Welcome to my blog!!!! - Easter 2009

Welcome to my first blog entry! I am asking God to use this post to connect with people who share my passion to see God glorified and to see the church change the world. The thoughts shared in this blog wi
ll be that of a man that believes the church should be "offensive" not "defensive", effecting culture, not being affected by it. 

I have four passions in my life: My Savior, my Wife, my Family, and HIS Church. May God be glorified in and through them all! Thanks for reading my thoughts!

This first blog entry is dedicated to the amazing work of God over the week of Easter. 

Context is important:

We have made the decision in our church that we are not going to ask the community that we seek to reach to serve us, but we want to serve them. In December of 2008, God opened up the door for us to partner with a local Chik-fil-a here in Macedonia. Our director of outreach shared our vision as a church (to serve the community) through an unscheduled conversation, and a purely motivated statement to want to serve the community through the opening of our cafe (scheduled for February 2009). God orchestrated this conversation to open up doors to the community. Not only do they sponsor our cafe for our weekend services (Saturdays and Sundays), they have begun to partner with us for community events.

God led us in '08 to have two major community events: An Easter Egg Helicopter drop and a 5K Run. Todd went to the city and offered our services to host the Helicopter Egg Drop on the city's behalf. Before we knew it, God opened up doors for us to plan and host an event for the city of Macedonia. Chik-fil-a offered food and even their cow for the event!

Our Easter week began on April 4 with the Helicopter Egg Drop. We anticipated seeing up 1,000 people attend the first year. God opened up my eyes, and the eyes of our people when 6,000-8,000 people 

showed up! People parked up to a mile away and walked to the event. Cars were backed up for miles! So many people came that it was chaotic! One of the coolest things I have ever seen was our people in lime green shirts locking arms to keep the people back! Unbelievable! We had 6,000 eggs, and we needed 20,000! It was one of the most unbelievable things I have ever witnessed. The mayor was astonished and grateful. 

It says in Mark 2, after Jesus healed the paralytic that was brought to Him... "This amazed everyone, and they praised God saying, We have never seen anything like this..." People were saying this! One of the prizes that was offered in one of the eggs was free food at Chik-fil-a for one year. We found at the end of the event that one of the persons that found this prize was a single, widowed mother of two. Jesus fed a woman for a year!

That's how the week started...

That Monday I was to leave to speak at a spiritual focus week in Connecticut. This school was praying for God's movement, and on Tuesday, eight people prayed to receive Christ.

Thursday while I was gone speaking, we hosted communion. Normally, we see 70-80 people come out. This year, we saw 170+ adults. People were amazed at the greatness of God and, for some, began to connect the dots of what God is doing at Western Reserve.

The weekend for us begins on Saturday with our first service, followed by two more on Sunday. We did not know what to expect. God brought a surge of people on Saturday night and capacity plus crowds at both services on Sunday. People got right with God and others became followers of Christ. We saw 700+ people come to our services. 

At our staff meeting on Monday, I shared God's command to Moses to write down what God had done, and to be sure that Joshua saw it. Why? So no one would ever forget what God had done.

I had the staff review what God had done from April 2008 to April 2009...we wrote them down...here are a few...

12 Months of Jesus

- DNA transformation of our church...we began to walk towards people...not away

- One Sunday in September, we cancelled one of our services, hit the streets, and in 45 minutes, 300 businesses were "thanked" for serving our community.

- In 17 minutes, our church gave $57,000 in cash and pledged $3700 per month to build an orphanage in Cambodia and rescue 40 children. Our orphanage is to open in coming weeks

- We launched our Cafe...Chik-fil-a partnered with us.

- 6,000-8,000 people came to an helicopter egg drop

- Western Reserve doubled in attendance during these months

What next God....what next?

Personally, I have watched my children be effected by a church that is being effective. Marcie and I often say, they get it! Caleb and Emily have seen works of God through this church that I have never seen in 26 years of being a follower of Christ!

May God be glorified!

Until next week...Jason

By the way, I begin a new series this week entitled, Questions That Need to be Asked. It's going to get crazy around here! We are going to talk about subjects that the church has been afraid to address. Eternity...is Hell real? Baptism, Am I Ready for Eternity? If you have friends that live in this area...you gotta bring them to this series! I believe God is going to bring a soul harvest! We will be amazed! See you this weekend!