It's Official!

It's official! We have been approved by the Anderson District One School Board to begin our services on October 7th, 2007. This now means that we can begin with our advertising and print stuff. Anderson District One rents out the school to us for one year. After our year is up we have to find another location. We are already looking for our locations for next year when our contract with the school is up. We are thinking a lot about not having just one location but rather two- three locations in the upstate area. We are currently pursuing several different locations in the Easley, Powdersville, Williamston, Piedmont and Anderson areas.

We hope to have at least two locations nailed down by March. That will give us time to prepare for the move. Some people have asked if we will be doing video venues. The answer is no. The whole service will be live and in person. (I know that Sea Coast, North Pointe and others have been using video effectively but it doesn't fit into the vision of what we are trying to do. No offense is intended toward churches doing video but it is just not us.) We will be simply staggering our times to allow some of the staff to travel to the different locations. Our goal is to meet these different communities where they are and make a difference in each of these areas.

As we add our third and fourth location, we will add an additional speaker and we will rotate between locations. This way it will not be known as one person's church but rather a church of many people. We will have the same ministries at each location. I shared some of this in the Core Groups this past week and it was really cool to see the reactions of everyone there. There was a buzz about what God is going to do.

We will be one church with 4 locations. It will be cool to see people from different communities coming together as one. This next year is going to be amazing.

Core Groups

Tonight I finished up the last of the four core group meetings that we had for the church. It has been amazing. My original goal was to have 25 people to be on board with the launch. After tonight's meeting we realized that through the four meetings, we had over 60 people represented through the core group process. A couple of families sent one or two people to the meeting to get the info for the entire family which was very cool.

All in all the core group meetings were a huge success and I am even more excited to see what God does from here. A special thanks to the Scott's, Garrison's, Miller's and my parents for hosting the meetings. I will be meeting with our leaders and then we will have a huge meeting with all of our volunteers in the next few weeks. If you didn't turn in your volunteer form at the meeting, please remember to drop me an email with your information within the next couple of weeks so that we can plug you into your area of ministry

Website, Tax Stuff, and Core Groups

The website is up and running www.sstonebridgechurch.tv .

Today was pretty productive on getting a ton of the official tax and paperwork stuff done. It is amazing how many things that you have to fill out for taxes, incorporation, non profit and so on. The good news is that all of this is completed and now I can spend more time on messages and series.

Our third core group meeting is Tuesday at 6:45 p.m in Piedmont. . Drop me an email if you need directions. The fourth one is scheduled for Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. in Powdersville.

Core Group Update

We have completed two of our core group meetings. Both went very well and people are getting on board. I was able to lay out our core values and our focus. I shared the vision with both groups and the response was awesome. We had some great questions and discussions. It was a unique learning process for me personally and it felt good to be able to lay everything out and see others get excited about what it going to take place.

We have two more core group meetings next week and I am excited to see what will take place in those meetings as well. It is not too late to get in on one of those meetings.

The cool thing about these meetings is seeing God fill the spots where we have needs. It is late and I have an early meeting with our web designer tomorrow. I will update more later.

People to Pray For

I thought I would just update on some key folks who are already on board and ask that you pray for these folks and others that will be leading key areas as we get started. Chasen Callahan will be our Worship Leader. Mark Sexton is going to be our Associate Worship Leader. Erin Brown and Casey Callahan are going to be heading up our Children's area. Jeff Garrison has signed on to head up our media. We have several others who are praying over things and making sure this is where God wants them to be. I will be updating this often letting you know some of the folks helping out so that you can get to know them more.

Full Speed

Things are moving along full speed ahead. Today has been incredibly busy and very encouraging. Between Melissa and myself we each ran into five more families that said they would be at Stone Bridge on 10.07.07 @10:07 a.m. at Wren High School. I already have been working on the message for that Sunday and I am excited to see what takes place. Be in prayer that people would stop just merely living and that they would Step into Life that Sunday.

Our Core Groups kick off tommorrow night at the home of Ray and Sandra Clary. We'll meet from 7-8. Thursday we will be in Anderson at the home of Jeff and Alfreda Scott. That also will meet from 7-8.

First Series and Keystones

Today was spent doing some brainstorming for our first series "Life in HD". I met up with Wil and Reggie at Marathon North and we brainstormed through all four messages in that series. We came up with some cool stuff that will challenge and stretch us all. Be sure to go ahead and be inviting your friends and neighbors to our first service on 10.07.07 @10:07 a.m. at Wren High School.

One of the main things Stone Bridge will be focused on is Keystones, which is our home group or life groups. Doing life together as seen in Acts 2 is a key component of what the church was created to be. Keystones will be a basis for discipleship, fellowship, missions , and evangelism. If Keystones operates the way the early church operated, we will see people come to Christ in our everyday lives as we come in contact people day by day. A friend gave me some interesting material this week. It basically said that a church can be an organization where Sundays become the entire focus or the church can become a living organism through life groups. Once a church moves beyond an organization and transforms into a living organism, then true life change begins to take place. Church then moves from being a building or a service and turns into a lifestyle lived out daily by the Body of Christ. Then our "services" become a celebration of what has taken place throughout the week in the life of the church.

My prayer is that we will will become like that. A church that does life together and as we do, a community is changed.