Chuck Bridges Blog

Yesterday was our second week in our new schedule of meeting in our smaller, more intimate Worship Center. The two service schedule seemed to flow a little bit smoother yesterday. We had plenty of lighting for people in the Worship Center! All in all I think we had a pretty good day. The attendance was a little lower than it was the first week. This is something that I will monitor very closely since one of our primary reasons for making this change is to encourage our people to spend more time and energy getting others to the Main Event! I sure do hope and pray that our faithful, dedicated Christ-Followers will not merely use the new schedule to have a “shorter” day on Sundays! This is the time to “step-up” and DO “Whatever it takes” to get people in to hear what God desperately wants to say to them! People will not just come because we have a new schedule and some new signs (doesn’t the sign out front look great? no more cemetary marker!). They will only come when you and I invite them (and keep on inviting them!).

Another thing I will continue to remind our people about is “hanging out.” We have set up the Atrium (glass area out front) with a coffee bar, some tables, a welcome center, and a ministry recruiting desk to encourage more people to fellowship. For years now the front area of Washington Avenue Church has looked the same on Sunday mornings as it does every other day of the week. We want to have activity at the front of our campus so people driving by on Washington Avenue (hundreds each day) will see that there is LIFE at WAC! This will not happen if most of our people park in the back, enter through the back and exit the same way. Will you help us out? Even if you don’t drink coffee, take some time to ‘hang-out’ in the front before each service.

In many ways we are like a brand new church. What we have to be careful of is that we don’t bring an old church mindset into what could potentially be an exciting explosion of growth — seeing people come to know Jesus Christ!!!

We praise God for the two salvations that were made public yesterday! What a blessing it is to share in this experience with Daniel and Brandon. I was also given the privilege of taking part in leading a 37 year old man to Christ at Starbucks last Friday! This is what lights my fire and what I want to spend my energy and time doing while here on earth.

It is a great day to be a part of what God is doing in this generation. He is alive and well and wants to breathe resurrection life into His local churches. I hope we get to experience the brightness of His glory while He is near — moving and working. The time is now so let’s be very careful not to miss this great opportunity to BE TRANSFORMED so that we can become TRANSFORMERS!!!