Happy Super Bowl Sunday! I’m not a football fan, so this is not a National Holiday for me. I did make the effort to find out who was playing, so I’m pretty excited to see if the Packers win. Just kidding…

We are sure on a roller coaster of fun at North Creek! Lots of great conversations about the future and how excited people are to reach our community and the world for Jesus. Literally it seems as if everyone is on the edge of their seats in anticipation for the future. I’m not really sure I’ve experienced this type of momentum before. It’s fun!

Congrats to Marc and Amy Roy on the birth of their awesome little son, Kingston Joseph. Marc and Amy lead our young adults small groups and have a profound impact on the 19-25ish group in their everyday lives. We wish them the best and pray a blessing on them! Marc also owns Expressive Dance Hip Hop Studio. I’m thinking that little Kingston will have quite the swag going on as soon as he can walk. Someone please let me know if I just used the word “swag” correctly in that sentence…

We had a couple of visitors from Maple Grove this morning! Come on down anytime! You are more than welcome!

We are having our baptism Sunday next week! We have a portable hot tub, which is one of our most asked questions. If you have decided to follow Jesus for the rest of your life and haven’t been immersed and water…it’s T.I.M.E. Don’t wait another minute because your declaration of who Christ is in you is vital to your Christian walk. I’ll blog about that this week, but in the meantime, you can sign up at www.coffeechurch.com.

Our teenagers just got back from an amazing Generation Unleashed Conference. They are bursting with excitement! Did you know our youth group is averaging about 90 teenagers right now? One of their small groups meets in the church van in the parking lot because there’s no room left. That is the kind of church problems I live for. By the way, we have a solution for some more space for them, so we’ll have that problem temporarily solved in a week! My prayer is that so many more teenagers meet Jesus that we have the same problem very soon.

We went to Tiffany and Scott Wisecarver’s going away party last night. It was fun, except for the whole “going away” part. What’s up with moving to Tennessee??? Seriously, though, we BLESS them on the way out the door and know that God has great plans for their family!

Would you pray for Mark and I even more over the next few months? Everything we are dealing with is such a blessing, but it’s also exponentially more work and forces us to be better leaders. We are asking God for supernatural strength, wisdom, leadership ability, and a humble heart. We covet your prayers right now!

And we are praying for you as well! We know God is moving and changing hearts all over the place! Remember that you’ve only got ONE LIFE. Use it for His glory.

With the upcoming move to a multi-site situation for North Creek with what is now Maple Grove, I thought it might be fun to give you a background on Maple Grove and tell you a little bit about their church history. Hope you enjoy!

Maple Grove Church began in 1984 in a tavern in Brush Prairie. (Since we are currently in an old nightclub, I feel a sense of comradery!) It was originally called the Prairie Assembly of God. By the end of the first year it was averaging about 35 people on Sundays. It continued to grow over the next several years until 1989 when it averaged about 106 in the morning service. During those years it moved from the tavern in Brush Prairie to Battle Ground. Property was purchased and a building program began that ended with the occupation of the current building. The current building is just about the same size as the building the Hazel Dell Campus is currently in (although we don’t own our property) and it sits on 5 acres. It is nearly paid off as well, which is awesome!

Pastor Wayne and Jenny Sommers came in February of 1993. (You may not know this but our worship leader, Matt Garner, is their son-in-law). Average attendance grew every year for 11 years and had a peak of 280 in 2006. In December of 2003, they began a Deaf Church that is currently averaging around 45-55 in attendance and is pastored by Jim and Dawn Smith. This is a separate service that is completely geared toward the hearing impaired. It is not just a translator in a hearing-oriented service, which makes it very unique! We are excited about the possibility of taking this ministry under North Creek’s portfolio and using our resources of media to reach even more of the deaf population for Jesus. Start learning some sign language, North Creek!

Maple Grove has similar strategies as our church in supporting missionaries, having small groups, and reaching out to the community in tangible ways. We do a few things differently, but the values behind those things are very much the same.

During the last few years, they have had a decline in attendance through a series of events. Although they have not experienced division and pain, I would definitely say they are looking for “new life”, as Pastor Wayne has felt God say to him for many months. North Creek can definitely add some new life, energy, and caffeinated people into any situation!

We believe that this transition is going to come with peace, unity, and excitement on both sides! After all, we are all ultimately working for the same Guy anyway! 😉 Hope that gives you a better picture of the big picture!

God has been up to something really cool in the last month at the Coffee Church! We are seeing our people engage in prayer, fasting, seeing God’s hand move their mountains, and growing in our “foolish faith!”

Here’s this week’s high points:

Congrats to Matt and Andrea Garner (Worship Leaders) for celebrating one year of being with us yesterday! We are glad to call you family and love you very much!

Fifteen years ago yesterday Mark proposed to me at New Life Church in Renton, Washington. We were youth pastors and he proposed in front of a couple hundred teenagers. I’m thankful everyday for the marriage that we have and look forward to many more years together!

Obviously a high point is our Miracle Announcement yesterday (see previous blog) about the potential of an additional campus and new partnership with what is currently Maple Grove Church. We are BURSTING with excitement about the possibilities of what is to come! Mark and I pray all the time for “more room for empty seats that He will quickly fill”. Let’s get going!

