This weekend our congregation shifted to two morning services and an evening service, preparing for our new sermon series and fall push which invariably brings growth every year at every campus of Mars Hill Church. We entered the weekend with a Biblical Parenting Conference Friday and Saturday, then started the Peasant Princess series on Sunday… forever changing our times and the size and shape of Sunday with a 9am, 11.15am, and 5pm service. It was a massive undertaking that went off almost without a hitch. We had our biggest attendance in 2009 save for Easter with exactly 400 people. With college starting this week and our campuses’ first anniversary October 5, we’re bound to grow a bit more before it’s all said and done.

Your pastors and staff would like to publicly thank our talented musicians now playing three services and spending the whole day at the campus – almost all Mars Hill musicians serve for free and put in innumerable hours and we love you guys, particularly “Achilles Heel” for starting off the three service stint this Sunday. We’d also like to thank the countless volunteers who have stepped up in every area of behind-the-scenes ministry to clean the facility, hand out bibles, and push all the buttons that make things happen. Most of all, my wife Kat nearly cried when our Children’s Ministry Director Eric Stark and his wife Kim sat in the service at the 11.15am. For a year, they’ve worked both services and driving to a neighboring campus after a long day to sit in a service. This was the first service at their home campus that they’d EVER been able to attend since our launch last October, made possible by the parents and singles stepping up to take care of kids during church services in our Children’s Ministry.

This sermon series is just getting started and is likely to get REALLY interesting. Additionally, our midweek programs kick in next week and I couldn’t be more thrilled to begin investing in our men, women, singles and church with supplemental teaching and training. What else has God got in store? Only He knows, and I can’t wait to find out.