And now...

Final drum roll please...? /\/\/\/\/\ *those are drumsticks* Here are my top three memories of the past 10 months.

#3 Gas buy down. With 502 people in church this past Sunday, what we did last May seems even crazier to me. I think God sometimes clouds our "fear factor" in moments when we need to advance without fear. We had about 10 - 12 committed Elementers on Memorial Day weekend when we pulled this thing off. We recruited family and friends to come help from Greeley, Oklahoma and Gillette just to have enough help. We wanted our first event in the city to be a servant project, and we thought helping people fill their gas tanks would be a great service. We had no real consistent offering coming in, no volunteer base, no way to really promote the event. You can read all about this event and how it worked in the following blogs. Bunch of posts on this one here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Little did I know where Element would go from here. I almost put this #1. It definitely gets the award for "Most Posts On The Blog For One Event".

#2 Element Gives Back. HOLY COW was this fun! We developed a blog to log all the stories of ways people gave back. Go to www.elementgivesback.com to check it out. We planned in August to do a sermon series in January on finances/stewardship. As we were approaching the series we began talking about how we were going to illustrate the scriptural principle of tithing and portraying the idea that "this money is not our own". The gives back idea is not original to us. We saw another church do this in a different way, so we prayed about it and felt like it would be an AMAZING way to model this and that God wanted us to do it. We felt like to do it correctly we wanted to give back one weeks entire offering to the congregation. So we made the decision that the offering from January 6th, we would give back in varying increments to the congregation, on January 13th. Little did we know the kind of impact it would have on our congregation. We spoke truthfully and openly about finances and God's command for us to give 10% of our income back to Him. This is something we hope to do every year at surprise times. It not only teaches the congregation to give back, but it keeps Element Church in that mode as well. You can read all about it here, here and here.

#1b October 7th, 2007 is a day I will never...NEVER forget. I cannot tell you how it feels as someone whom God called to come plant this church, to stand at the door of a theater and watch over 200 people come to hear the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. When we decided to do this thing I didn't have a clue if 2 people would come, let alone 200. I was amazed. ABSOLUTELY AMAZED! To literally begin to see the vision unfold before your eyes. To see the promises of God be fulfilled. Yet it was only the beginning. That day we worked SO HARD to get to, I stood there and said "This is only the beginning.". God didn't call us to launch Sunday. God didn't call us to "start" a church. He called us to lead this church, and I'll do it till I die or He calls me on. I think this would make any list I make from here on out. Not sure how launch Sunday doesn't take the cake. You can read about it here, here, here, and here.

#1a Another #1 is yet to come. Element Church, God is not done with you yet. What amazes me is the new stories that come, will blow these out of the water. God is in the business of doing AMAZING things through His people. It was fun for me to recount these stories, so if no one else enjoyed it I did. And to think, my wife had to talk me into start blogging. I'm so glad I did so we have record of all the things God has done. I'll leave you with this from Isaiah 55

"And these events will be great honor to the Lord's name; they will be an everlasting sign of his power and love."

Greater things are yet to come,

Jeff