In the letter to the church at Philadelphia we find this intriguing fact about Jesus,
“What he opens, no one can close; and what he closes, no one can open.”
(Revelation 3:7)
In the eight years that I have been serving in pastoral ministry (my first ministry position as an assistant youth pastor was at the ripe old age of 19) I have seen the truth of that reality, time and time again. If God is not in something, no matter how hard you try, you can’t help but fail miserably (“or even more miserably succeed” as Warren Wiersbe put it.) On the other hand, if God is involved nothing can stop it from coming to pass-not even the gates of hell!

I have discovered that the “trick” is to keep your self smack-dab in the slipstream of God’s will and not to try and kick down doors by yourself.

Today at Fresh Life, we made an exciting announcement about a door that God has recently opened for us.  We are under contract to purchase a super old theatre, called the Liberty that is a block away from our current facility (also a super old theatre, called the Strand).  We plan on simulcasting the service into this building, which will give us twice as many seats as we have now (500) for a fraction of the cost of building a 1,000 seat auditorium.  Getting texted pictures of the forty people listening to the message from folding chairs on the sidewalk (and in the street) who couldn’t get seats in our third service or in the overflow room this morning, was enough confirmation that we need more room.

now that’s a risky overflow!

Here are some pictures of the Liberty:

the Liberty theatre

a mockup of what the teaching will look like on the screen

a view of the beautiful historic theatre from the stage

Also, a while back I blogged about our struggle to foster a sense of community in a growing church. We also presented our solution to the body today.  With much prayer, the answer we have come to is what we are calling Fresh Life Groups.   Continue reading…