pushes" in the community, taking plates of cookies to new residents along with invitations to our parties or to the church. In addition to our Easter mailing we'll also be doing door hangers and putting a few articles in the local paper to get the word out about Via Christus. Our hope is not necessarily to draw big crowds through "marketing" (not that that is very likely anyhow in today's advertising saturated culture), rather we hope to find those handful of families who will check us out, resonate with our mission, and stay to help us make connections with others in the community.
So while we are anxious to find those families out here, at the same time, it feels like time is just barreling by and we've just barely gotten started. We're about to kick-off a major Easter service and we're only a few months into the game. So while on the one hand I wish that we'd begin to attract the locals, on the other hand I feel like we've only just begun to lay the groundwork with the leaders that we do have.
But I love the group that we have. We are worshiping and learning together with an amazing bunch of people on Saturdays. I'm really grateful for everyone who has come to be a part of Via Christus so far.
Keep prayin' for us!
Labels: personal
