I’m sitting here on my coach feeling incredibly thankful in regards to how faithful the Lord has been to us here at NewSpring Church.
It was ten years ago today that we nearly canceled church.
We had our first service on January 16,2000…but the next Saturday night (January 22) a MAJOR ice storm hit the upstate. I remember sitting in front of my television with the weather channel on, begging God to let the ice strorm miss us..
It didn’t!
SO…the next morning trees were falling all over the place and the entire college campus lost power. I “gave up” and decided to walk over to the building where we were meeting and post a sign on the door that said, “church canceled today.”
When I got to the door Joe and Jeen Sangl were sitting in front of the building in their little chevy car and Joe said to me, “Hey man, we aren’t calceling church, are we?”
“No way,” I said back to him as I wadded the piece of paper up and put it in my pocket.
We walked into the room (which was VERY cold) and set up chairs. We didn’t have to worry about sound or anything like that…like I said, we had no power. After everything was ready we sat back and wondered whether or not anyone was going to show.
They did, mostly college students…but by the time we began our services we had around 70 people in the room. So…we played some music, I preached and then we went home. (We had church that night as well!) I remember thinking as people were leaving, “I am SO glad we did not cancel church today.”
(I also remember counting the offering that day…it was around $400…and while I was full of joy because people had shown up, I was also full of fear because we were going broke!)
That was 10 years ago today…
And so here I am on the eve of our 10 year anniversary. In a way it seems like it was just yesterday that we started…full of dreams and a passion to reach our community for Jesus.
We had NO idea!
God taught me a lesson that day…His church cannot be stopped. And tomorrow we will see evidence of that as thousands gather to celebrate all that God has done.
Jesus is changing our communities one life at a time.
And I can’t wait to see what happens next!