Last night I went to the youth group’s trial run before their actual launch next week. What a moment for me! After over a decade of working youth pastoring teenagers, the last several years were very different without a formal youth group environment. As the music slammed in the background and teens hovered over foosball and air hockey tables, I thought to myself, “I think I’ve been here before.” And although I will never play the same role in their lives again, I am sure glad to see our church fill up with that particular group. I miss their strange querks and their intensity. I love the combination of being really laid back and in a complete panic all at the same time. They are a people group that is very unique and definitely adds an element that I personally enjoy to church. They worship with abandon, ask honest questions, and are in the middle of defining a relationship with God that is more personal than whatever has been passed down from their parents.

Kris, our youth pastor, and her team will begin to mold and shape their lives on a whole new level. They will share moments at camps and in small groups that I will never know about, but it will be those times that the teens will look back on and say it was then that they made a decision to live differently. And in the irony of life, someday, not far away, we’ll staff our church with the very teenagers who started their own youth ministry in April 2009.

Church – brace yourselves. The fleet of teenagers coming our way will change us…for the better. They will seem like an untouchable force that is a church within a church, but don’t fall for the facade. They want you to meet them, talk to them, invest in them. They don’t want their own church, they want to be a part of ours. And I welcome them with open arms!

It is with great excitement that we have decided to change to a 9:00 am and 10:30 am service format! After a successful Easter service and the fact that our 10:30 am service is overfull on a regular basis, we are permanently shifting to two services beginning immediately.

We would like for you to consider shifting from our 10:30 am service to 9:00 am on a regular basis if that works best for your family. As we determine who is moving to the 9:00 am service, we will begin to establish new leadership/volunteer teams for that service. We are not expecting you to serve in the opposite service that you regularily attend (with the exception of our worship team).

We are still planning on having great children’s programs at both services. Starting Point will still be meeting during our 9:00 am service.

Many of you knew this shift was inevitable, but if you have any questions, please feel free to email me at mark@coffeechurch.com.

As we pray and seek God’s direction, I sense a new season of growth for our church. Once again we are taking a step of faith and anticipating that God will fill our church with new lives! We look forward to the future!

Pastor Mark

Easter is my favorite day of the year! We had a great time at church today with 176 people (with no double counting!) at our first time having two services. We have an amazing team of volunteers and it went so smoothly, it was almost too uneventful! With two services, we anticipated parking issues and seating issues, but thankfully the two services were divided well and everyone got in and out perfectly…thank you to our parking team for being so well prepared!

When you begin a church there are so many “firsts” that it is difficult to deal with the emotions of it all. For the last two years we have seen growth, watched lives changes, moved into a new building, and been a part of dozens of miracles. Today’s first day of multiple services and our highest attendance ever was another part of the roller coaster of church planting.

Serving Christ is a journey that is just a lot of fun rolled up in a lot of faith. If you will really let God direct, mold, and shape you, He will create a world around you that is full of the unexpected and the awesome. I would never have asked to plant a church and yet, because God seems to know me better than I know myself, here I am wondering how I could ever have lived without this experience. Every second of work, heartache, and risk has been worth it. I love this journey…and even as I type those words, I hear the voice of God behind me saying, “And it’s only just begun…” Good.

My youngest daughter, Kennedy, is in an interesting phase. She finds treasures all over the house, carries them to a Disney tea cart, loads them up and then steers the cart around the house. She’s a picture of a bag lady with a pink and purple cart!

It’s very interesting to watch this progression. She painstakingly carries load after load to the cart, arms loaded to the maximum, barely able to hold the weight of it all. Then she stacks it as high as possible, some falling off and needing to be reheaped on top of the cart over and over again. She spends so much time investing into this process and it is often overwhelming for her. When she has lost her patience with the goal, she will cry out to her dad to carry the whole cart for her. She can’t bare it any longer, so she thinks that if her dad can come to her rescue that she will be able to take it again when it reaches the next destination.

I think to myself, “This is ridiculous. She doesn’t have to be doing this. Nobody is asking her to load up a bunch of useless toys, transport them from one end of the house to the next, and protect them with everything that is in her little body. It’s a waste of time.” And yet, she continues to load up her “important” stuff and suffer for this irrelevant cause.

I wonder if God looks at our “burdens” the same way. Did he ask us to carry a weight that is beyond us? Is our image of “important” things really just a pile of useless toys? Do we ignore God when he wants to give us freedom, but we just can’t see beyond our tea cart full of junk?

I look at my cute little blonde girl with the eyes of God. Her footings in this world show me so clearly my own faults. I don’t want to exert a bunch of energy into things that have no eternal benefit. And the things in my life that are important…well, “Daddy” is always strong enough to carry the tea cart for me. If I am under the weight of a heavy burden, it’s probably because I haven’t remembered to ask for His help!

I am very much looking forward to Easter this year! It’s a monumental day for North Creek as it will be the first time that we are offering two services. Our regular service is quite full and our foyer overflows on Sunday mornings, so for Easter we’ll open up another option for people to attend.

With a 9:00 and 10:30 am service, it gives us a look into our upcoming future. I can’t wait! I love the growth and the new faces that are becoming a part of our lives.

Easter is one of my favorite days of the year! We celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, which sets our belief system apart from others…our Savior is alive! What an awesome event that we get to proclaim next Sunday! Invite a friend, neighbor, coworker, etc. to experience this special day with your family.

It’s also a marker for spring – the plants start peeking out of the dirt, the fruit trees bloom in all of their brillance, and my quest for two cute little easter dresses gets underway. It’s symbolic to me that winter always ends. The cold, desolate seasons of our lives always make way for new life. It’s all about Hope! I look forward to seeing you on Sunday!