My highlights are going to be tricky this week, since I was out with the flu all weekend…I guess my highlight is that I’m feeling a little better and we made it!

Friday late night I woke up to a sick child and quickly realized I wasn’t doing well either. That spiraled into an awful day on Saturday that ended with Mark feeling terrible. It’s not good when the preacher is going down. Somehow he made it through all three services like a champ – without me, with the kids, and with my inlaws out of town, so no help! It was truly brutal on all fronts. I slept for about 30 hours straight…

On the flip side, we had Superbowl festivities with a cooler full of drinks and bags of Doritoes. Thanks to Julie and Ashley for decorating – I heard it was awesome!

I think Chris Harold was getting a little nervous that he was going to have to preach at a moment’s notice this weekend. He was probably praying for Mark pretty intensely!

Our students went to Generation Unleashed this weekend. It’s a conference in Portland and they had such a great time! Thanks to Kris and our fabulous youth staff who took a couple of days to invest into our teens. Now go take a nap because I am sure you need one!

Thank you to everyone who covered my jobs this weekend. We have a such an incredible team, which makes it so much easier to relax and know it will all be OK.

On that note, I really don’t know why people stay home on Sundays…there is NOTHING on TV…ugh! Get me off of my couch! I missed church SO much and can’t wait to be back next week!

Five years ago Mark and I created our “Master Plan” for church planting. We didn’t necessarily roll it out to the masses, but we were clear on the timeline, how things would happen, when we would launch a second campus, when we would move into more permanent situations, and how quickly we would hire full time staff. We talked in detail about the succession of hoops we would jump through in order to be a “successful” church plant.

Now all of that makes me hysterically laugh.

What I have learned in this process is that although a master strategy is essential to keep on the horizon of what you are doing, don’t count on God’s plan magically lining up with your plan. We have found that when God drops an opportunity into our laps, we have to manage that opportunity in spite of the bigger picture of what we thought would happen.

For instance, our current building was an unexpected and opportunistic situation. It was within our price range, in a great location, and the “flavor” we were looking for. So, we made a quick and major shift from our growth plan in order to accomodate that opportunity. Then, in spite of the fact that we wanted additional campuses, it just made more sense to use our building to the best of it’s ability and just add services. Now, here we are, four years into our church with a building we didn’t see coming and a Saturday night venue that has proven to be very effective.

Recently, we’ve had several new “opportunities” come into our picture that we are trying to figure out how to appropriately manage. It seems as if God is saying, “I’m going to give you the resources you need, in order to do what I want you to do, when I want you to do it. Don’t screw this up.” Again, cue the hysterical laughing…

As a planner, I’m not sure that I would choose the timing that God always seems to be working under, but I definitely would choose the outcome. His plans are greater than our plans and the adventure of not being able to ascertain what is coming is exhilarating.

We are simply managers of God-given opportunities. It is our responsibility to look at the people, finances, locations, etc. that He is laying out before us and figure out a way to leverage all of that to see lives changed by the love of Jesus.

So, have your strategies…I highly recommend them…but don’t be looking at your spreadsheets so closely that you miss the opportunities that are laid out before you.

This post will push my blog past the 20,000 views mark! That’s pretty exciting for me because that means I have had 20,000 opportunities to use words to make an impact on someone’s life! I absolutely love writing and using 500 words to draw something out of a reader has been both a joy and a challenge. Sometimes I want you to laugh, sometimes I want you to cry, and sometimes I want you to be so angry that you go out and change yourself or the world. There is power in our words and I don’t take that lightly.

A special thanks to Rachael Yonko who was the one who told me that I should write a blog and let people into the life of our church plant. It has become my outlet for sorrow, my stage for celebrating, and a record of my life that I cherish more than just about anything. If I died tomorrow, I feel as if I’ve left a picture of myself for my kids that I wouldn’t have otherwise had.

Thank you to all of you who stop by and read my thoughts now and again! I hope that you take something away that makes you a better human being. We live in a dark, cruel world and one job, as Christians, is to find ways to leave some light and grace sprinkled around. This is my way and I love doing it!

Every week I rant and rave about the weekend, so here’s my thoughts:

We ended up with one of our best attendances ever for the weekend. Our 11:00 am was packed with new guests, which was awesome! We started a series on God’s Will for our lives…yikes! That’s a big and twisted topic for many of us.

The deeper I get into get into this ministry, the more I love Jesus. I see His life-changing work so often that I feel myself changing by the minute. It’s all about lives being changed…not much else matters in the end!

Just to prove that sometimes things go wrong…Saturday night was one of our worst services ever! We had one technical difficulty after the other, which threw Mark off BIG time. And on top of that, despite the good attendance overall, Saturday night had it’s worst attendace ever. No reason for any of it and I’m sure we’ll be back to normal next week! Sometimes you just have to laugh and be glad it’s over!

Worship was incredible!

Small Groups are up and running! So far, so good! I am excited to watch people grow and get to know one another.

One of “my girls” surprised me on Sunday. Alessandra was one of my favorite junior highers about 12 years ago. She visited this weekend and it was so great to see her as a young woman who is in love with Jesus!

We also had several of our friends come and check out our church at that same service. It was a crazy trip for Mark and I as we bopped around from one group of friends to the other! Thanks to all of you who came to see what in the world we’ve been up to for four years!

God is stirring LOTS in our hearts right now. How can we make a bigger impact on our community and our world??? It’s a question that causes us to lose sleep at night!

Kennedy wasn’t feeling great this weekend, so she hung out with me during the services. There is just nothing like hearing your kid’s voice beside you singing worship songs…

I hung out in the Great Adventurer’s during the 11:00 am service. There were 21 girls in the room and 2 boys! I’m sure the boys are glad that is not the norm!

My prayer for you this week is that God totally messes up your life in amazing ways…His plans are greater than your plans!