Chuck Bridges Blog

Can you believe we have officially completed the first month of the year? (I count by Sundays) We have made our transition into a new worship area and everyone seems to be adjusting to the times pretty well. The TRANSFORERS series in January was a huge success. Once again I want to say thank you to our awesome staff (includes some who are paid and most who are not) who did a wonderful, bang-up, professional, creative, job in helping to communicate God’s messages. As I said on Sunday, this is not the end of our emphasis on being TRANSFORMERS. We intentionally began the New Year with this series to set the standard for our church throughout the whole year (and beyond).

One of the things we are intentional about this year is keeping accurate and honest records of our attendance, how many guests we have, how many people we have serving in ministries, our financial giving, and of course the most important stat of all — how many people are being saved! I am very excited about the numbers for our first month of the New Year/New format. This past Sunday we had a total of 339 people on campus. This is the second largest attendance we have had since I have been the Pastor of Washington Avenue. Praise God! For the month we averaged 311 in attendance. This is including the third week when the weather was bad (snow/ice/cold). We had 258 on that day. If you average the attendance for the other three weeks it comes to 329 per week. It is evident that we are averaging more people since we changed over to our new format, schedule, and meeting room! What a great privilege it is to work with a church filled with people who follow their leaders!!!

The greatest news of all is that we had 4 people who made public their decision to follow Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior! We are anticipating a great time in our first baptism service since making the changes. Details about that will be coming soon! We have also enjoyed meeting some wonderful people who have been visiting our services. We continue to pray for God to send us the people He wants to be a part of this ministry. From Seekers who are unchurched, dechurched, or just don’t know Jesus Christ as Savior, we want to be the place where they can come for answers to their greatest NEED!

Now that we are solidly averaging over 300 people in attendance, I wan to issue a challenge to our people. I started to make a goal of having over 350 in average attendance by the end of March. But that goal is not big enough for our God! I want to challenge ALL Christ-Followers who call Washington Avenue their home church to pray, invite, and tell everyone you can about the great things God is doing here. Let’s make it our goal to reach 400 in attendance by the end of March. Do you know that Easter is in March this year? Wouldn’t it be great if we had to bring in chairs for both services on Easter Sunday?! (March 23) Will you start NOW praying for God to give you opportunities to talk to people who need the Lord and invite them to come to church with you? Remember, our NUMBER ONE CORE VALUE IS TO ENGAGE PEOPLE WITH THE GOOD NEWS OF SALVATION THROUGH CHRIST!!

ENGAGE ~ ENGAGE ~ ENGAGE ~ ENGAGE ~ ENGAGE ~ ENGAGE ~ ENGAGE ~ ENGAGE ~ ENGAGE ~ ENGAGE

CONNECT PEOPLE TO JESUS ~ CONNECT PEOPLE TO JESUS ~ CONNECT PEOPLE TO JESUS

I can’t wait to see what God is going to do! Let’s ride the WAVE He is sending our way. Remember, even though we have had a great start to this New Year, it’s not how we start but how well we finish that counts. (Hebrews 12:1-2)