Making the Connection

Check out the pics from Sunday. As you can tell, the kids are having a blast and getting hyped up on lots of sugar from those brightly colored Easter eggs. You can also order the pics from Shutterfly if you want them.

Easter 2007

Every Easter at TCC, we take a spiritual survey to get a snapshot of where our attenders see themselves in their relationship with Jesus. This always produces a large number of Connection Cards and many people take the step to trust in Christ. After Kristi worked today through a record number of responses, we have the results.

• 100 people marked they are already Christ-followers.
• 28 people made the most important decision of their lives to trust Christ!
• 5 people wanted more information about taking this next step.
• 2 really honest people indicated they didn’t want to think about it.

Now, we’ll be following up these decisions through letters with helpful resources and phone calls. Please pray with me that the seeds that were planted in lives will be watered and grow to maturity. There is a huge PART-AY in heaven as we welcome new people into the family!

The Rock was rolled away and it landed in the middle of The Connection Church this morning! This is the way Easter should be celebrated. This is the way every Sunday should be celebrated. I was excited this morning that there was no frost on the windshields when I went outside early this morning. We rolled up at 7am to get started. New faces were around to help get everything set-up. Bryan Geiger pulled up with the CERT truck filled with Easter eggs, tables, and more. That guy never fails to amaze me.

Another guy I’ve got to brag on is Micah, who has been feeling really bad over the last few weeks but is so faithful to get all the sound equipment set and sounding great every Sunday. And today, He helped me kick off the message by kicking around some of our favorite 80s memories.

The band sounded great and led us to truly celebrate Easter by focusing on Jesus’ resurrection power. They also pulled off great versions of "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and "Every Breath You Take" by The Police.

I think the message hit home with a lot of people today. I’ll let you know the results of the annual spiritual survey tomorrow. But I believe a lot of people took the step to trust Jesus with their lives today.

At the end of the services, we had a total nose count of 604! We figured there was 1 nose per person. Pretty unbelievable even as I write that. It’s what I had said I thought we’d have (+4), even with the weather being what it was this weekend. It’s amazing that a church that’s 2 and 1/2 years old could have that many people together on one Sunday in Kyle, TX. It’s a great start to a new series and a new season for us as a church.

Now comes the follow-up. This week we’ll be evaluating, meeting, praying, mailing, calling, emailing, and planning for the coming weeks. Thanks again to everyone who served to accomplish this phenomenal day together. It could not have happened without you inviting, talking it up, and working so hard to pull it off. And most of all: TO GOD BE THE GLORY!

I went to our worship band practice on Thursday night and was blown away. I’m not overselling this when I say, the services are going to rock! Especially the opening song. Let me let you in on another secret: Our services normally start 2 minutes late. We run the countdown clock (what, we have one of those?) to end 2 minutes after service time. We’re not doing that tomorrow. We’ll start right on time and you don’t want to miss the first note. So leave early to make sure the weather doesn’t cause you to be late. Jesus rose from the grave! Let’s get up out of bed and worship Him!

This morning a group of about 30 of us huddled together at Steeplechase Park to decide whether or not we should follow thru with The Big Hunt. I was moved to see the commitment from our church family. They blow me away.

Chris Bealand reminded us of Romans 8:28: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. The Big Hunt and The Connection Church are God’s. He is bigger than The Big Hunt and He can do with us as He wants. And we know that His purpose for us will prevail.

In the end, it was cancelled (for today), postponed (we’ll do the eggs tomorrow instead of KidStore), rescheduled (maybe a different event), reimagined due to inclement weather. That’s a nice way of saying, "The weather stinks." It’s crazy cold, soaking wet, and windy. What can you do?

So, we have 30,000 Easter Eggs left over. My advice, make sure you get to TCC on Sunday morning with your Easter baskets to gather plenty of eggs. So in a sense, we’re moving the event to our Sunday morning services, at least the eggs element.

Once again, a big thanks to Jennifer Williams for her incredible job of bringing some much needed organization to the Big Hunt planning. And we had an incredible team that worked hard and kept believing til the call was made to not do the hunt today.

Here’s some good thoughts:

• We got lots of advertising on The River 102.3
• Our groups pulled together to prepare for the event
• Lots of people in our church stepped up to get connected
• There’s a lot of buzz in the community about TCC
• With the weather the way it is, maybe by Sunday morning, people will be a little stir crazy and want to get out for worship
• This is a stretch, but perhaps people who were going to just come to The Big Hunt will be led to check out our services on Sunday instead

Even worse, what are the people in Austin going to do at the annual Spamorama Festival? What do you do with all that Spam? Talk about an event with purpose.

Let’s regather our thoughts and create a community event in the coming weeks/months. Maybe a Summer Kick-Off.