Our team is also equally excited! Anytime you mention teenagers, our youth pastor, Kris Gray, gets giddy. She’s the best!

Small groups began last week and we are hearing great things! We have some more people who are jumping in this week and then we will be off and running on a journey of growth.

I volunteered in KidCity yesterday. They were talking about the story of Esther, which is one of my favorites. It was awesome to talk in my small group with the kids about doing the right thing no matter what the consequences. Quite the way to live your life!

Interesting fact about the upcoming church transition: we are great friends with Maple Grove’s current pastors. We met them ten years ago when we moved to the Vancouver area. Also, Wayne was North Creek’s board president when we first launched and was an amazing encouragement to us during a trying journey of launching. We look forward to introducing you to them as soon as possible!

We also can’t wait to meet everybody from Battle Ground! It’s going to be awesome to pool the different giftings and personalities that are represented in our two churches. People are our greatest resource to make a difference in our community! Buildings and equipment help, but people are priceless. I have a feeling that everything both churches need to reach our county is sitting in seats at either campus. I am waiting in anticipation to see how God works this all out!

So much more to say, but it will have to wait for another day. Be blessed this week!

I love when God births in our hearts something a decade or two before we actually see it come to fruition. It lets us know that our steps are ordained and HE DOES NOT FORGET. That’s what happened in our lives this week. A ten year old dream that we have kept believing for has been set into motion. Here’s the story…

When we were youth pastors we said, “What if we could replicate everything we are doing and take it to the other side of our city? Most of the work is already done, but geographically we can go further faster as we disciple people into a growing relationship with Jesus.” It was the idea of a multi-site ministry that would never come to pass during our tenure as youth pastors.

We carried that dream with us into church planting and have feverishly worked to go multi-site. For about five years we have dreamed, planned, and tried to make it happen, knowing that if we could just be in multiple locations we would have a greater impact on our community. But it just didn’t work out the way we planned…until this week.

This week the pastor and board of Maple Grove Church in Battle Ground began the process to vote to allow their church to become our church. They would be lending their strengths to our strengths and together we can accomplish more. It would be the opportunity that would allow North Creek Church to have their second campus in Battle Ground, Washington in just a couple of months.

We could not be more shocked or excited about this opportunity! We believe that this is a God-ordained win/win situation for both churches and an answer to prayer on both sides. It is a miracle!

So what does that look like?

For the Hazel Dell campus it actually doesn’t look much different at all. It does mean we’ll need some new leaders, new volunteers, and to continue to press on toward our goal of a permanent building for this campus. It means that some of our current people who live closer to Battle Ground may choose to go to a new campus. It means that some of our current team might not be there on a particular Sunday because they are at another campus. But overall, life at Hazel Dell will function very similarly to what it does now, but all the while knowing that more people are hearing about Jesus at their church 20 minutes away.

For the Battle Ground campus, it would look a lot different. It would look like some new staff. It would look like a new way of doing things from small groups to youth ministry. It would look like new advertising in the community and new life for that church. It would look like opportunity for people to dream and grow in new ways. This would not be a video-venue campus, but rather we would utilize our wealth of teaching pastors to accommodate both campuses. We are blessed with amazing communicators and will utilize those gifts! We would be decorating that church to look precisely like the Hazel Dell Campus, so that both campuses feel like the Coffee Church.

We want you to know that Maple Grove’s current pastor and board are not in the slightest bit disheartened with this decision. They are full of anticipation, ready to see change, and excited for the message of Jesus to be flowing in their community. This is a season of rejoicing and excitement and with that we say, “TO GOD BE THE GLORY!”

We know that you will have a mountain of questions as we go through this process to launch North Creek Battle Ground. Feel free to email Pastor Mark at mark@coffeechurch.com anytime and also count on the fact that we will be communicating regularly as we navigate the future. Here we GROW!

We started our Circle Maker small group last night and it was great! One of the passages we read was Numbers 13:26-33. We pick up the story where God had told them to check out the land of Canaan, which he was GIVING them. Spies went in to see what they were facing and came back to give a report. Keep in mind that what they were seeing was already promised to be theirs! Here is a condensed version of what happened:

26 They came back to Moses and Aaron and the whole Israelite community. There they reported to them and showed them the fruit of the land. 27 They gave Moses this account: “We went into the land to which you sent us, and it does flow with milk and honey! Here is its fruit. 28 But the people who live there are powerful, and the cities are fortified and very large. 29 The Amalekites live in the Negev; the Hittites, Jebusites and Amorites live in the hill country; and the Canaanites live near the sea and along the Jordan.”

30 Then Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, “We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it.”

31 But the men who had gone up with him said, “We can’t attack those people; they are stronger than we are.” 32 And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, “The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. 33 We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them.”

I am so struck by this passage, it’s astounding! How many times in our lives does God give us a promise and we doubt the fulfillment of that promise? Both spies saw the same thing, knew the same promise, and yet came back with two profoundly different takes on the situation. Where do you tend to fall in this story? Are you the “We can certainly do it!” type when God hands you an opportunity of blessing or do you see all of the difficult challenges and “spread among the people a bad report”.

Honestly, I think we probably all fall on both sides of that fence now and again, but it is certainly a push for me to listen to the voice of God and, without wavering in the details, to proclaim “WE CAN DO THIS!”